Porsche 959: was Bill Gates' saga worth it?

I think that the 993 Turbo took a lot of the 959's luster away. 400bhp, a very similar experience, AWD, but much easier to maintain, much more widely available, and with much better brakes.

Matt

 

The 959 will always be an icon! The car was so far ahead of it's time with it's debut in 1983 at the Frankfurt Motor Show! Again without the help of Bruce Canepa and Bill Gates the 959 would never have made it's way to America.

 

I can't obviously say why Bill Gates bought it, but the current market for 959's is north of $1M and climbing. The 993TT, while an amazing car, has zero impact on the market for 959's - these are verified (read any major magazine article on the true supercars and this one is on the list) as one of the great collector cars and there are very few really good examples left out there.

 

Add the carrera gt to tis as well. Each car is independent of value

 

This thread would not be complete if we did not mention a Ferrari.

F40.

 

I don't know if it was worth it for Gates, but all car collectors owe him a debt of gratitude; were it not for him, "show and display" rules probably wouldn't exist.

btw I doubt Gates cares whether or not his 959 was a good investment

 

Bill has been a Porsche guy since the 1970s. There are lots of stories about him ripping around Albuquerque in his 911s way back when... I don't know if he still drives a current 911, but it wouldn't surprise me. I think his daily driver is a Lexus, though.

 

Here's a couple film pics I took back in the 80's. Just thought they were appropriate for this thread. They were taken outside O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
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Heading from Greenville Delaware event a year or so back - pic by Josh or Bob Craig
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Yes there is a great shot of him with an early 930 in period, over in the Turbo Carrera thread.
RElative to the OP: I don't think anyone who collects cars is nearly as interested in 'absolute' performance of a car as they are in it's role in the historical lineage of a marque or cars overall. And the 959 was a game changing, milestone car by any measure, it's place in history is assured and it's irrelevant that today you can make a WRX go faster...

 

I don't think the 959 is that important.
Nothing compared to the McLaren F1 with its race pedigree.

Even in period, the f40 was more desirable.

 

I'm going to have to strongly disagree.

959 (or, at least a derivative) won a MUCH more demanding race than the F1's LeMans victory - it took places 1, 2, and 6 at Paris-Dakar in 1986! Modify an F40 all you want - how well will it cope with sand, rock, and uneven terrain?

Not saying that the McLaren F1 isn't perhaps the most incredible driver's car ever, and I appreciate the F40 from a performance (if not build) standpoint, but the 959 was a technological tour de force for the period.

 

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, ......no matter how wrong it is ; )

 

The 959 was hugely important. But it wasn't entirely unique in that subsequent Porsches were very similar in feel and performance. You can get awfully close, as I pointed out, with a 993 Turbo.

The MacLaren, by comparison, was hugely important, but also impossible to get anything close to experiencing with any other road car. It's much more unique in what it offers.

And the F40 and 959 were, at the time, evenly divided between people who fell into Ferrari or Porsche camps.

Matt

 

Yes but only 10 years after the 959 came out...And that is where the 959's historical significance lies. By evolving the applied technological advances made possible in the 959 all subsequent Porsches became what we now know. The fact that the 959 now feels like many modern Porsches, and therefore perhaps not particularly "special", is absolutely staggering considering it was designed and made nearly 30 years ago.

The 959 is the Daddy of the modern 911. Plain and simple.
You just cannot understate this enough nor can anyone erase it's significance.

 

Desirability and Importance are two different things. I'd rather have an F40 than a 959, then or now. But the F40 was actually retro: stripped down, lightened, it's only technological risks were use of composites, everything else was the standard playbook. The 959 by contrast debuted all kinds of innovations that would become standard on subsequent super cars: AWD, ABS and computer asst, Tire pressure management.
And do you really want to compare the McLaren's race pedigree to Porsche's??? Probably no chassis in history has more race miles than the 911, while the F1 was a bold one off sharing nothing in common with it's F1 or sports racer ancestors than Gordon Murray...

Yep.

 

Though the F1 was the last street-based chassis to win LeMans OA ...

 

This is a Canapa owned car and is likely very expensive.
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The Canepa cars are heavily modified, I can only imagine that will hurt their value in the long run compared to one that is stock.

 

i thought i read were gates and a bussiness partner bought 2-959's,and they were stored inside a building in wash state[fed holding/customs]i thought they were still there?

 

Aren't 959's $1,000,0000 cars these days ?

I called a dealer in London and the 959 is 600,000 pounds

 

Weird original post... I don't think Mr. Gates cared that much about how much it cost, just how he could get a car. I think he still has it, and I want to say he has a couple of them.

I agree the F40 is the more desirable car, but the 959 was much more impressive. Despite being on market first, offering nearly identical performance and all the trimmings that a modern car of the time should have (and more), the Ferrari offered a great sense of occasion, which coincidentally is still what separates them today from their competition.

Also, Ferrari did not 8 or 9 years later release a new, cheaper car with similar looks and all the same features as Porsche did with the Turbo and Turbo S. You can't get the F40 experience anywhere else. But at this point, the 959 is valuable for more than the experience, and instead more valued for its rarity/historical significance/cool factor.

 

Using performance as a yardstick in collector car value does not work. If that was true Porsche Boxsters would be worth more than 550 Porsche Spyders.
People do not spend big money to buy old cars to go fast. It is for historical significance and driving experience. 959 has both.
When the 993 Turbo came out and the 959 was pretty much considered a used car, buyers made that choice between the two and the price was similar at that time. Not even close today and totally different buyers.

I think the fun and memories of the 959 experience far out way the minor financial impact it would have on him.