Porsche 959 – The First Porsche Supercar

The Porsche 959’s development began as the “Porsche Projekt Gruppe B” in 1981, when the then-new managing director Peter Schutz was approached by Porsche’s head of engineering Helmuth Bott.
Bott proposed a new generation of the Porsche 911 that would be developed from scratch, while, after great success in Le Mans, rallying would be an interesting field of motorsport to use to get a good public image.
The project officially started on the 1st of January 1982, with the decision being that, while the 911 would be kept as a regular model, there would be a rally car based off the 911 SC (the 1972 C-Series 911) made to comply with the rules of the Group B Rally.

The Porsche 953 - A 959 Pretending To Be A 911

As a first step in the development three 911s were taken off the production line and turned into the Porsche 953, a mixture of a prototype and an unofficial predecessor.
The 953 received a reinforced chassis along with a roll-cage, a purpose-made suspension that raised the car and enabled it to survive decent jumps.
The car was also fitted with an early version of the 959’s four-wheel-drive system, powered by a completely reworked flat-six engine delivering 220kw.
The car was the first 911 with four-wheel-drive, and is often referred to as the “Porsche 911 4x4”.
The three cars, sponsored by Rothmans (a tobacco company), were entered in the 1984 Rally Paris Dakar, with one of the three (driven by René Metge and Dominique Lemoyne) winning against the 426 other starting cars.

The Gruppe B Concept - The Porsche 959 Takes Shape

In 1983 Porsche presented the “Gruppe B” at the IAA in Frankfurt (Germany), a concept car that closely resembled the 959.
The biggest differences were less intakes in the front, the headlights being positioned further up the front (somewhat resembling the Datsun/Nissan 240Z) and “Turbo Discs” covering the wheels.
There’s also the rumor that the concept car presented at the IAA had no working drivetrain, which has neither been proven right nor proven wrong.
Already during that presentation Porsche got more than the 200 orders they needed for homologation, but due to unexpected complications in the construction the cars wouldn’t be delivered until several years later.

Rallying Is Testing - The Porsche 959 Starts Driving

Three early 959 took part in the 1985 Rally Paris-Dakar 959 (once again sponsored by Rothmans).
Due to the engine-department falling behind schedule the cars did not have the planned 441kw-strong bi-turbo flat-six engine, but had to make do with tuned up engines from the normal Porsche 911.
All three drivers had to terminate their participation in the rally due to various reasons.
A single 959 that was finally equipped with the bi-turbo engine was entered into the “Pharaoh’s Rally” in Egypt in October of 1985, driven by Saeed Al Hajri and John Spiller, ending the rally in first place giving the 959 its first motorsort-success.
The same year one of the two prototypes from 1983 was adapted to resemble the production version more closely, and was subsequently destroyed in a crash-test necessary to get the car to be road legal.

1985 - The Project Becomes Reality

In 1985 a hand-assembled 959 premiered, resembling the production version to about 99%.
The body of the car is made of Kevlar-reinforced plastic for the roof, fenders and most of the rear end, while the front bumper is made of Polyurethane and the front hood and the doors are made of aluminium.
All that sits on a base largely made of Nomex, meant to slow the progression of a possible fire.
The car is 4.260mm long (with a wheelbase of 2.268mm), 1.840mm wide and 1.199mm (just 47,2 inches) high, weighting 1.450kg with a full tank of fuel (90 liters).

What Makes The 959 Special - The Drivetrain

The 959 is powered by a modified version of the rally car’s engine (distantly related to the Porsche 935 race car’s engine), a 2.947ccm flat-six engine with a block and head made of aluminium.
A notable feature is that the heads are water-cooled, while the block relies on air-cooling.
The engine is force-fed air through two sequential KK-turbochargers with one intercooler per turbocharger, the first time such a system was installed in a road-going car with a fuel-burning engine.
A Bosch Motronic-system takes care of the fuel-incjection, while two overhead camshafts control four valves per cylinder.
Uniquely for the 959 are the sodium-filled exhaust-valves, supposed to enable the valves to easier dispose heat.
The engine is lubricated by a dry sump system holding 18 liters of oil, allowing for a very low engine position within the car.
The engine delivers 331kw at 6.500rpm and 500nm at 5.000rpm through a hydraulic single-disc clutch to a manual six-speed gearbox (with the road-car not having the rally car’s “G”-gear, a special gear to let the car “crawl” out of difficult situations).
The gearbox forwards the power to a refined version of the 953’s four-wheel-drive system, which included sensors for each wheel’s rpm, slip, the engine’s rpm and the angle of the steering wheel.
The data gained from those sensors is used to distribute power between the front and rear wheels, allowing up to 80% of the power to go to the rear wheels.

The 959 features independent suspension on double-wishbones all around, with adaptable Bilstein dampers operated by a system that adjusted the ride-height depending on the speed for better aerodynamics.
The car rolled on 17-inch magnesium wheels with integrated tire pressure sensors all around, wrapped in 235mm-wide Bridgestone RE71-tires at the front and 255mm wide tires at the rear.
Deceleration was taken care of by 322mm vented discs in the front and 304mm discs at the rear with four-piston calipers all around.
The car also featured a Wabco-made ABS-system as standard.
From a standstill the 959 reaches 100kph in 3,7 seconds and 200kph in 13,3 seconds, before having to surrender to the elements at 317kph.

The standard version of the 959 was called the “959 Komfort” and came with a full leather interior, electrically adjustable seats, air conditioning, a radio with a cassette-deck and a sound-system.
Customers could order a “Leichtbau”-(“Low weight”-)package that ditched the radio, AC and a lot of insulation along with changing the stock seats with more lightweight ones, dropping the weight by 100kg to just 1350kg.

1987 - The Porsche 959 Can Be Bought, But Not By Anyone

When the car finally hit the showrooms in 1987 the base-price was 420.000 German Mark (equivalent of about 238.693 US-Dollars today).
However, it wasn’t originally sold to anyone who came in and handed over a big stack of money.
Selected customers and celebrities were offered a chance to buy one, and those who did also had to sign a contract saying they would not sell the car within 6 months.
Selected customers who chose to buy the car include Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates (more on his car below) and the Austrian composer Herbert von Karajan, who crashed his 959 within weeks of getting it (with the car subsequently burning down).
Porsche retrieved the plate with the VIN-number from that car and gave Karajan a new 959 that was officially his original one.
There is no 100% secure information on how many 959 were made, with even Porsche having given different numbers over time.
Currently Porsche (which is the source I trust most) claims that there were 288 959 made, with 113 being made in 1987 and 179 made in 1988.
40 of those are said to be the low weight version (either ordered that way from the factory or converted soon thereafter).
One 959 Komfort was made without being counted in the number of cars produced, and went straight to Porsche’s museum.

To celebrate the end of the 959’s production customers could order theirs as the “959 S”.
The 29 cars that were ordered with the “S”-option had larger turbochargers and different wastegates allowing a maximum boost-pressure of 1,15 bar (16,68psi).
When tested at the high-speed track in Nardo (Italy) in 1988 the car lost 0,1 seconds from a standstill to 100kph (compared to the normal car), but ran 339kph top speed rather than 317.
Two cars are known to have been scrapped after suffering accidents that would have needed a repair that cost more than the car’s value (both accidents without injured occupants, by the way).

Nowadays (January) the average price for a decent 959 (although it is assumed that only absolutely perfect 959s exist) is listed at 900.000 Euros, with a perfect one (“Grade 1, like new or better”) being listed at 1,3 Million Euros.
An original 959 S, if one ever comes up for sale, costs around 300.000€ more, although they usually sell at auctions which leads to much higher prices.
The high prices also mean that the 959 suffers the same fate a lot of expensive classic supercars suffer, which is that they are more likely catch dust in some collection than to be driven.

The Porsche 959 briefly re-entered production in 1992, when 8 cars (nicknamed the Porsche 959-92) were made from spare parts with small improvements especially to the brakes and the electrical system controlling the suspension.
The cars also (of course) received different tires which were a lot saver to use than the ones from the original production.
All the cars were the “Komfort”-version, and came with full equipment in either red or silver.
The cars were sold to selected customers at a price of 747.500 German Mark, almost twice as much as the original production-cars cost.
These cars are extremely sought after, with no average price existing since they usually don’t get sold but are more likely to be inherited.

The Porsche 959 Cabrio - An Expensive Mishap Becomes The Most Expensive Porsche

The Porsche 959 Cabrio (short for “Cabriolet”=Convertible) started out as a normal 959 delivered to the German racing-driver Jürgen Lässig in 1987.
Lässig crashed the car into an Audi 80 while travelling on the Autobahn A 81 near Singen (Germany) in 1988, inflicting serious damage to the right half of the front as well as the side of the car.
Lässig sold the damaged car to “Auto Becker” in in Düsseldorf (Germany), a large used car dealership.
The car was stripped of its interior, the damage was repaired, and the car was converted into a Cabrio (of sorts).
Most of the time the car is a normal convertible with a folding soft top, but it can also be fitted with the modified original roof as a hard top or the windscreen (along with the frame) can be swapped out to have a Speedster.
The car was presented at the IAA in Frankfurt in 1989, and reportedly sold to a collector from the USA for 3 Million German Mark.
It has since ended up in Italy and is currently (November of 2016) for sale at “ADR Motorsport” in Venice with only 8.100km on the clock.
So, if you happen to have 9,99 Million Euros lying around you can have that unique car.

The "Gates 959" - Helping US-Americans Import Cars Since 1999

Bill Gates bought a silver 959 Komfort in 1988, but had to leave it with Porsche in Germany because the car wasn’t road-legal in the USA since Porsche hadn’t given four 959 to the Department of Transportation for crash tests.
After half a year Gates had the car shipped to San Francisco, where it was put into storage without officially entering the country for thirteen years.
Gates did a lot of lobbying for “cars of interest”, and is credited with having helped the introduction of the “Show or Display”-law in 1999 that allowed him (and other similar cars) to be registered if they could pass emissions.
Gates shipped his 959 back to Germany where Porsche installed a custom-made exhaust-system and re-programmed the ECU to allow the car to pass the US’ emission-laws and be registered.

By now (2016) 959’s don’t have to be modified anymore, and Gates reportedly reversed the changes to his car to have a “full” 959 now that they’re perfectly legal.
However, his car still made it into the country under “Show and Display”-laws, so he still has to stay below 2.500 miles per year.

All given data was researched to the best of my knowledge, if you find mistakes please let me know.

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