GT Porsche Magazine October 15 Back Issue

It’s the 30th anniversary this year of the 959’s first appearance in 1985, and at the time it was the most expensive and advanced series production car ever created. Much like its contemporary VW Group equivalent, the Bugatti Veyron, and in specific Porsche terms perhaps the 918 Spyder, the 959 represented something of a technological test bed for automotive expertise at the time. An innovative all-wheel drive system, sequential twin turbochargers, advanced aerodynamics, double wishbone suspension, adjustable shock absorbers, and self-adjusting hydropneumatic suspension all moved from automotive fantasy to reality on this car.

It was way ahead of its time. In short the 959 was a 1980s technological tour de force packed full of innovations and radical design concepts, many of which would later filter down through the Porsche hierarchy of models, finding their way on to future race and road cars. It’s a practice we still see today from Porsche. I hope you enjoy Andrew Frankel’s retrospective look at a very special Porsche poster car in this celebratory issue.


This year’s running of the Frankfurt Motor Show will take place while this issue is still atop the newsstands, but the big news will be the arrival of the second generation 991, which will feature a downsized turbocharged engine. You can read what we already know about the new 911 in this issue, which is actually quite a bit, but we’ll all have wait to fully understand how Porsche has answered the real burning question: how will the driving dynamics of the new turbocharged Carrera differ from that of a 911 Turbo? Taking Porsche’s historical engineering expertise into account, I’d wager there’s probably nothing to worry about...