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Porsche 959
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By the year 1980, Porsche had come a long way. In merely twenty years, the Stuttgart-based company had quickly become the benchmark to which all other car companies would aspire to - past, present and future. The dedicated engineers and motivated designers had shown the world that they could beat the best at Le Mans. They had proved their worth at rallying, with a 1965 win in Monte Carlo, and they had become champions all over the world in the Grand Touring class. Most prolific of all, the team had produced a quick, reliable and desireable sports car, in the shape of the 911, from a seemingly 'flawed' chassis - which had a large proportion of mass behind the rear axle. The most recent triumph had been to harness turbocharging efficiently and safely in a road car.
Instead of lying back amongst their many laurels, the Porsche engineers decided to bring all the knowledge, experience and hard-won data together, and create a Car for the Future. A car that would beat all comers on road and track. A car that would form the very essence of Porsche DNA. And it was to be called the 959.
History
In 1980, the FiA unveiled the regulations for the new Group B class of the World Rally Championship. Helmuth Bott, Porsche's Research and Development Chief, saw these new regulations as the ideal field for which to build a new super-Porsche, and soon became immersed in talks with the engineers and designers, hatching plans for the supercar. Bott envisaged a car which made elaborate use of exotic modern compounds and composites for the bodywork, an exciting and technologically advanced chassis and drivetrain, and electrically adjustable, computer-controlled suspension. With these plans, he headed off to speak with Peter Schutz, Porsche CEO, and the rest of the board.
Schutz paricularly like Bott's idea, and shared his enthusiasm for a super-Porsche. However, other board members were not so pleased with the propositions, and pointed out the financial strain that the project would place upon the still-young Porsche. The regulations demanded the production of 200 near-identical cars, built to match the specification of the race car that would be entered in the championship. Porsche realised that this figure was too high for a race car - after all, there were only so many privateer rally teams. The high figure would necessitate the production of road legal cars, which would involve intensive development into making the car reliable for long journeys, and comfortable.
