Porsche 959: Coming to America

Just finished another piece for 911 & Porsche World magazine. It’s the story of the 959 and how it came to America: very much through the back door, and not without its tribulations.

The car was never approved for sale in the USA. Porsche were giving away money on every chassis sold, so they really didn’t fancy smashing up four of the 200 homologation specials in US crash tests. As a result, the cars had to come in through the grey market – aptly named as there are some shady characters operating in this area.

Graymarketcars.com claims that many of the modern day supercars coming in through grey market suppliers are plain old illegal. Pagani Zondas for example: there is apparently no way they can pass the all-important Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions testing, but still the cars are over there. The US Dept of Transport, EPA and NHTSA are all well aware of the situation and choose to do almost nothing about it, much to the chagrin of the manufacturers who pay millions of dollars a year in emissions licences: according to the guys behind graymarketcars, that is.

Check out these McLaren F1 pics on graymarketcars.com – considering the DoT say they will confiscate all illegally imported vehicles caught using US highways, these guys are either mega brave or mega stupid to be driving such megabuck machinery without full US approval.

A number of DoT and EPA-approved import centres have been linked to 959 conversions, and there is some bad publicity out there about quite a few of them. For example, G&K in Santa Ana, CA were one of the first firms to convert 959s (see the GIAC 959 ECU modification story) under the Show And Display legislation that gave the cars the loophole needed to enter the US, limited to 2500 miles a year as show cars only. G&K were previously fined $140,000 for breaking import laws on their Smart car programme, and for illegally registering cars (including one Porsche) using another ICI’s licence. The EPA website has more details here.

I put a lot of research into this piece, speaking at length with a number of informed, experienced individuals including Wayne Dempsey of Pelican Parts and the Porsche 959 Registry (where these 959 prototype pics come from), John Dixon at the Taj Ma Garaj (the first man to legally import a 959 into the USA) and Bryan Milazzo, who handled most of the paperwork for John and has gone on to help buy, certify and maintain more then a few other 959s. My eyes were well and truly opened by what John in particular had to say on the subject.

Now the cars are over 21 years old, they can come into the US without NTHSA and EPA certification. They need to wait until they are 25 to gain historic status in California though. I hope they can survive until then. I love the 959 and it is certainly my lottery car – no doubt about it. What’s not to like about the ultimate roadgoing race/R&D Porsche: a landmark machine, whose raison d’être was officially sanctioned by Ferry himself, money no object? Plus it looks like this:

The real cherry on the cake here would be to speak to Bill Gates from sunny Seattle. Mr Gates and his Microsoft partner, Paul Allen, attempted to bring at least one 959 each into the USA – Bill eventually succeeding and Paul eventually shipping his back to Europe, where he is still enjoying it – as far as I know.

It would be fascinating to understand the sort of rootin’, tootin’, car importin’ cowboys these boys came into contact with along the way, to tell the real story of how their cars eventually entered America legally, to understand what they feel now when they use their 959s, and to know whether it was worth it all in the end. Maybe one day I will get that chance – stranger things have happened.

Tagged as: 911, 959, Porsche, shipping, USA