Porsche 959

The Porsche 959 is a rear-engined supercar manufactured by Porsche between 1986 and 1993, first as a Group B rally car and later as a road-legal production car designed to satisfy FIA homologation regulations requiring at least 200 road-legal units be built.

Overview
The Porsche 959 is powered by a twin-turbocharged 2.9L (2,849 cc) flat-6 engine that produces and. The engine is rear-mounted and the car is all-wheel-drive.

The 959's engine was developed from the "Moby Dick/Porsche 935" race car and redeveloped slightly fro the short-lived Porsche Indy Car and several other projects before finally being tuned for the 961, the 959's racing counterpart. The water-cooled four-valve cylinder heads, in tandem with the air-cooled cylinders and sequential turbochargers, allowed Porsche to extract from the compact, efficient, and rugged power unit. The use of sequential twin turbochargers rather than the more usual identical turbochargers for each of the two cylinder banks allowed for smooth delivery of power across the power band, as a departure from the abrupt on-off power characteristic that acted as a hallmark feature of Porsche's other turbocharged engines of the period. The engine was used, virtually unchanged, in the 959 road car as well.

In order to have a lightweight, rugged shell, Porsche adopted an aluminum and Kevlar composite for the body along with a Nomex floor, resulting in a weight of that helped the 959 achieve its high performance level.

Porsche also developed the car's aerodynamics, which were designed to increase stability, as was the automatic ride-height adjustment that became available on the road car. Its "zero lift" aerodynamics were critical to keeping it drivable. The 959 also featured Porsche-Steuer Kupplung (PSK), which was at the time the most advanced all-wheel-drive system to have been used in a production car. Capable of dynamically changing the torque distribution between the rear and front wheels in both normal and slip conditions, the PSK system gave the 959 the adaptability it needed both as a rally race car and a road-going supercar. Under hard acceleration, the PSK could send as much as 80% of available power to the rear wheels, helping make the most of the rear-traction bias that occurs at such times. Power bias could also be varied based on road surface and grip changes, helping maintain traction at all times. The dashboard featured gauges displaying the amount of rear differential slip as well as transmitted power to the front axle. The magnesium alloy wheels were unique, being hollow inside to form a sealed chamber contiguous with the tire and equipped with a built-in tire pressure monitoring system.

Upon its introduction, the twin-turbocharged 959 was the world's fastest road-legal production car, with a top speed of 195 mph (314 km/h); the sport model could reach 197 mph (317 km/h). The 959 was tested to perform 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds (both Komfort and Sport versions).

Asphalt 8: Airborne
The Porsche 959 will be added in the upcoming Porsche Update.