Market Find: White on White 1988 Porsche 959 Sport Part of RM Sotheby’s Miami

What: 1988 Porsche 959 Sport
Color: Porsche Grand Prix White (grandprixweiß; non-metallic Uni; 908 / P5 / 9A5; Porsche)
VIN: WP0ZZZ95ZJS905016
Mileage: 3,757 miles
Price Estimate: $5,500,000 – $6,500,000
CarFax: N/A
Window Sticker: N/A
Location: Coral Gables, FL
Link: RM Sotheby’s

Rare car. Rare spec. Not tailored.

Besides silver, a white 959 isn’t especially rare. Yes, this still a Porsche 959 road car built for Group B homologation we’re talking about, so it’d be worthy in these pages anyway. However, we give it extra points for having rare specification within that space.

The color is Grand Prix White, so in the lexicon of Porsche paint colors that’s G-body vanilla. In fact, Grand Prix White and Guards Red were the only colors made available on the 959 Sport.

Notably, we love the look of the incredible 959 center lock Cup-looking magnesium 5-spokes also color-matched to Grand Prix White. The latter is why we call it “white on white” in the title, a styling cue that is oh-so-quintessentially 80s and arguably consistent with the Porsche’s 1983 Gruppe B prototype concept car. So, while vanilla, it’s still a great look.

Also, this is a 959 Sport, is a whole lot more rare than the 959 Komfort. Of the 292 production 959s constructed, only 29 of them were built to Sport specification. Differences for the Sport included full leather-wrapped roll cage with four-point racing harnesses and cloth upholstery. As weight savings measures, the Sport also saw the deletion the Komfort’s adaptive suspension that was replaced with conventional coilovers. Air conditioning and stereo were also deleted. All told, these deletions shaved some 220 lbs. off the weight of the Komfort.

A detail worth calling out is the car’s seats. In this pre-964 era, Porsche wasn’t yet fitting Recaro Pole Position shell seats from the factory as they would in the Carrera RS and many, many more. Thus, the 959 Sport uses Porsche’s familiar folding bucket in big bolster configuration. Where it differs is pass-throughs for racing harnesses. It’s also got unique Sport-specification fabric seating surfaces stitched with the same unique gradient striping one would see in a 959 Komfort’s leather seats.

The car you see here is the 16th 959 Sport built. Briefly sold directly to an American associated with a privateer Porsche racing team, the car’s first owner quickly sold it off once he learned he’d have no luck importing the car to America. Even still, he didn’t do it before renting out a track for a day and having some fun with it.

The car would spend most of the rest of its life thus far in Switzerland, before going to Italy in 2015 then America after that.