A £2.5 Million Porsche 959 Dakar Is For Sale For The First Time Ever

You might already know the patchy rally history of the Porsche 959. Originally conceived for the road, it was quickly turned into a homologation special while still on the drawing board to allow Porsche to enter the totally insane world of Group B rallying.

Unfortunately, the 959 was thwarted in its aim to rival Lancia and Audi by the fact that the series was shut down just as the car was almost ready. It probably would have been a bit too heavy to succeed anyway, but that’s beside the point. After throwing all that money at the project, Porsche took a side-step and entered the Paris-Dakar rally across Africa.

Back in those days the rally did actually run from Paris to Dakar on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, unlike the current one that was moved to South America after terrorism became a real threat along large parts of the African route and caused the 2008 event to be cancelled altogether.

This Dakar, chassis 010015, was one of just three that competed as prototypes in the 1985 event; the first Porsche attempted. It pre-dated the road cars and served as the most rigorous test bed Porsche could imagine. Powered by a naturally-aspirated 3.2-litre Carrera engine rather than the twin- turbocharged 2.8-litre monster the road car eventually got, it was the most reliable setup Porsche could assign it at the time.

Underneath, the suspension and four-wheel drive were the complex systems developed for the road-going 959, obviously with extra ride height for rallying. The body panels were the same, too. It’s a truly special piece of Porsche history.

It didn’t actually finish the rally; none of the trio did. This one suffered an oil line failure while the other two crashed. The lessons learned were invaluable, though. Porsche entered again the following year with better-resolved 959s and finished first, second and sixth.

Sadly, you know full well that this kind of car isn’t going to fall into ‘affordable’ territory unless you currently own at least a couple of major oil fields. At the RM Sotheby’s Porsche 70th Anniversary Sale, due to be held on 27 October 2018 at the Porsche Experience Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s tipped to reach £2.5 million. Damn.

Source: Top Gear