We all have cars we’ve previously owned and loved but can’t always remember why we sold them. Today is an exception; I know why I sold it. This is the latest in my #wheelswednesday series of posts about some of the interesting cars I’ve owned. In this case, it’s a 1971 Porsche 914-4 that I bought brand new, back in the day.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz – My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.—Janis Joplin
By the late 1960s, Porsche was looking for a replacement for their entry-level, four-cylinder 912 model and at the same time Volkswagen wanted a new sports coupe to replace its Karmann Ghia. Subsequently, Ferdinand Piëch, who was in charge of research and development at Porsche, was placed in charge of the 914 project.
Originally intending to sell the vehicle with a flat six-cylinder engine as a Porsche and with a flat four-cylinder engine as a Volkswagen, at some time during development, Porsche decided that having Volkswagen and Porsche models sharing the same body would be risky for their brand in America and convinced Volkswagen to allow them to sell both versions as Porsches in North America. That’s why European models, in addition to having a two color (white-yellow) turn signal light on the front fenders, also had both Porsche and VW logos on the back of the car.
How I Made this Photograph: This image was made in the Maryland countryside during an outing in the days when I drove my Porsche 914 like it was a regular car. It was shot with a Nikon F with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens on Kodak Ektachrome film, processed by Kodak in their lab in Silver Spring, Maryland. Exposure was unrecorded; film was scanned by ScanMyPhotos.
My Porsche 914
The photograph shows my brand new 1971 Irish Green Porsche 1.7 liter four-cylinder model in a contemporary image. The car cost me $3,695, which is equivalent to $28,619 in today’s money. As I mentioned in this post, which gives pricing on various new Porsche cars, try buying any Porsche automobile, including their lowest priced model for anywhere near that price today. By contrast, the six cylinder 914-6 cost only a bit less than the 911T, which at the time was Porsche’s next lowest price car. The 914-6 sold quite poorly while the less expensive 914-4 became Porsche’s top seller during its run, outselling the 911 by a wide margin with more than 118,000 units sold worldwide.
As you can see I had a lot of fun with this car. Except for…one Thanksgiving night when I went to bed and was sleeping peacefully only to be awakened by the sound of crashing metal. I quickly sat up in bed and said “somebody hit my car.” Sure enough, my car that was parked right in front of my house and been clobbered from the back and was pushed into a utility pole just a few feet in front of it.
After 55 days in the car hospital my Porsche 914 came back but she was never quite the same Irish Green beauty as it was before the crash. I ultimately sold it and purchased a used 1968 Ossi Blue Porsche 912 that turned out to be the car that has meant more to me than (almost) any other that I’ve owned but maybe that’s just nostalgia speaking. Interestingly, I have no photographs of that car at all, at least none that I could put my hand on. Maybe somewhere…
PS. Once up a time, when living here in Colorado my wife and I went shopping for a clean used 914 and bought…a Porsche 924. You can read about how that went here.
Porsche 914: An Enthusiast’s Guide. As I write this, used copies are available on Amazon for around fifty-six bucks. The Kindle version available for $22.68 for those preferring a digital format.