While the 959 is an extremely rare car with only 337 produced, this particular example is a 1988 "Sport" model, of which there were only 29 produced (37 if you include the 8 cars built from spare parts), making it a doubly difficult to find model. Over the "Komfort" models, the 959 Sport versions have different seats incorporating racing-style harnesses, A/C delete, rear seat delete, an "S" steering wheel, factory leather-wrapped roll bar structure, and a more standard-fare coil over strut suspension, rather than the height-adjustable air suspension.
A rumor that occasionally pops up posits that the 1988 Sport production schedule was originally intended to supply a 1-make racing series in North America. The rumor also states that when the first of them arrived at the ports, it was turned away for being "too nicely appointed to be a racing car".