The recommissioning has been carried out over the past few months by the Porsche Heritage and Museum team together with their colleagues from Porsche Classic.
A car that can survive 8,700 miles in the deserts and savannahs of Africa can go anywhere in the world. The Porsche 959 Paris-Dakar mastered the grueling rally from France to West Africa in 1986. The 959, in which Jacky Ickx and Claude Brasseur finished second behind the winning French team of René Metge and Dominique Lemoyne – in an identical car – is now ready to by driven once again. The recommissioning has been carried out over the past few months by the Porsche Heritage and Museum team together with their colleagues from Porsche Classic. The multi-part documentary “959 Paris-Dakar” on the Porsche YouTube channel offers exciting insights into the recommissioning process.
The 959 Paris Dakar Race History
The starting line-up of the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1986 was dominated by trucks and all-terrain vehicles. The three Porsche 959 cars from Zuffenhausen stood out – the third, a service car driven by project manager Roland Kussmaul and Wolf-Hendrik Unger, took sixth place. To this day, the Porsche Museum has preserved the complete trio as part of its collection. “The winning car remains untouched and we keep it in a kind of time capsule, so to speak, with all of the physical traces of the rally preserved for as long as possible,” explains Kuno Werner, Head of the Museum Workshop.
