Automotive Academy

The Porsche 959 is a sports car manufactured by Porsche from 1986 to 1989, first as a Group B rally car and later as a legal production car designed to produce a minimum number of 200 street legal units be built.

When the Porsche 959 was going through its production run, it was hailed as being the most technologically advanced road-going sports car ever built and a preview of future of sports cars: it was one of the first high-performance vehicles to use an all-wheel drive system and provided the basis for Porsche’s first all-wheel drive Carrera 4 model; and it convinced Porsche executives of the system’s viability so well that they chose to make all-wheel drive standard on all versions of the 911 Turbo starting with the 993 variant.

During its lifetime, the vehicle had only one other street legal peer with comparable performance, the Ferrari F40. The 959’s short production run and performance have kept values high. In 2004, Sports Car International named this car number one on the list of Top Sports Cars of the 1980s.

In its day, this was the most technologically advanced road-going sportscar ever built. But just 337 were made, each with a 2.8-litre turbocharged flat-six out back.