Porsche LIED about why they didn't sell the 959 in the US!

Let’s hear your 959 questions! Tomorrow on my new channel I will answer them, and once I hit 1000 subscribers I will respond to my new VINwiki videos live!

Could sit here and listen to JF recite auto history for hours. Someone get him and Steve Lehto to coauthor an audiobook on auto and racing history.

I worked at an American Audi/Porsche dealership for a few years in the early 2000's and used to spend my little downtime exploring the parts catalog, which included 2 years of the 959. It had the most insane price I ever found for anything. The rear bumper cover was $78,000. At the time, you could order a stock 996 body in white for that price. The brand new Carrera GT had a $14,000 rear bumper cover. Another I remember was the Carrera GT front rotors being $7,500, with the pad set a bargain at $460.

I worked for Bruce in the early 2000's. I developed the stainless-steel exhaust system and the fixturing jigs for fabrication. The system had two cats with the redesign, so new system was necessary. I built 13 sets. We got 100 more horsepower and passed California Smog.

We love Ficarra's deep dives into the histories of some of our favorite cars!

I met John Ficarra when he worked at Canepa. I was just some jerk off the street who leaned his bike against the front window and sheepishly walked into the showroom. I'm sure it was clear that I wasn't there to shop, but he treated me like a gentleman would and happily showed me around. A fine man.

John is by far my favorite guest on VINwiki. This man has some of the best stories.

Probably my favorite car of all time. Being fortunate enough to work on, ride in and drive a 959 is definitely a highlight of both my career and life in general and I will be forever grateful to my former shop foreman, Tim and all the bosses at Barrier Motors for making that dream a reality for me. No one other than Tim really understood what that car meant to me and it is one of my most cherished memories from my too-brief of employment with Barrier(got lured away by race cars). My instructor at Porsche Training once asked the class what our favorite Porsche was and when it was my turn, I responded IMMEDIATELY with, "the 959 and I can't wait to see one!" He laughed and said, "they are unobtanium and you'll never see one." Three weeks later I called him from the passenger seat of a gorgeous LOW mileage 959. I still cannot believe I had that opportunity at 22 years old. Glad I had a chauffeur when I drove it! 😁 Sounds stupid, but just seeing one brings tears to my eyes. It's an insanely influential car and does not get the credit it deserves. I know this sounds nuts, but given the choice between one of these and a 20-30 million dollar McClaren F1, I'd take the 959 EVERY SINGLE TIME. I grew up loving that car and the desire will never leave my blood. What an utterly spectacular car!!

I am 52 years Old, I used to read Road & Track, Car and Driver, Automobile, Robb Report, this magazines had all the information about the cars that we all loved and admired. I never got to be wealthy enough to buy a 959, a GTO, a Countach, F40 or Testarossa but listening to this stories makes me remember those wonderful 80's. Thnak you Vinwiki for your channel and the wonderful guests that you have.

As you mentioned the Ferrari 288 GTO was also not for sale in the US. But I worked at a very very high-end audio file store in Houston Texas and in the summer of 1985 we had a guy pull up and park and come into the store and it was a red Ferrari 288 GTO. I couldn't believe it and it was even more beautiful in person than in the magazines. I guess it was gray market. It's still my favorite of the Ferrari super cars.

This video is a top 10 in the Vinwiki library

The first time I saw a 959 was on the Autobahn. I was stationed in Germany in the '80s and was driving to see my family. In my rearview mirror, I see a couple of high beam flashes and the guy had his left turn signal on. I thought what the hell because I had a Mercedes that could maintain around 240 to 260 KPH. This guy was coming up real fast so I moved over and this guy passed me like I was standing still. He was followed by a motorcycle who had its problems trying to keep up. I shook my head and limped ahead. I will never forget that.

There's more lore and legend surrounding the 959 than any other car in memory. Its nice to hear the straight skinny from an authority on the subject.

As a Canadian Soldier I was posted to Germany from 1986 to 1992. I believe it was 1987 or 88, my wife and I were driving east on the autobahn through Stuttgart and became very excited by seeing no less than 20 959’s at the Porsche factory. So cool.

Now THIS is what Vinwiki is all about. I was glued to the screen for 20 minutes straight. Awesome story

Getting to see Canepa's white 959 ripping around when I was a kid is part of what got me into performance cars.

12:22 the car in the picture has a Spanish license plate, with the previous letters and numbers system from the current one. The first letter (or two) referred to the province (in this case, M stands for Madrid), then four numbers from 0000 to 9999 in sequential order as cars were assigned a license plate, and then one or two letters. Initially, all provinces began with (letter(s)) - 0000 - A, then 0001 - A and so on, so when they got to 9999 - A, the next one would be 0000 - B. When a province reached 9999 - Z, the next one would be 0000 - AB, that is, starting all over but with two letters, only that the second one couldn't be a vowel (and there where other exceptions such Q and Ñ where never used so they were not mixed up with O and N). This would go on until some time in the year 2000 when Madrid (the province that sold the most cars) was going to reach 9999 - ZZ and that would mean adding a third letter, which was not ideal, as some provinces still had only one and most of the ones with two final letters were very far back. So, they came with the current system: just four numbers and three letters, but no initial one or two letters with the geographical information they used to have. This was the way to stop some "not nice people" from stealing or breaking into your car and rob you due to your origin based on your license plate, for example, Madrid vs. Barcelona. Little funny story: my province and the one just north have football (soccer) teams that are rivals, as much as they get. It was easy to find cars from one province that were seld in the other one having some kind of merchandising, stickers, whatever in the rear part of the car so people would know they were not "outsiders". I never had any problem, but it could have happened. Oh, by the way, the car in the picture has a license plate from 1990.

When I was in high school. I was passed by a silver 959 near San Francisco. I can only assume it was Mr. Gates. This was about '88 or '89. I've seen one other 959 since. That said, I've seen more 959s than playstation 5s.

I'll never forget being in a meeting with BillG, and he was distracted the entire time. After the meeting someone asked him what was going on, and he showed us pictures of his 959 sitting in a warehouse at a U.S. customs port. A few of us stayed behind and for the next ~20min Bill was telling us about this car and his struggle to get it into the U.S.

The "story" back then was that Porsche presented the DOT with their computer model crash-test data but the DOT wanted to crash-test real cars