But that wasn’t enough.
That four-wheel-drive thing was happening in rallying; maybe that was worth a look?
These were the heady days of Group B. Days when greed and power, money and success were all that mattered. Lancia, Audi, Peugeot, Ford and more, they were all at the table raising the stakes season after season. When Porsche revealed its cards, the rest turned and looked. And looked worried.
The 959 was a beast of thing. Two turbos meant it would hit the ground running with 600bhp with a trick, road car-derived four-wheel-drive system to transmit gargantuan levels of power and torque to mother earth with embarrassing ease. The World Rally Championship, one might have thought, was at its feet.
And then, before Porsche could unleash hell on its rivals, everything changed. The window of opportunity had gone as quickly as it arrived.
Would the Group B 959 have really worked in the WRC? In all honesty, probably not. The tricky diffs, scoops and spoilers all read well, but how would they have played out through a dark, dank and wet-through Kielder in late November?