Super Car Sighting 4-4-07

For the first time in my life, I saw a Porsche 959 on the road yesterday. The owner of the vehicle is consistently at this spotting location, but not typically in the 959. In fact he has driven one of his other vehicles there as well, an original television show Batmobile. I'm hoping to ask the owner a few questions given the opportunity, snap a few pictures, and maybe even get a ride in the beast if possible. Here's to hoping. For those of you not well versed in the Porsche 959 legacy I have grabbed some basic info from the 959 Wikipedia page. Enjoy and be amazed. The 959 pictures below may be the same exact vehicle I saw. This picture is from a Crystal Cove car meet which is very close to where I spotted the vehicle. There can't be that many of these around, even in Orange County.

The Porsche 959 is a supercar manufactured by Porsche AG from 1986 to 1989, first as a Group B rally car and later as a road going vehicle designed to satisfy FIA homologation regulations requiring that a minimum number of street legal units be built. It is widely regarded as Porsche's first true supercar.

During its production run, it was hailed as being the most technologically advanced road-going sports car ever built and for being the harbinger of the future of sports cars; it was the world's first high-performance vehicle to use an all-wheel-drive system, it provided the basis for Porsche's first all-wheel-drive Carrera 4 model, and convinced Porsche executives of the system's viability so well that they chose to make all-wheel-drive standard on all versions of the 911 Turbo starting with the 993 variant. During its lifetime the vehicle had but one peer, with Ferrari's F40 being the only other street legal vehicle available with comparable performance.

The 959's short production run—fewer than 200 road legal versions were built, and due to its astonishing performance coupled with its rarity have always kept values high. In 2003, Canepa Design corporation, famed for their high-quality SUV conversions, began using new hardware and modification techniques to modify 959s, making them more powerful as well as bringing their emissions levels into acceptable standards so that they could become street legal under recent U.S. legislation, bolstering the vehicle's status as a collectible among American buyers who were wary of spending vast sums of money on a vehicle that previously they would not have been allowed to drive in the U.S.

• 0-60: 3.6 s.



• 0-100: 8.3 s.



• 0-125: 12.7 s.



• 0-140: 19.0 s.



• 0-1/4 mile: 11.8 s. @ 119 mph (standing)



• Top Speed: 198+ mph