Watching Porsche’s latest Top 5 video made us realize something surprising; The iconic 959 remained Porsche’s fastest production car for a cool 26 years (in its very rare S guise) before the company topped it with the 918 Spyder in 2013.
And it’s surprising because this is Porsche we’re talking about, the German company that is dominating the sports car world for over 50 years now. We do recognize that top speed isn’t the most important figure of a sports car but for the most romantic out there, terminal velocity used to hold a big chunk of a car’s appeal.
With that said, someone would think that Porsche out of all companies would at least try a little harder and not wait 26 years to offer a faster car than the 1987 959 S. It wasn’t that hard but then again, Porsche never cared that much about top speeds anyway, at least for the past 25 years.
Details on the 959 S are scarce; Porsche made just 29 examples of it, with the 2.8-liter flat-six engine featuring larger turbochargers and the company claiming an “official” output of 508hp (515PS) and 413lb-ft (561Nm) of torque, over the standard 959’s 444hp and 369lb-ft of torque. Top speed is “rated” at 210mph (339km/h).
However, each of the 29 Porsche 959 S models came with different outputs, since the owners could decide how much power they wanted. It came at a time when the Ferrari F40 stole the title of the fastest production car from the normal 959 (197mph) with its 201mph.
Porsche’s latest Top 5 includes all the usual suspects if you know your Stuttgart metal, with cars like the outgoing 991 Turbo S, the 991 GT2 RS and the outrageously awesome Carrera GT. The slowest car in this list tops out at 205mph (330km/h), so you can’t really complain, can you?