The Porsche 959 was never intended for America’s shores. It was a super-advanced, limited-run, AWD hypercar (by the standards of the 1980s) that boasted the highest top speed of any production car of its time: 195 mph. That’s an astonishing speed for a road-going car to accomplish even today, 26 years later.
So when one of the select few examples of Porsche 959 that did cross the Atlantic is put up for sale, it’s nothing short of national news – at least to automotive outlets. But this particular example goes one step further to take the rare-cake: it has only 10,000 miles on the odometer (roughly).
And, according to Car Scoops, this particular Porsche 959 is expected to bring in $1.45 million US. Of course, the page at Copley Motorcars’ website doesn’t directly list a price, so we can’t corroborate that. But the car was imported by Bruce Canepa, a veritable legend in the world of classic, rare, and vintage Porsche cars. Seeing as the official Porsche 959 production run from 1987-’88 only numbered 292 units, it certainly qualifies as all of the above.
The Porsche 959 featured an all-wheel-drive system which could adjust torque distribution between the front and rear axles – a common enough feature today, but quite radical in the 1980s. It also had an automatic adjustable ride height, two sequential turbochargers, and 444 HP from a compact 2.8 liter plant.
The Porsche 959 was the crown jewel of the automotive realm in its time – a veritable masterpiece, representing the very best that the industry could then hope to produce. It is automotive art – not so much a right-brained, disorderly piece of romanticism like a Van Gogh, or a Monet, but a more ordered, Frank Lloyd Wright-like bit of fantastical, engineered wizardry.
Or maybe, with its mind-bending performance, the 959 is more M. C. Escher than anything.
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