Porsche 959 1987
Posted on
15/9/2025
by
Conceived for Group B rallying’s madness, it became a road car only after the FIA pulled the plug on the category. What rolled out in 1987 was decades ahead of its time
There are cars that change the world, and then there are cars that seem to have been built on another planet, smuggled to Earth under cover of night, and handed to a group of slightly deranged German engineers who thought Newton’s laws were more “suggestions” than “rules.” The Porsche 959 belongs squarely in the second camp.
To call it a supercar is to undersell it. The 959 wasn’t merely fast — it was so far ahead of its contemporaries that, even in 1987, it felt like Porsche had accidentally left the cheat codes switched on. When Ferrari was still proudly bolting carburetors onto engines like a man refusing to give up vinyl in the age of CDs, Porsche had delivered a twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-drive, computer-managed rocket ship that could hit 197 mph while coddling its driver with heated seats and electric windows.
This was no ordinary machine. This was the car that rewrote the rulebook, redefined the supercar, and frightened the Italians so badly they went home and built the F40 — a car that looked like a child’s sketch of a knife fight but, crucially, couldn’t quite match the Porsche’s sophistication.
To understand the 959, one must begin with the madness of the 1980s rally scene. Group B rallying was less a motorsport category and more an arms race in which carmakers strapped rockets to their cars, set them loose on gravel tracks, and hoped the laws of probability didn’t turn every stage into a Viking funeral.
It was in this world that Porsche decided to flex. Helmuth Bott, Porsche’s engineering chief, saw the regulations as an opportunity not just to build a rally car but to develop a technological testbed that could drag the company into the 21st century. Bott had the full backing of Ferry Porsche, who in his grandfather’s tradition of stubborn genius, was all too happy to bankroll a project that combined racing glory with cutting-edge engineering.
The first prototypes — codenamed Gruppe B — appeared in 1983, wearing the wide hips and bulging arches of a 911 on steroids. But while the silhouette was familiar, everything underneath was revolutionary. The car was designed from the start to be an AWD monster, packing a twin-turbocharged flat-six, adaptive suspension, and a body honed in the wind tunnel until it looked like Stuttgart’s answer to a bullet train.
Unfortunately, just as the car was ready to tear up gravel stages, Group B imploded under the weight of its own insanity. After a series of horrific accidents in 1986, the FIA banned the category, leaving Porsche with a brilliantly engineered car and nowhere to race it.
Most manufacturers would have shrugged, written off the expense, and moved on. Porsche, however, decided to sell the thing anyway — as a road car. Which is how the world was introduced to the 959.
At the heart of the 959 lay a 2.85-liter flat-six that could only be described as excessive. Borrowed loosely from the 911 but massaged until it was unrecognizable, this motor featured air-cooled cylinders with water-cooled heads, titanium connecting rods, sodium-filled valves, and a dry-sump lubrication system straight from the racetrack.
And then there were the turbos. Two of them, working sequentially rather than in parallel. The smaller turbo spun up quickly to kill lag at low rpm, while the larger unit kicked in as revs climbed, delivering a seamless wall of thrust. The result? 444 horsepower at 6,500 rpm and 369 lb-ft of torque. Those figures may sound modest today, but in 1987 they were absurd — enough to make a Lamborghini Countach look like a heavily caffeinated lawnmower.
But the real magic wasn’t the power. It was the way the 959 delivered it. Where other turbocharged monsters of the era behaved like light switches — nothing, nothing, nothing, then everything at once — the Porsche’s engine was smooth, progressive, and shockingly usable. You could potter about town without fear of being rear-ended by your own throttle, and then annihilate a motorway with the same machine.
Power without control is meaningless, and Porsche knew it. That’s why the 959 came with what may have been its greatest trick: the Porsche-Steuer Kupplung, or PSK, an electronically controlled all-wheel-drive system so advanced it made Audi’s Quattro look like a set of snow chains.
Unlike crude permanent AWD setups, the PSK could continuously vary torque distribution between front and rear axles, anywhere from 40:60 to 20:80. Sensors monitored throttle input, wheel slip, and speed, then sent power where it was needed most. In essence, the car was thinking for you, predicting your mistakes, and saving you before you’d even realized you were about to park the thing in a ditch.
The result was a car that could demolish any road, in any weather. Snow, gravel, rain — it didn’t matter. The 959 was like Thor with traction control, casually hurling lightning bolts at physics while you sat inside sipping an espresso.
The suspension was equally ridiculous. Adjustable ride height and damping, electronically controlled, meant you could set the car low and stiff for track work, or raise it up for rougher roads. Even today, this sounds exotic. In 1987, it was science fiction.
The brakes? Ventilated discs with ABS, another technology Porsche had borrowed from the future. The bodywork, meanwhile, was crafted from a blend of aluminum, Kevlar, and Nomex, with hollow wheels designed to aid brake cooling. The drag coefficient was a remarkable 0.31 — slippery enough to make rival supercars look like garden sheds with spoilers.
Here’s where the 959 left its competition in therapy.
In 1987, these numbers were outrageous. Remember, this was an era when a Ferrari Testarossa struggled to hit 180 mph, and most sports cars needed binoculars to see 60 mph in under 5 seconds. The 959 wasn’t just fast; it was the fastest production car in the world until the Ferrari F40 arrived — and even then, the Ferrari felt crude and feral by comparison.
Those lucky enough to drive the 959 all reported the same uncanny sensation: this wasn’t a car that demanded sacrifices. Unlike the Countach, which required thighs of steel and a chiropractor on retainer, the Porsche could be driven daily. It had power steering, air conditioning, leather seats, and a cabin that didn’t feel like a medieval torture chamber.
Yet when you floored it, the 959 would hurl you toward the horizon with the ferocity of a ballistic missile. And you didn’t need to be Walter Röhrl to handle it — the electronics, AWD, and suspension did much of the work. It was the first supercar that ordinary humans could actually exploit, and in that sense, it foreshadowed the McLaren F1, the Bugatti Veyron, and every other civilized missile that followed.
Though Group B had died, Porsche wasn’t about to let the 959’s talents go to waste. They built rally versions for the Paris-Dakar Rally — and won it outright in 1986, with René Metge and Jacky Ickx behind the wheel. That’s right: a supercar built to annihilate highways also happened to be the best desert racer on the planet.
And then there was Le Mans. The 961, a racing derivative of the 959, entered the 1986 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished first in its class, seventh overall. Not bad for a car that was essentially a road-going lab experiment.
Building the 959 nearly bankrupted Porsche. Each car cost far more to produce than the sticker price — which, at around $225,000, was already eye-watering in the 1980s. Porsche sold only 292 customer cars, plus a handful of prototypes and development models. Every one was effectively a hand-built piece of aerospace engineering masquerading as a road car.
To make matters worse, Porsche couldn’t sell the 959 in the United States because it didn’t meet crash or emissions regulations. This led to the famous case of Bill Gates and Paul Allen importing 959s and parking them in customs limbo until the “Show or Display” law finally allowed them to drive their toys legally years later.
The 959’s influence is hard to overstate. Its AWD system became the template for every high-performance Porsche since. Its turbocharging wizardry informed generations of 911 Turbos. Its use of advanced materials, adaptive suspension, and electronic management foreshadowed the entire modern supercar industry.
And beyond the technology, the 959 set a precedent: supercars could be both fast and civilized. You didn’t have to choose between blistering performance and usable comfort. You could have both — at a price.
Today, the 959 is among the most collectible Porsches ever built. Prices routinely soar past $2 million at auction, and the car enjoys a mythical reputation. It isn’t just a rare machine; it’s the embodiment of an era when Porsche threw caution to the wind and built the most advanced car in the world simply because it could.
Collectors love it not only for its performance but also for its role as a technological Rosetta Stone. Owning one is like owning a piece of the future, preserved in Kevlar and aluminum. And unlike many supercars of the era, you can actually drive it without fearing for your spinal integrity.
The 959 was not just an engineering marvel; it was also shaped by the personalities behind it. Helmuth Bott’s obsession with pushing Porsche beyond the 911 defined the project. Jacky Ickx’s legendary Dakar win in the 959 cemented its place in motorsport lore. And Bill Gates’ desperate attempts to get his car onto American roads showed just how irresistible the thing was to those who could afford it.
Even Enzo Ferrari, who supposedly dismissed anything not Italian as irrelevant, was rumored to have taken notice. The F40 was no coincidence — Ferrari needed a riposte, and the 959 provided the provocation.
The Porsche 959 wasn’t just a car. It was a rolling declaration of war against convention, an engineering experiment that escaped the lab, and a middle finger to every supercar builder still fiddling with carburetors in 1987.
It proved that technology and speed could coexist with comfort and usability. It set the stage for the Bugatti Veyron, the Nissan GT-R, and every other machine that tried to balance absurd performance with everyday civility. And above all, it showed that sometimes, when engineers are given free rein and a blank check, the result isn’t madness — it’s genius.
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