by An extremely rare Porsche 959 Speedster is up for auction at RM Sotheby’s. The 1987 Komfort model was transformed after an accident on the autobahn in 1988. The rebuild, which took 4,000 hours, included repainting and the creation of a removable tonneau cover. If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that any new supercar or hypercar with a tonneau cover will be followed by another in a year or two. Car manufacturers today never miss an opportunity to squeeze more profit and publicity from a project, but in the 1980s, things were different.
Porsche didn’t make a convertible, but Karl-Heinz Föhl did. Föhl was a racer with his own shop who spent over 4,000 hours transforming a silver 1987 959 coupe into the white Speedster now up for auction. But it was only due to an unfortunate accident that he got the chance to undertake this rebuild. The Komfort version of the 959 is believed to have been delivered new to another racer, Jürgen Lässig, the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona winner and 1987 vice-champion. Lässig received this all-wheel-drive supercar at the end of 1987 but was involved in an accident on the autobahn the following year and decided to sell it.
Föhl’s craftsmen repaired the body, removing the coupe roof and installing an electrically retractable soft top, as well as creating a removable tonneau cover that comes with the sale in its own case. A second case contains a low windshield, which better suits the ‘Speedster’ name we know from the 356, though the car still requires a rigid tonneau cover. The completed 959 was unveiled in September 1989. At the Essen Motor Show the following December, Föhl reportedly asked for an astonishing 1.2 million dollars at the time to part with it. Nearly four decades later, the odometer reading of 8,304 km (5,160 miles) suggests that the 444 hp (450 PS) 2.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six has barely been used, and the Grand Prix white paint and blue leather interior look almost new.
The auction has set an estimated price of 1.1 to 1.5 million euros (1.25 to 1.71 million dollars) for the 959 convertible.
