Watching a professional race car driver slide off the track as he struggles to keep the Porsche 911 Turbo S he’s driving in front of your journalist-piloted 918 Spyder is a remarkably satisfying feeling. That is, until you realize that the car is doing much of the work for you.

During my first drive of the 918 Spyder at the fantastic Circuit of the Americas, I saw just that happen. As the 911 and its pro driver threw up a rooster tail of dirt (he safely made it back on track just a few hundred feet later), I felt a surge of confidence in my driving ability. Then I felt a corresponding deflation—there’s a whole lot going on behind the scenes of the 918 even when it’s in full race mode.

As I noted in my first drive review, “If, at some point, you find yourself executing flawless apexes at speeds that you’d normally encounter at the end of a middling-length straightaway, and wonder to yourself, “Just how in the hell did I do that?”, you’ll have taken the Wizard of Oz’s advice to heart. You’ve ignored the man—or, more precisely, the 80 or so computers—behind the 918’s technological curtain. The giant green-headed monster of flaming speed is very real to you. The illusion is preserved.”

I bought the Wizard’s line, but then I peeked behind the curtain.

On the other hand, that huge level of technological sophistication that enables pace inconceivable to most ordinary humans, especially from behind the wheel of a street-legal car, is part of what makes the Porsche 918 Spyder such a masterpiece of the automotive art.

“Make no mistake: the speed is real. You’re really doing it. But there’s a whole lot going on behind the scenes to make that experience possible,” I noted. “Computers talk to computers, telling each other how much power to apply to the front axle (which has its own standalone electric motor, capable of delivering up to 129 horsepower). Other computers take that information and filter it through their own algorithm, deciding how much power to send from the 156-horsepower rear electric motor to the rear axle, while the 608-horsepower V-8 engine does the same, all of them responding to the requests of your right foot.”

But the 918 Spyder isn’t just a track-honed scalpel. It’s also a street car, and a very good one at that. It even offers an all-electric mode. “E-Power (electric) mode does just as you'd expect, siphoning off the car's 6.8-kilowatt-hour supply of electrons to supply a maximum of 230 kW of power to the two electric motors for a maximum range of up to 19 miles (not coincidentally, about the distance from Weissach to Zuffenhausen), or about 12 miles in more normal driving conditions,” I wrote. “A Jetson's-like whine accompanies the all-electric mode, louder at lower speeds, then slowly subsumed by the susurrus of the wind over the cabin. You might think the 918 Spyder would feel a bit sluggish in electric mode, but you'd be wrong; and if you need to accelerate more quickly than electric mode will allow, give it the boot, and the car will automatically kick on the throaty V-8 and send you into Hybrid mode.”

Pair these two extremes with a range of hybrid-drive modes, some advanced infotainment, an audiophile-grade Burmester sound system, and the 918’s incomparably gorgeous looks, and you can understand the superlatives I laid on the car in the conclusion of my first drive report: “E-Power (electric) mode does just as you'd expect, siphoning off the car's 6.8-kilowatt-hour supply of electrons to supply a maximum of 230 kW of power to the two electric motors for a maximum range of up to 19 miles (not coincidentally, about the distance from Weissach to Zuffenhausen), or about 12 miles in more normal driving conditions. A Jetson's-like whine accompanies the all-electric mode, louder at lower speeds, then slowly subsumed by the susurrus of the wind over the cabin. You might think the 918 Spyder would feel a bit sluggish in electric mode, but you'd be wrong; and if you need to accelerate more quickly than electric mode will allow, give it the boot, and the car will automatically kick on the throaty V-8 and send you into Hybrid mode.”

But, given its nearly $1 million price tag and exceptionally limited sales status, can the 918 Spyder beat out the much more affordable and widely available competition for the accolade of Motor Authority’s Best Car To Buy? Find out when we announce the winner on November 10th. The question is simple; the answer is anything but. How do you determine one car is better than t... in Motor Authority Polls on LockerDome