Anthony Peacock’s look back at Group B rally cars [Group B top 10 drives, December] was wonderfully evocative, but the Porsche 959 record needs putting straight; the 1986 Paris-Dakar was not its debut win. I was Rothmans Porsche press officer during the 1980s, principally working in Group C sports car racing, but I was seconded to the Paris-Dakar programme as Porsche gradually developed its fourwheel-drive system for rallying. In 1984 it entered two 911 Carrera 4WD hybrids, known as 953s, one of which won the Dakar with René Metge. The following year the 959 body was first used, with the 953 engine and 4WD, but both Metge and Jackie Ickx retired. The push was now for the 959 to have the twin-turbo flat-six engine in time for the 1986 Dakar, but first came the 1985 Pharaohs Rally in Egypt, in which the first two definitive Rothmans 959s were entered; Ickx’s car burned out before the Pyramids start, but Middle Eastern rally champions Saeed Al-Hajri and John Spiller went on to the Group B car’s debut win.
