Porsche 959
The Porsche 959 is a sports car automobile of the German Porsche company.
An exotic car or supercar, the 959 was created to dominate Group B rally racing, Porsche wanted to show its technical abilities in this arena at a time when the marque was seen by some more as a fashion accessory than a drivers car.
The 959 featured an air and water cooled twin turbocharged engine displacing only 2.85 litres, nearly half a litre less than a contemporary 911. By using 24 valve water cooled cylinder heads with the usual air cooled cylinders, and by employing staggered response turbo chargers Porsche extracted 450 bhp (340 kW) from this compact, efficient and rugged power unit.
The 959 featured an aluminium and Kevlar body designed to offer not only ruggedness but also a significant weight saving over steel. Such light weight created a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.6 seconds and a top speed of just under 200 mph (320 km/h). To compliment these capabilities the aerodynamics were designed to increase stability, as was the automatic ride height adjustment. The 959 also featured Porsche-Steuer Kupplung (PSK) which, at the time, was the most advanced traction control system seen in a production car. PSK dynamically changes the torque distribution between the rear and front wheels in both normal conditions and slip conditions (for example, under hard acceleration, up to 80% of the power goes to the rear wheels).
The 959 did not appear until 1989, by which time several catastrophes had outlawed Group B, thus the Paris-Dakar Rally that it won twice and Le-Mans at which it finished a creditable 7th were its only competitive arenas.
The 959 was never street legal in the United States, simply because Porsche refused to provide four 959s for crash testing to the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is generally believed that every one of the 200+ 959s produced was sold at a loss as the R&D costs for the project were immense.
The adoption of so many of its innovations by so many other manufacturers, as well as styling that still looks current have made history the arena in which the 959 has excelled.
