In our constant roaming of the web we stumbled upon this sad piece of automotive history located in Japan and being sold on eBay Motors. It's a Porsche 959 (built from 1986-1988), a model that was built by Porsche as a race car first, and a road car second -- rather than the other way around. As one of the penultimate supercars of recent years, the 959's primary rival contemporary rival was the Ferrari F40. This one's seen better days, as you can tell from the photo.

This Porsche 959 was once (and still is) an automotive icon that incorporated the use of cutting edge materials, somewhat outrageous styling, and most importantly, boasted phenomenal performance.

The numbers put down by these limited Porsches were amazing---even compared to the many hyper exotic supercars of today.

With 450 bhp on tap, 60 miles per hour was had in 3.6 seconds, with the quarter mile said to be attained at around 11 seconds. Only 268 of the 959 were made worldwide with none officially coming to the US. Small numbers of grey market cars, however, did make it to the few garages willing to caugh up hefty somes of money to import them on the grey market (e.g billionaire Bill Gates).

With such a rich history grounded in years of racing development, this white 959 will deeply be missed.

In any case, if the turbo flat six is still intact a potential buyer restores it to factory spec, they they'll have about $200,000 they can spend before it would be cheaper to just buy a nice example to start with. They buyer would "only" like $120,000 -- including shipping!

Long live this Porsche 959.

 

ahhh poor 959 need some love

 

Wayne Dempsey was looking into it. Needless to say, there's more than meets the eye.

Albatross or Gold Mine? 959 Parts Car on eBay... - Pelican Parts Technical BBS