A Flat-Eight Porsche Hypercar Is Looking Increasingly Likely: TDS

Hello and welcome to The Downshift, a daily sweep of the morning’s top headlines from the auto industry and car culture, curated by The Drive’s editorial team. Each story gets a short summary and a link to the original source if you want to dive deeper.

Here’s what’s happening on Monday, September 21, 2026:

🎱 Porsche may be working on a new hypercar codenamed “S1” and powered by a flat-eight engine, per a new report. Porsche has never before stuffed a flat-eight into a production vehicle, so this would be a pretty special occurrence. The company publicly floated the idea of such a mill as recently as the start of the decade, but that project, which involved a Cayman chassis, was scrapped. Coincidentally, a report prior to the Carrera GT’s debut more than a quarter-century ago mentioned an upcoming halo model with the very same name—S1—and V8 power, even though the Carrera GT ended up with a Le Mans-derived V10. [Handelsblatt via Motor1]

🔩 Stellantis is recalling just under 100,000 Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer SUVs (as well as their long-wheelbase variants) for improperly secured roof-rack crossbars, spanning model years 2022 through 2026. Of course, not every vehicle built in that span has a roof rack, so not every Wagoneer owner will need to take a trip to their dealer’s service department to have the incriminating bolts replaced. [NHTSA via Autoblog]

🌪️ In other Jeep news, the 2028 Grand Cherokee may receive the twin-turbo, 3.0-liter Hurricane inline-six that’s used in the Grand Wagoneer, enabling 420 horsepower and a 1,200-lb. increase in towing capacity, based on a report citing a leaked internal document. [Mopar Insiders]

📉 U.S. EV sales plunged 31% in July 2026 compared to the same month a year earlier, according to new data from Mobility Global, while EVs’ share of the overall market dropped from 8.9% to 6.2%. That sounds awful but it’s not particularly surprising, considering the absence of a federal tax rebate since last September. [Automotive News]

🧑‍🏭 Back to Porsche, as the company may shed another 4,100 jobs as a part of Volkswagen’s ongoing titanic restructuring. The sports-car maker had already committed to reducing its headcount by 9,000 back in July, so these cuts would come in addition to those. However, Porsche CEO Michael Leiters denied the claim in an internal memo to staff. [Reuters via Automotive News]

🕹️ The European Patent Office has published Porsche’s application for a virtual manual transmission, not unlike what Ferrari has implemented with the 12Cilindri Manuale. [CarBuzz]

👔 Volvo has chosen former Skoda CEO Klaus Zellmer to succeed Hakan Samuelsson as the Swedish automaker’s next chief executive and president. Zellmer will assume the post no later than October 1, 2027, giving Volvo a solid year to manage the transition of power. It’s worth noting that Samuelsson hasn’t been forced out; he was always placed to lead the company for a two-year interim after Volvo’s board of directors voted to replace former CEO Jim Rowan in 2025. [Automotive News]

🏁 Weekend race winners:

• NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at Bristol: Sheldon Creed for Haas Factory Team
• NASCAR Cup Series at Bristol: Joey Logano for Team Penske
• MotoGP Austrian Grand Prix: Pedro Acosta for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
• IMSA SportsCar Championship at Indianapolis: Dries Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde for BMW M Team WRT

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