The history of the Porsche 959 was far more catastrophic than you know

The Porsche 959 is considered one of the largest cars of the modern era and certainly one of the crown jewels of Porsche, the eternal king of sports cars. What is much less known is that the car has been a fantastic failure at all levels of life.

Porsche put the 959 in production in 1987, and at that time it was probably the most technologically advanced car in the world. There was not one but two turbochargers. He made 450 horsepower with only a 2.85-liter engine. It was 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds and reached 196 mph, still impressive numbers.

There was a variable traction computer controlled. It had driver-adjustable height and suspension settings, as well as a number of advanced electronic systems at the time. We are used to these kinds of systems today, but it was radical 30 years ago. Each of these technologies would have been a big problem at the time. Porsche, then still a relatively small car manufacturer, grouped them all at the same time.

It was ambitious. It was a total mess.

The thing was that Porsche introduced for the first time the concept of this car in 1983 and was going to put it into production in 1985. This was to be one of the most successful road and race cars in the world. history.

It is considered such by today's auto fans, but the development of the 959 has been much more tortured than the memory of today's car suggests. It took so long to conceive that it debuted two years late, missing its window for the race, almost instantly losing its place in the supercars hierarchy, and costing the company more money.

The problem with the 959 was the same thing that made the car so amazing. By integrating all the new technologies of the 959 into the same car, Porsche had to develop them all at the same time.

Maybe Porsche did not think it would be particularly difficult. After all, when Porsche launched the 959 project in 1983, it already had a chassis (the 959 was based on a classic 911 platform), its body was already planned (Porsche has done all the aero for that on an internal level ). C29 (study car), she owned most of her engine (the 959 operated as a 911 block with 962 heads at Le Mans) and she had experience in turbocharging. Porsche was one of the first car manufacturers to sell a modern turbocharged car to the public after years of racing turbo sports cars.

Basically, the 959 was a great version of the Porsche 911 already on sale. All Porsche had to do was make the 911 Turbo four-wheel drive. And the car was pretty easy to install for that. Since the 911 is rear-engined, all that Porsche had to do was to pass an output shaft from the front of the transmission to the front half of the car with a differential in the middle. This is the trick that has made it possible to quickly adapt similar systems, from the Audi Quattro to the Toyota Tercel.

So this 959 project was going to be easy, right? Of course not. Porsche did not care about the ease. Porsche was interested in brutally and scientifically rigorous at the price of everything else.

Porsche did not just want to make an AWD car; Porsche wanted to manufacture an AWD car with undamaged steering, with unmatched maneuverability and stability, easy to drive at low speeds and perfectly stable at the gate 200 miles to the hour, faster than n '39. any production car before. in Monaco as in Alaska as in Qatar.

Oh, and it should be a racing car racing the world at the same time.

It was intended for Group B, but was revealed after everyone went home

The original concept of 1983 was called the Gruppe B concept, and its design was as standard as you could imagine for the new category of Group B international races.

Group B was already full of turbo, four-wheel drive and mid / rear motor cars participating in the World Rally Championship. It was clear that the category, which required automakers to build at least 200 production cars that meet road standards, was only going to develop through more cool and popular certification promotions.

It should be mentioned that the 959 was however a much more daring project than the rest of what we saw in the B group. Audi had really made the category pass with the Quattro, but it was backed by the resources. serious engineering and financing of Volkswagen. . Let's not forget that Porsche was not yet married to VW at the time – despite the occasional overlap and collaborations between the two cars that produced cars like the 914 and 924, Porsche was not yet a VW group company.

Despite everything, making turbo all-wheel drive cars took years at Audi, and it was a much more crude and mechanical car than the Porsche, ultimately more digital. More like the Porsche project was what Lancia was building at the time, first the 037 rear – wheel drive, then the Delta S4 AWD, both incredibly advanced for their time.

But if you look at any of these cars up close, they really look like stock cars. They are not close to modern production standards. Porsche wanted to make a car as ambitious as any race car in the world, but it would only do it with the civility of a luxury car.

The exact words of the company in its 1985 brochure were: "The Porsche House is preparing 200 future 959 cars that have been proven in the street. The 959 is an exclusive high performance car with extravagant technology. Countless items are transferred directly from the race. With the 959, high-value materials are processed in the highest quality, as is the case in Zuffenhausen. It is tested for everyday use to the highest standards. "

He continued, "The 959 opens up a level of food and safety management yet unknown. It is suitable for the committed and knowledgeable expert, who wishes to have his say in the development of the sports car. "

It should have been clear that it was going to be a nightmare.

Production was too slow for the homologation of special races, and even as a prototype, it was a trial

The development of the Group B concept in the 959 took so long that by the time the 959 model finally came into production in 1987, the Group B racing category ended in 1986.

"And that's why Weissach could only compete in rallies allowing vehicles without homologation. And that's also why the 959 racing version, called 961, attacked Le Mans in 1986 and 1987. [in a prototype class] and played in one round of the IMSA Championship on October 26, 1986 at Daytona Speedway in Florida, "as the excellent new book indicates. Porsche 959: birth of a legend by journalist and author Jürgen Lewandowski, who was aware of the development of the 959 at the time, who headed the automotive and transport section of the famous German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In this case, the publisher of this book has sent Jalopnik a copy to review, which contains a nice little book of facts, a giant book of unpublished development photos (more than what I 've gotten). I could find in this article) and a brief history. the development of 959 in German and English. It's a good move if you're a super nerd 959. That's not the only source of this story, but it's the momentum for me to bring this whole story together.

In any case, when I was growing up, it always seemed strange to me that the great career of the 959 was taking place in the long distance rally Paris-Dakar. It's not what you expect from a big-capital Porsche. In context, in 1980, the Paris-Dakar was won by a VW Iltis, a lousy German military Jeep. It was the kind of race that was contested by off-roaders at home, not a high-performance luxury supercar.

I did not realize that the Paris-Dakar had no homologation rules and that the World Rally Championship had done so. Porsche simply did not have the budget or production cars to enter the WRC, so she went to the Dakar.

And even then, the program was not a fluid operation. The first year, Porsche ran this type of car on the Dakar in 1984 (surprisingly winner), it was essentially an ordinary 911 all-wheel drive called 953. In 1985, the car had the entire chassis and the 959 electronics, but not all cars entered have finished.

In the midst of this desert racing season, Porsche finally put turbos on two of its desert race cars, the first of which burned.

Finally, the 959, as it should, won in 1986, taking first, second and sixth place. It was before two Mitsubishi and one Lada, so that gives you a sense of competition. The real thing against which Porsche was competing was the desert itself, testing sustainability. It took three years of development to get there.

Now, three years of development for a small business for a running program are not particularly abnormal. It was the development of the road car that had the most impact with the 959, beyond keeping it away from the serious races of Group B at this time when the legend is at the rendezvous.

When the show-car debuted in 1983, people were already flooding Porsche with orders and the company announced full production in the spring of 1984, with internal documents showing that Porsche was planning to meet its licensing requirements. 200 cars from here on July 1st. 1985, as Birth of a legend Notes. This included ordinary road cars, race-ready "Sport" models and leather-lined "Komfort" models.

But production did not even start until 1987, and even after the cars finally started to roll out of Porsche's normal facilities, Porsche continued to develop the car. Whenever a customer brings the 959 at the earliest to perform maintenance, Porsche would add updates to the customer's vehicle, as indicated in Birth of a legend.

Digital controls "Like a cheap Nintendo Knockoff"

In the end, it was Porsche's ambition to defeat the 959, but the biggest practical problems were the car's digital packaging and controls, which were both destructive and time-consuming.

Digital controls were new in the automotive world in the 1980s, and Porsche topped the list with the 959, with electronic controls for the entire car, particularly variable all-wheel drive compared to the rest of the market.

On the digital side, the problem was that Porsche was programming the car with individual memory chips that were in resin, which is difficult to understand. Birth of a legend Dieter Röscheisen, test engineer and driver from 959, who worked on the braking and control systems of the car, spoke of the slow development:

Measurement and parameter adjustment were not done at the time with simple programming on a laptop. The programs were recorded on an EPROM, an erasable programmable read only memory, which was molded in synthetic resin for production use. Any changes to the settings were only possible by completely changing the control unit. So, every test at that time was considerably more critical than today's tests. "The work involved in measuring electronics was huge."

Not only did it cost a lot of time, but it made the physical task of testing the car difficult, as Röscheisen said:

"The equipment needed for this purpose occupied the cabin and was very heavy. In addition, there was a measuring device for the steering wheel with which we could record the steering angle, the rotation speed and the steering torque. It was difficult to see the instruments through the large hub of the steering wheel and the many cables. "

I approached Porsche and managed to get a picture of the camera. Imagine this airplane rifle as you develop the world's fastest tram. Very Buckaroo Banzai.

If you want to create a supercar from scratch, like Carl Sagan intoned, you must first invent the universe.

The author of Birth of a legend was present at some tests of the car at the Nürburgring in 1986, well beyond the development of the car, and saw how it all worked with Walter Röhrl who did the tests:

After ten laps, he entered the pits. There, he shared his thoughts with the curious technicians about the performance of the 959. He told them how the car came in, how the power distribution between the front and rear axles worked, how he braked, in short, Röhrl described in his typical perfectionist way that the 959 could do on the circuit in his experienced hands. The technicians then removed the electronic component described by Dieter Röscheisen and replaced it with another preproduction EPROM containing different parameters. Walter Röhrl came back on the track, made ten more laps, came back in the pits results. And so on.

Hour after hour, Röhrl came out with dozens of different electronic maps and each time he gave his precise opinion on the deviations from the previous configuration. […] It was only during these days that I was able to understand the endless test work, the refinement of the finest details and the love of perfection that is obviously in the genes of the Porsche technicians.

By the way, that 's the most discussed problem about the 959, and that' s throttled me about the car since I learned how to grow it. It seems that everyone who writes about it considers it only a success, and all its development is an integral part of purely Germanic rigor and industrialization. This guy is shouting at German genes! Come on.

To have a little more perspective on this EPROM programming, I talked to my colleague Jason Torchinsky. He specialized in computer science in the 1970s and 1980s with a basement full of soldering irons and vintage video game installations, including a functional arcade cabinet that he himself created to channel Internet. He explained that the EPROM was common at the time and that the UV light could erase them, so that people would cover them with a sticker on the chip or resin.

Sometimes chips are installed on a motherboard with a drop of resin, and not in the usual ceramic case with "feet". It's fast and cheap, but not repairable. A conventional EPROM would have been in a socket that it could easily exchange, like a cartridge. But it looks like they installed it with a blob, like a cheap Nintendo imitation.

Blob mode is an inexpensive way to produce a motherboard, but only makes sense if you have already debugged.

Jason sent me a pair of photos to help explain things:

[Referring to the top image] It's an EPROM chip. (You can see the window with the chip itself.) They usually had a sticker on the window to avoid fading, and the socket just came out. But [referring to the lower image] it's a blob resin chip. No ceramic case or packaging or pin or socket, just the chip itself, connected to traces and with a resin blob to keep it safe. As you can see, it's not removable. So every time [Porsche] made a code change, they had to produce a new motherboard.

Terrible idea

If they spent just a little more money in advance, they could have had a removable chip in a holder or a resin chip on a daughter board that could be unplugged. Having a non final software on a board like this is a very bad idea.

It's nearsighted. I wonder why they did it that way. I mean, if they were still making changes, it's such a bad idea.

Birth of a legend Apart from the theory of the Germans, the Nürburgring's observations show just how hard the 959 tests have been on a daily basis. It was intense, but the 959 remained painfully out of sync with its production goals.

And it was when things were going well.

Circling all this material in a "911 of the 80s" means that he also caught fire

Things were not much better in terms of the physical development of the car, as Röscheisen described the development of the car's anti-lock brakes. The 959 was not the first car with ABS, but no one had ever developed the ABS for a car that went so fast (196 mph) or if it weighed a lot (3,197 pounds).

The tests did not go well and Röscheisen tells in his book that the car wanted to brake alone in the midst of the high speed tests:

[T]The engineers found themselves on a territory that was totally unknown to them – and they could not have anticipated some of the areas in which they were launched. Although the aerodynamics proved relatively easy to adjust, the brakes and control systems posed very special problems.

Dieter Röscheisen: "For example, during braking system tests on the Italian Nardò high-speed track, the brakes would suddenly become extremely hot and the car would sometimes jump two meters to the left or right. The problem was that we could not really simulate this fault. Sometimes the car brakes left, sometimes right. He behaved like a rabbit zigzagging on the road.

Porsche realized that the problem was in the brake fluid used in the car, which boiled and formed bubbles while Porsche was using racing fluid. But Porsche only found one way (and found a new way to control the brakes to keep the coolant cool) after testing everything else on the ABS system, its suppliers and the new car tires.

The other problem of the car was to know how everything was packed in its small setting. Remember that the base shell of the Porsche 911 was not much different from that of the early 1960s. It was basically four seats on a six-cylinder engine deck.

In the 1960s, the 911 did not have a lot of parts and the car was spacious enough for what it was. It was air-cooled so obviously it did not even need a radiator.

But in this basic hull, the 959 was crammed into four-wheel drive, two turbochargers, a dry sump oil system with five sweeping pumps, two oil coolers, two intercoolers and a regular radiator for the engine of 2.85 liters. heads.

It took Porsche a bit of time to figure out how to stop the car from catching fire. Birth of a legend Explain:

Clearly, the confined conditions associated with the high-temperature technology – the two turbochargers radiating at 1,472 ° F (800 ° C) – required several extra hours of work until the team was able to control the heat balance, even in high summer temperatures in a traffic jam on the highway. During these numerous experiments, it is possible to admit today that some 959 test cars have ignited.

Dieter Röscheisen shared a little anecdote. "To one of the many readers of Ehra-Lessien [where Bugatti tested the Veyron] one of my colleagues looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the car had started to burn. He did not stop but continued driving quietly at 180 km / h. [112 mph] for a few kilometers to get the previous test in the range of five fire extinguishers. And he succeeded. If he had waited for the firemen to join him at the point where the car caught fire, it would have been too late. The cause of the fire has proven to be a recording device for measuring the results installed in the engine compartment. "

The author notes that the rest of the car was not particularly difficult, some parts like the turbo engine being itself, as we have already mentioned, relatively simple developments of the technology that Porsche had been doing for more than ten years. years. The reason why Porsche took so long to build was that the project was almost constantly failing given the design parameters for the sophistication that Porsche had set.

Not only was it going to be a fast car, but it was going to be civilized. It would not only be powerful, it would be reliable. Not only would it be fast, but it would be numerically advanced.

And he made 196 miles per hour! It was the fastest production car in the world when it was released.

Ferrari's problem: does the world want a "normal" supercar?

But this title lasted only a long time. The Ferrari F40 was released the same year and was faster, claiming to actually break the 200 mph barrier (at 201) rather than approaching it. Without almost all the heavy, complex and computer controlled systems the 959 had, the Ferrari was lighter and more exciting.

The Porsche was a car that could be used every day, so normal and simple that you could buy one with fabric and leatherette seats on the dashboard. The Ferrari was a group of kevlar stuck with a V8 in the middle. It was not that practical, but as a supercar it was not necessary. The Ferrari was an instant poster car, heralded as the latest analog pilot car, a legend that eclipses the 959 so far.

Critics have immediately understood this opposition, even before the release of the F40 and Ferrari's best-performing car, the 288 GTO, another machine for Group B that has never raced.

CAR magazine concluded its initial test of the 959 in 1987, claiming that it was technically impressive but rather boring:

Of course, the 959 is absolutely beautiful. The biggest sports car of all. A car that easily crushes the Countach and the [Ferrari 288] GTO and the Testarossa. A car is unlikely to be rivaled for years to come. Yet, on my return from Stuttgart, after a day spent feeling a new driving sensation and setting a personal maximum speed record, I feel strangely insensitive.

I do not really want it. In a way, the car is too efficient, too docile, almost too good. He does not sing and dance and does not live and breathe as the best Italians do – and in the same way as the humble 911s. In his determination to make the world's largest road machine, Porsche has forgotten to involve the guy at the wheel.

Of course, that was what Porsche was aiming for, after all. Total control, absolute normality and perfection despite the performance capacity of the car. But that made no sense for what it was, or what its price, its cost, had done.

After all its development problems, Porsche could not sell its cheapest

"Our customers are entrepreneurs," Porsche's CEO told the New York Times in 1986, just after referring to the new 959. "It's the kind of product that thrives in a free society. We do not sell a lot of Porsche in Russia. And being that kind of product, his house is in the United States. "

But Porsche did not sell the 959 in America. And it was not by choice.

Porsche has even built 29 sports models so that we can buy them here "but they have never been delivered," Birth of a legend notes that "the 959 can not be registered for road use in the United States".

The 29 cars tried to sneak around like race cars, but the feds would not accept that a car with air conditioning and a radio would only be used for races and forbade them from entering.

Porsche did not certify the low volume 959 on sale here because the company "refused to provide the United States Department of Transportation with the four complete 959 that they needed for crash tests." themselves to understand it.

Bruce Canepa, the 959 American guru, introduced a single car at that time, then managed to orchestrate a legal petition with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft and car enthusiasts. law. This was the new "Show and Display" rule that allowed the 959 to physically enter the country, even though American examples still had to meet contemporary emission standards and should be virtually imprisoned in the United States. air-conditioned garages or on race tracks.

So, the car was so complicated that it took years to develop, so many years that it missed its window for the race, and so long that it instantly became more powerful than the Ferrari F40, more simple and moving. It was so expensive to make that Porsche did not even certify it for sale on the world's largest capitalist market.

And after all that, it is understood that Porsche has lost money every 959, mainly by hand.

"The 959 is probably the most expensive promotional gift that Porsche has ever offered to its customers," said Helmuth Bott, Porsche R & D manager, about the car at the time. Birth of a legend note, stressing that each car costs around DM 1 million to develop and produce.

Porsche did not have the courage to sell the 959 for more than what it saw as an impressive 420,000 German marks, even though customers had no trouble turning their models around immediately.

The car that modernized Porsche and the 911

J'ai beaucoup accumulé sur la 959, mais je devrais également souligner le succès de la voiture, et pour cela, vous devez comprendre ce que signifie cette voiture pour la société. En interne, Porsche love cette voiture, comme Uwe Makrutzki me l'a raconté en personne.

Makrutzki et moi étions tous deux au milieu des salons de l’automobile de Pebble Beach, lubrifiés au champagne cette année, et j’ai élevé les 959. C’est là qu’il m’a donné son côté des choses.

Il travaille actuellement chez Porsche Classic, mais dans les années 1980, il a été fortement impliqué dans le programme 959 sur le plan technique. Aujourd'hui, a-t-il noté avec fierté, il travaille à garder ces voitures sur la route. Porsche Classic a 18 959 avec lui en ce moment, il m'a dit avec un sourire. Son projet le plus récent consistait à construire un tout nouveau 993 Turbo à partir d’une coque inutilisée issue de la production, mais il a dit que son rêve était de prendre une 911 Targa du début des années 70 et de la remplir complètement. . Il ya encore beaucoup d’amour pour la 959 chez Porsche, et il y a de bonnes raisons à cela.

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En 1980, Porsche prend un nouveau PDG, un Américain, étonnamment nommé Peter Schutz. C’était la première année où l’entreprise perdait de l’argent et une partie du problème était la voiture centrale de Porsche, la 911.

Il commençait à vieillir et commençait à paraître démodé, non raffiné et bruyant. Un classique et une icône, certes, mais une machine à moteur à refroidissement par air qui ne vieillissait pas bien face à la concurrence renouvelée. Les constructeurs automobiles apprenaient à adopter la technologie après que les lois sur les émissions et les crises gazières eurent une décennie dans la nature. Le moteur avant à moteur V8 à moteur V8 a été conçu comme son successeur moderne en tant que voiture de sport phare de Porsche.

Le 911 devait être annulé en 1981, mais le personnel de Porsche a été déçu, comme l’a noté notre notice nécrologique pour Schutz à sa mort l’année dernière:

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Lorsqu'il a commencé à travailler, Schutz a déclaré qu'il avait «remarqué une sorte de tristesse généralisée parmi le personnel».

Ce n’est pas une bonne chose à noter dans une équipe de quelque nature que ce soit, et après un peu de questions, il a constaté que la tristesse avait à voir avec la décision d’annuler l’iconique 911.

Le conseil a estimé que le 911 était un «concept dépassé» mais, agissant dans le mode le plus stéréotypé de ce que les gens perçoivent comme une pensée teutonique, ne tenait pas compte des raisons moins tangibles et plus émotionnelles les 928 étaient autour.

Schutz ne l'avait pas et éteignit les plans pour tuer le 911 de manière dramatique:

La façon dont Schutz a communiqué sur ce qu’il pensait de l’annulation de la 911 est assez légendaire. Voici comment cela s'est passé, avec ses propres mots:

«Il faut comprendre qu’en Allemagne, une fois qu’une décision est prise, elle est faite. En ce qui concerne l'entreprise, la 911 était l'histoire. Mais j’ai annulé la décision du conseil lors de ma troisième semaine de travail.

Je me souviens très bien de la journée: je suis allé au bureau de notre ingénieur principal, le professeur Helmuth Bott, pour discuter des projets concernant notre modèle à venir. J'ai remarqué un graphique accroché à son mur qui décrivait les tendances de développement en cours de nos trois premières lignes: 911, 928 et 944. Avec ces dernières options, le graphique montre une augmentation constante de la production pour les années à venir. Mais pour la 911, la ligne s’est arrêtée en 1981.

J’ai attrapé un marqueur sur le bureau du professeur Bott et étendu la ligne 911 sur la page, sur le mur et à la porte. À mon retour, Bott était là, souriant.

«Est-ce que nous nous comprenons? Et avec un clin d'œil, nous l'avons fait.

Ainsi, la légendaire Porsche 911 a été sauvée par un homme tirant une ligne sur un mur avec un marqueur.

Pour cela, le 959 n'était pas seulement un exercice d'ingénierie mondial. Il s’agissait d’une vitrine de ce que pouvait faire le «concept 911», comme Uwe aimait le dire. Il pourrait être rendu moderne, rapide et confortable tout à la fois, et il pourrait rivaliser avec les meilleurs du monde.

Le 959 n’était pas seulement une Porsche, c’était un 911. Et à cet égard, ce fut un succès incroyable.

Le 959 était un projet trop grand pour son temps, mais Porsche, comme il est maintenant, ne pourrait pas exister sans elle. The 959 is how Porsche taught itself all-wheel drive, the tech that tamed the 911's widowmaker handling, making it the easy, accessible car it is today.

All-wheel drive debuted on the 964 in 1988, the first generation of 911 after the 959 program started, and it debuted on the world-beating Turbo in the 993 generation, the layout of which has stuck around ever since. The 959 is also where Porsche taught itself digital controls and electronic integration and first dipped into water-cooling its engines for production, too. All of this is what has made the 911 a palatable car to the masses, successful and profitable.

Now, it’s not like there was a clear line of success from the 959 on. Porsche still almost went broke in the 1990s and had to bring on outside help from Toyota to learn to produce cars in a modern, high-quality and cost-effective way. The company sacrificed a lot of its over-engineering in the process, and a bit of its soul, too. Water-cooling became a necessary evil in the face of emissions laws, a change many purists lament today.

And Porsche wouldn’t have survived without sacrificing a bit more of that soul with the Cayenne SUV. I could even say the same about Porsche’s full integration into the VW empire after a failed hostile takeover of the greater Volkswagen Auto Group in the credit-hungry 21st Century. Without those dips and cuts, modern Porsche would not exist.

But the 959 was the pride-making step that proved to the world (and maybe, more importantly, proved to the employees of Porsche) that it could be a cutting edge company and not just a purveyor of rattly, ascetic sports cars.

Or maybe even there I’m wrong again. Today’s Porsche is rich and successful, among the most profitable car companies in the world, supported by SUVs and optional leather air vents.

History is always a product of the present, and today’s successful Porsche can easily look back on this money-losing, late-debuting, difficult supercar as a part of that success. Maybe now it has the luxury to look back on the 959 as a critical stepping stone, and not just a chest-thumping folly.