Porsche 959 | Cars that were ahead of their time
In the manufacturer’s own retrospective story, the occasion of this car’s reveal is described as ‘the moment when the future becomes the present’. The marque and car could be none other than Porsche and the 959. Perhaps the ultimate car ahead of its time, it could earn pride of place as the star of one of these pieces for any number of reasons.
As such, we can’t really single out any one of its innovations for fear of doing the car’s significance a disservice. As does, in a weird way, talking about the 959 in a way that weds it to its proposed racing cousins, as you would the 911 GT1 Straßenversion. It was after all first envisioned as a Group B rally car, albeit one intended to fast-forward technological developments for road cars. So we won’t, on both counts.
Sequential turbocharging
With all that established, let’s begin at the heart of the beast, with its 450PS (331kW) 2.8-litre twin-turbocharged flat-six engine, which was a refinement of the part-water-cooled mills first seen in Porsche’s Group C sportscars. In the 959 however, those turbochargers were for the first time not identical. One was small and one was large, and they would come on song in sequence rather than in parallel, hence the ‘sequential’ nomenclature. That means instead of a big slug of power and torque coming on all at once higher up in the revs, the engine’s power band is more progressive and accessible for more of the time.
Revolutionary, really, next to the Ferrari F40 whose engine lay largely impotent below 4,500rpm, lighting up like a self-sustaining nuclear reaction beyond, very quickly demanding that the driver snatch another gear. The more powerful 959S reduced weight by trimming certain tech and creature comforts, while adding bigger turbochargers for 515PS (379kW) and a verified 211mph top speed.
All-wheel-drive and adjustable suspension
As those who have driven an F40 – or indeed any heavily turbocharged car – will know, getting such a dollop of power in its entirety onto the road via the rear wheels alone is all but an impossibility. Latent performance potential more often than not quite literally goes up in smoke. Not only is the 959 more progressive in its delivery, for less of a ‘shock’ to the tyres, more tyres are receiving the power in the first place.
Thanks to Porsche’s radical Porsche-Steuer Kupplung (PSK) all-wheel-drive system, an iteration of the kind of systems first used by Audi, the 959 delivered a new kind of versatility and all-weather capability to the supercar space. To maximise traction and reduce understeer, the system could send as much as 80 per cent of power to the engine-weighted rear wheels. That split was handled by a clutch with six pairs of friction plates, each with hydraulic actuation and independent computer control.
Helping keep the car stable at high speed was the ride height-adjustable suspension, that could vary from 12mm to 18mm. These changes would occur either automatically, dependent on circumstance, or could be manually selected and were handled by a damper on each corner of the car. It was joined by a second damper and electric motor, which could control suspension damping stiffness across three settings.
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Dashboard and tyre pressure monitoring
As well as feeling the PSK system’s good work through the car’s dynamics, you could literally see it. The car featured advanced gauges displaying exactly what the rear differential was doing and how much power was being sent to the front axle in real time.
You could also monitor the air pressure in your tyres for the first time in any road car. Yes, the 959 was the first car to have a tyre pressure monitoring system, with the hollow wheels housing sensors to deliver real-time pressure data.
All of these are features that are widespread in performance cars today. There are very few fast cars out there that can’t micromanage their own turbochargers and power bands, that can’t show – and give you the option to adjust – exactly what your driven wheels and suspension are doing at any one time.
So that makes it important to give the 1985-1986 arrival of the 959 some context. The marketplace at the time consisted of the 12-year-old Lamborghini Countach – which had only recently shod its 22-year-old V12 with fuel injection – and the also barely fuel-injected, de Dion-suspended Aston Martin Vantage. It also arrived just ahead of the thrilling yet glue-smelling Ferrari F40 with its aforementioned North-face-of-Everest power band.
The 959 in this landscape was an all-wheel-drive, kevlar-bodied, computer-controlled, sequentially-turbocharged adjustably-suspended technological tour de force. That tech baron and Microsoft founder Bill Gates took it upon himself to convince the US government to create the ‘show and display’ law just so he could have and use one probably says all you need to know. It’s arguably genesis for the physics-defiant generation of tech-laden supercars that remains at the peak of its powers today. A generation that didn’t really hit its own stride until some two decades after the 959’s arrival.