a 959 Came out to play with my F40

A rare sight these days! Very nice to see both sides of the fence.
CH

 

Is that a Sport version? Seems lower than the reg.

 

Sweet, it looks fantastic in red.

 

Reminds me of the time I saw Sophia Loren and Marlene Dietrich sipping martinis together at the Carlyle Hotel.

 

Two true icons...beautiful!!!

 

Very cool!

Not to try to take anything away from these great photos (really two of the coolest cars ever, in my opinion) but the F40 seems to be an inch or more lower on the left than on the right. I was thinking it could be the shadows, but the 959 doesn't look lower on the left than the right.

 

WOW!!!!!!!!! What a step back in time! Two of my all time favorites. Has your friend ever let you drive it?? Would love to hear some comparisons.

 

Red/Hot/Passion....!

 

Which one won the drag race?

Geno

 

Those two cars changed every thing. So awesome to see them photographed together.

 

that's awesome

thanks for sharing.

 

what tires (if you remember) was your friend's 959 wearing? RE51, or something else? Was it a Canepa car?

fantastic to see these two machines together!

We drove the 959/288 down to the Edsel Ford Estate for a car show this weekend : 100 more miles on the clock!

 

Amazing!

 

The sport version is supposed to only have one mirror. Do you have any interior pics?

Greg A

 

Now there's a a memory to cherish over generations.

 

Opposites of the same coin in many ways.

Porsche - German - Technology - Precision - Fast

Ferrari - Italian - Raw - Aggressive - Fast

Both are incredibly desirable, yet the Ferrari is the only one that I would dream of or lose sleep over.

F40 is a beautiful, ferocious beast.

 

Wow! What a setup! The 959 changed the world when it debuted at the 1983 Frankfurt auto show. The car was so far ahead of it's time. Ferrari at the time knew they had to replace the 288 GTO with something to go against the 959. The rest is history

 

This is a Canepa car. It doesn't bear that much resemblance with the original 959 as its been modded out massively, including having the oem height adjustable suspension ripped out and lowered. Nice car I guess if you want and like a modern 959...not for me though. I'm happy with my original stock 959.....
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Reminds me of the last time I saw Al Holbert alive, at his family dealership in Warminster , Pa.
I was racing in SCCA Solo II then and bought my race seat, racing 5-point harness and racing gloves at their race shop.
There were at least 959's lined up against the fence in an enclosed area.
They were Euro spec'd I believe and they were to be possibly modified there.
I had met Al before as I followed IMSA at the Glen in the mid eighties and watched him race many times and had his and Derek Bell's autograph.
I believe that these cars had just arrived and Holbert's were the most connected Porsche dealer on the east coast.
The 959 was so ahead of it's time and was often matched up against the F40 in many magazine tests.
Just brought back those memories seeing the 959 again..
GV27TIFOSI

 

The cars were at Holbert because at the time he was head of Porsche Motorsports North America (PMNA).

Porsche was in a bit of a conundrum. At the time, they had gone on record as saying that it was impossible for a 959 to be modified to meet U.S. DOT/NHTSA standards. This was due in part to the anti-Grey Market measures that the European automobile manufacturers were taking in those days. Plus, because it was only a few short years before that Porsche lost millions of dollars in that 930 product liability lawsuit stemming from the fatality in La Jolla, California, Porsche probably had a bit of a paranoid mindset about their supercar coming to the highly litigious U.S. market.

In response to wealthy U.S. enthusiasts who were clamoring to have the 959 come to the U.S., Porsche decided to make an 'off-road' (nee racing) Sport iteration for the U.S. market. The plan was to have 26 of these Sport versions sold to Americans. They would be only available in Red or White, would NOT be fitted the adjustable Ride Height and adjustable Shock Damping which were both standard features on the Euro Comfort version. Furthermore, they would be fitted with a roll cage so as to imbue it with 'off-road/racing' credentials, etc. An obscure detail is that the 14th digit of the VIN would have a '5' rather than a '0.'

However, when PMNA took some DOT officials for rides on the racetrack with the car, the whole thing backfired! These DOT officials were NOT convinced that these things were anything more than warmed over ROAD cars! (i.e. the fact that these cars had power windows didn't help matters with the DOT! -- Porsche could not fit manual window cranks because they wouldn't clear the roll cage). The DOT ultimately felt that it would be far too tempting/easy for an owner to illicitly operate these examples on the road and therefore red-lighted the whole undertaking.

Because of this, Porsche shipped all the 959 Sports back to Stuttgart. Porsche was willing to sell these cars to whichever Americans from whom they had received a deposit, but only under the proviso that the purchase was being made FOB Stuttgart, Germany, with ZERO representation or assurance from Porsche that the car could be successfully brought into DOT conformity, etc.

 

Team speed sure likes your car!

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I don't know why it posted pics twice. Tapatalk is irritating.