how each Porsche drives, as I was treated
(emphasis on treat) to two days with ’em
both, on the road and at Sonoma Raceway.
Here goes.
The 901 feels old. Perhaps “classic” is a
nicer way to put it, but let’s be adults. The
red 901 drives like an old car with good
steering. But the dogleg shifter is vague,
and the power isn’t powerful. Although
the steering feel is both admirable and
better than anything else from the era
before the Beatles landed in America, the
rack is slow, the suspension is clumsy, and
the tires don’t offer much in the way of
grip. As a museum piece, the 901 is nearly
without peer. As a driver’s car? Did I
mention I spent two days in a 959?
The 959 entered production in 1987. I
was 12 years old and had been mesmer-
ized by the joy of car magazines for a few
years at that point. One thing I was sure
of, the Shelby Cobra 427 was the quickest
car ever because it could hit 60 mph in 4
seconds flat. All the buff books said so, and
that number made sense because Ol’ Shel
stuffed a monster motor into a little, tiny
car. It’s not rocket science. It’s muscle car
science. Big engine, little car: That’s the
magic formula.
Then this odd-looking 911 showed up,
and using every high-tech trick known to
Porsche, it ran to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds.
My little world was rocked, my little mind
blown. What about all the Detroit-centric
mantras I’d been fed? Are these Germans
telling me there is a replacement for
displacement? Basically, yes. Books,
literal books, have been written about the
jaw-droppingly advanced paradigm-over-
turningness of the 959 (I recommend
Porsche 959: Birth of a Legend by Jürgen
Lewandowski). The Porsche wasn’t the
cutting edge; it was the very concept of
knife sharpening.
Where to even start? The most powerful
930, aka the 911 Turbo, had a 3.3-liter
turbocharged flat-six that made 325 SAE
hp and 319 lb-ft of torque when fitted
with the optional, Europe-only Werksleis-
tungssteigerung kit. The most powerful
930 we ever got in the U.S. made 296
horsepower and 304 lb-ft of torque. The
959 made 444 hp and 369 lb-ft. Remember,
back in the day, the 930 routinely beat up
on Ferraris and Lambos. It was a supercar
of the first order. The 959 humbled it, as
well as every other car.
The list of what makes the 959 so special
is real long, but highlights include: water-
cooled heads; sequential turbocharging;
a variable front-to-rear torque-biasing
all-wheel-drive system; computer-con-
trolled damping; aluminum, Kevlar, and
Nomex body construction; driver-adjust-
able suspension height (though Citroën did
offer that one back in 1954); tire pressureLeather? Yuck. We’ll take tri-color
cloth buckets every singe time.
And twice on Dienstag.monitoring; hollow-spoke magnesium
wheels; a 0.31 drag coefficient; the effective
elimination of lift (important for the fastest
production car the world had ever seen)—
the list goes on and on.
Just know that Porsche sold the 959 for
$225,000 and lost about $275,000 on each
one. They cost about a million bucks today.
And now, finally, after 15 years of driving
and writing professionally and 30-plus
of dreaming, I get to drive a 959. I think
I actually teared up when filming the
video. It’s not often that Ahab gets his
white whale.
The silver/gray car I drove is actually
a 1986 pre-production beaut—one of 18
examples of the 959 kept by the Porsche
Museum. Did I mention the grayscale
cloth seats? Technically, this is a 959
Komfort, as it has the adjustable ride
height and more, well, comfort.
Below 4,500 rpm the 959 drives like a
normal car. There was actually an early
Lexus quality to the experience. The
interior parts felt like they belonged to
the 1980s but were of high quality. At
normal speeds, doing normal things, the
only indication you’d have that you’re
driving a million-dollar museum car was
a soft yet audible whoosh from an unseen
blow-off valve. I found it calming. Plus,
below first gear on the shift lever is a gear
called “G,” which stands for Gelände,