Turbo Tuesday - Porsche 959

Like all great Turbo Era cars, the car featured this week was forged in the fire of #GroupB’s brutal #rally stages.

The second terrific turbo machine to come out of Stuttgart in the 1980s, #Porsche’s 959 came screaming off the stage and onto the tarmac in 1987, causing quite the commotion as it did. Learning from their earlier #911Turbo models, Porsche worked out their formula to success. Turbo = Big power. Therefore, they thought, “more turbo, more bigger power”

Taking their iconic flat-six, they stuck two huge turbochargers to it, and ran them in sequence for maximum boost at any rev count. A good start.

How, though, do you make the shell tough enough to survive a shakedown, while maintaining as low a weight as possible to get the most out of the twin snails? Porsche decided on Kevlar. By making the body literally bullet proof, the car came in at 1,400kg. Even better.

444hp in a shell as light as that surely needs help sticking to the road, right? So, never afraid of learning from their countrymen and rivals, Porsche brought in an all new electronic all-wheel-drive system, capable of remotely changing how the engines torque could be sent to each wheel, allowing 80% of the torque to be pushed to the rear wheels to maximise acceleration under load. Perfect, then, for both the harsh gravel stages of Scandinavia and the mean streets of Munich.

Unfortunately, the car didn’t quite manage to ever get the taste of this gravel. It was so technically impressive that it overshot production by several years, finally being ready for homologation a full year after Group B was cancelled.

This didn’t stop the street performance, however. It pipped Ferrari’s F40 to the production car speed record by a single mile per hour, being capable of 198mph. And any car that beats Ferrari at their own game must be excellent, right?

#cars #supercar #80s #turbo #porsche959 #groupB #rally #959