Porsche still intends to go Ferrari hunting with a mid-engine sports car... they just do not know when

[Sticky]

The last time we heard about the potential Porsche 960/961 rival for the Ferrari 458 it was rumored to get a quad-turbocharged flat-8 motor and weigh only 3000 pounds. PorscheBoost stated at the time this was wishful thinking and simply a huge rumor which is all it ever amounted to.

The car seemingly has yet to move beyond the drawing board phase. Porsche's R&D boss Wolfgang Hatz told Australia's Drive that the car is still on the way. He stated, "Cancelled is not the right way [to say this]. We have not finally decided the SOP (start of production), so at the moment we have so many other things to do – to develop some entirely new cars such as Panamera successor and Cayenne successor and the next-generation of our sports cars, and on the other side new engines, transmissions and hybrids as well as the [Le Mans] racing program. So the workload is the critical point for us."

Obviously Porsche has been busy with launching the 918 Spyder hybrid supercar and the model lineup continues to expand so clearly they have their hands full. The car is not cancelled as some have reported it just seems shelved for the moment. When or if the car will ever come is an internal decision but do not expect it anytime soon based on these comments, "Wait and see, because we are doing so many other cars in the future. It's really tough at the moment. A lot of work for us."

Source

[leveraged sellout]

I think this is smart....the 458 is due to be "updated" with a heavy revision and turbo engine very soon, and McLaren has stated a goal of releasing something new every year, so who knows, a tweaked 12C/650S might be on the way.

I think they're waiting to see what the others are doing, so that they have something to definitely benchmark. Then, we will probably see some more info.