Porsche 959: The Greatest Rally Car That Never Raced

In the mid-1980s, Porsche set out to build a Group B rally car, but accidentally ended up creating a technological spaceship that redefined the modern supercar. By taking the iconic 911 silhouette and stuffing it with sequential twin-turbos, an aerospace-grade Kevlar composite body, and the most advanced computer-controlled all-wheel-drive system the world had ever seen, Porsche created an absolute weapon: the 959. It was a relentless, uncompromising engineering marvel meant for the dirt, but the WRC Group B class collapsed before it could ever turn a wheel in anger. Left without a racing series, this 200-mph laboratory went on to conquer the Sahara Desert, spark a bitter rivalry with Ferrari, and was deemed so illegal in the United States that a billionaire had to alter federal law just to drive one.Group B Video: https://youtu.be/2KJNhIRrrhgPorsche 928 Video: https://youtu.be/1p3oURcvnAg━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now.The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn the 1980s, the supercar world was an unregulated arms race, and Porsche decided to out-spend and out-engineer everyone. Guided by chief engineer Helmut Bott, they bypassed traditional rear-wheel-drive limitations and built a perfectly balanced, all-weather giant-killer. In this video, we dive into the brilliant, incredibly expensive story of the Porsche 959.From pioneering sequential turbocharging to developing the revolutionary PSK all-wheel-drive system, we explore how a heavily mutated 911 beat the world to the future. When the rulemakers took their sport away, Porsche simply pointed their masterpiece at the grueling Paris-Dakar Rally. And when the U.S. government refused to let it cross the border, one of the world's richest men went to war with the Department of Transportation.What’s inside:The Group B Spaceship:How Porsche ingeniously used aerospace materials like Kevlar, Nomex, and aluminum to keep weight down while packing in unprecedented technology. They engineered a complex sequential twin-turbo flat-six to eliminate turbo lag, setting the blueprint for the next thirty years of performance cars.The AWD Revolution:The relentless development of the Porsche-Steuer Kupplung (PSK) system. Unlike primitive 4WD systems of the era, this computer-controlled marvel could dynamically shift power to the wheels with the most grip in real-time, making the 959 an unstoppable force on any surface.Desert Domination:The tragic 1986 fatalities that forced the FIA to suddenly abolish Group B rallying left the 959 without a natural home. We explore Porsche's audacious pivot to the 8,000-mile Paris-Dakar Rally, culminating in a historic 1-2 finish in 1986 that proved this hypercar wasn't just a delicate garage queen.The Billionaire’s Contraband:The 959's bizarre afterlife in America. Because Porsche refused to crash-test four multi-million dollar cars for the DOT, it was strictly banned in the US. We tell the unbelievable true story of how Bill Gates and Paul Allen bought them anyway, sparking a 13-year legal battle that ultimately birthed the federal "Show and Display" exemption law.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies, and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#Porsche959 #GroupB #AutomotiveHistory #ParisDakar #80sCars #Motorsport #TheCarNerd #PorscheClassic #Supercars #BillGates