Wow! I've never seen one that beat-up. I've seen ones in worse condition, but that was always as a result of natural causes (i.e. rust, mainly). This thing has just been abused!

914s are fun little cars. First Porsche I ever drove myself was a 914. I've since driven a 944, so I'm slowly climbing the ladder of Porsche from the bottom up!

A beater Porsche. That's something I'll never see here in the Northeast, since these things have long rusted away here. I just wish you got some interior shots to see how bad it was inside.

@UDMAN: No kidding. I'd love to have a 914, but it would rust out from under me.

Somehow, my dad got to talking about how he had a friend in college with a 914, and he remembers it being an absolute blast (probably more so, since it was actually new then).

It's also The Porsche Normal People Can Live With, which is a big plus.

(yes, I still want a 911)

I just don't like 'em because they're so dammed ugly. After being conditioned by the timeless and nearly flawless shapes of the 356 & 911, this poor thing looks like something a teenage kid would scribble on his trapper keeper.

I will admit that they are a reasonably affordable way of going fast and a very affordable way of obtaining membership in PCA.

Buying a 914 is the Porsche equivalent of buying a pink paisley and blue plaid shirt off the bargain rack just because it says "Polo" on the pocket.

Back in the day, most people didn't consider these real Porsches, just short bodied VWs. I always liked them and it is a shame to see this poor thing in that shape. Get a collection going to either fix her up or bury her.

The second I saw that rear-angle shot of the 914, it clicked in my head and now I have the word 'porschamino' ringing in my head over and over.

...Wonder how much a 914 costs these days.

(Interesting side note: Most repulsive colour on a car I've seen in a long time, brings to mind a pumpkin ... with wheels.)

I have always love these little cars, but being 6'5", I know my chances of fitting in one are slim to none.

Pro: This, like the Cayman and Boxster, shares its engine layout with the most sporting recent Ferraris, all modern F1 cars and most supercars. The overrated 911 shares its engine layout with the VW bug, Corvair and some motorhomes.

Con: Used Toyota MR2 Spyders in really good condition can be had for $10-14K.

I love these cars.

When I was in highschool, my stepdad had a friend who owned a exotic auto shop who passed away. His wife just wanted to get rid of all the cars on his lot that he owned, so she sold me two of these and a '55 Karmann Ghia for $600. One of the 914 was wrecked on the side and the other had a bad electrical system. I already had too many cars and didn't have time to replace the wires and fix it up. So my step-dad had them in another "friend's" tow yard who ended up selling them without telling us.

I did get to restore the Ghia, along with three others, and sold them.

Everywhere else in the world it was called the Volkswagen-Porsche 914.

Fot some very good reasons.

Fix it up?! Are you all nuts? That's the coolest Porsche I've ever seen* precisely because it is so beaten up and orange. Let's face it, the reason Porsches are so uncool is because 90% of the drivers are trying to show off how much money they've got. That definitely isn't the case here...

*actually this isn't true, it's not as cool as the similarly-knackered 356 rally car that turned up at a London show a couple of years back, but I think that's been restored by now so doesn't count

@Tocsin: I think that was a Nader-inspired "safety" color popular on many cars of the era, along with the canary yellow and the screaming lime green. The baby-poop yellow/brown popular around the same time seems to have been just a perverse negation of the high-viz crowd.

No rust? I thought they rolled off the line in Stuttgart with swiss cheese for Battery trays.

As a former owner I can add this, it was kinda slow but incredibly nimble and insanely fun with prototypical Porsche trailing-throttle oversteer characteristics. A 70's iteration of a Boxster, but sans the stupid name.

With that color scheme it looks like a squished construction pilon.

@Tocsin: As it is spoken, so let it be Caminoed: [jalopnik.com]

Out here in the West that was a very popular color. At the time it went well with your paisly shirt and love beads.

That is one battle hardened 914.

I say leave it be and wear those dents with pride. This is a ride that's used not pimped. (UGH! I hate that word!!!)

Seeing this brought back memories of an insanely attractive girl I wanted to date freshmen year of college. The closest I got to any actual date was going for a few joy rides with her in her father's orange 914 (which was in much better condition than this one, obviously).

I always liked the design of this car, there is nothing that looks like it. Some always compare any Porsche model with the 911.. Porsche is allowed to build other cars beside 911, actually the current 911 has very little in common with the original Porsche idea of a sports car.

@Tocsin: Even moreso for the Carerra GT.

Rear 3/4 view of that thing screams Camino

@48pan2: Wasn't it a VW color? I remember seeing Sciroccos and early Rabbits of that color.

BMW also had a similar shade of orange available for the 2002.

@Beluga: Wow, they made up a legit excuse to have all of these zany colors? And here I was, just thinking that everybody was on acid and believing that shag carpeting was a good idea. Man, I wish I had been alive during the 70s.

@rawtoast: A 6'8" friend of mine got in one, though his head stuck out the targa hole. There's not much to the interiors in them, so you can splay your legs pretty much any way you want.

Here's the 914 I worked on a drove :)

Oh, and @PaulWakely (are you the PC vicar?), coolest Porsche I've ever seen was a knackered daily-driver 356 in Melbourne in 2005:

The shape and the color both scream malaise. That aside, I'd drive it for the fact that I wouldn't be scared to park anywhere.

I remember when I first saw these things, I thought they were ugly as hell. Over time, the looks have cerrtainly grown on me -- no doubt helped by the fact that my highschool girlfriend's dad was a VP for VW of NA in the early 70s (was from Germany, had worked for VW since the early 50s....). He managed to get ahold of a 914-6 and brought it home. The fact this was in Jacksonville, FL where Brumos resided certainly helped with "availability". Then he took me on a "test drive" on some backroads. Seeing as he was more at home of the Autobahn, he drove that thing like a man possessed and proceeded to almost make me wet my pants. Then he let ME drive it ...... oh for the days of power off oversteer!!!!! The 914-6 was ungodly fast and dangerous, making it a perfect hoonmobile.

Wish I could find a decent one at a decent price.

I think these things have really come of age. From the rear 3/4 they look great, and were RUF to have some fun could be made to look twice as good as a Boxster.

I'd love one. More, in fact, than I'd love a Boxster.

I just shot another somewhat rough 914. The owner came out and tried to sell it to me. Cheap.

I love 914's...on the track. Complete turkeys on the street. Won my 1st national championship in a 73 1.7 liter. 80 screaming horsepower. Almost never had to lift. You could flick the car with the steering wheel, and set it into the turn. The inside front wheel would come up, and then just hang in the air all the way around the turn. The car had just enough power to find equilibrium--it couldn't accelerate enough to overcome the scrub and friction of the three tires holding the drift, but it also wouldn't lose any speed. Once you set the attitude and the radius, it was just a thing of beauty. For twisty autocross courses, the car spent about as much time on three wheels as four. [www.afsinc.com]

The 914 with a 6 can be a total beast. Another friend ran one in a higher class with some kind of twin plug monster motor in it (though for SCCA he had to run single plug, IIRC). It was something like 300hp in a 1900lb package. Rocket fast, and Newton-be-damned handling.

I remember a guy I knew at the Navy Yard in Charleston took me for a ride in his 914. I dont think Ive ever taken corners that fast since and that was what 30 years ago? If I could fit in one now Id love to own one.

I'm guessing a '74. Wiki says the rubber bumpers stops on both ends start up in that year. In '75 the chrome parts became rubber. However, there's no badging to indicate what's under the hood. Probably a 1.7, but the 2.0 variant started in '74 as a replacement for the cancelled 914/6. Sometimes there's badging showing displacement. I found a site with a list of colors and this wretched paint appears to be signal orange. It is a safety color!
[homepage.mac.com]

914s probably didn't rust any worse than most other imports. Porsche was among the first automakers to fully galvanize the undersides of their cars. Maybe the 914 didn't qualify. I do know most 70s Beetles are prone to spontaneous decomposition.

@brandegee: Never mind...I misinterpreted what the heck the bumper stops are. No wonder Murilee had trouble...it's a 1.7 '70-'72.

I'm not too worried about where this falls on the spectrum of VW-Porschosity, I just like them (I suppose it helps knowing that if I could afford a car, there's a reasonable chance I could afford one of these), they make the whole 70's aura work pretty well. It's also another reason for me to reinstall NFS: Porsche Unleashed when I get home.

914: The Porsche that doesn't make you look like a pompous asshat.

@Murilee Martin: You must give off a "please invite me to PCH" pheromone.

I saw an electric 914 a little while ago (it was silent and had badges to indicate as such). My "green" PCH plan is a toss-up between that, a CNG P71 and a biodiesel/veg military surplus Blazer.

Brock Yates described the 914 as looking like a transistor radio.

Ah.. memories. I had a '74 914 beater for my first car. It wasn't fast but it could make up the time by the handling - low center of gravity and perfect weight distribution makes for a nice handling car. It's life was sadly ended by a careless UPS driver in my own driveway.

@Mad_Science: Last week I had the owner of a '79 Mercedes 300D (yes, it will be on DOTS) try to sell me the car for $500. Pretty solid car, too.

@brandegee: I agree, 70-72. But just to pick nits with your previous post--the 2.0 started in '73. See the link in my previous post for a pic of the one I owned...it was a '73 2.0 originally, but we swapped in the 1.7 because it ran a lower class in SCCA Solo. Starting in '74, the small motor was a 1.8, but had less power than the 1.7. The 2.0 liter was 94hp vs the 1.7 @ 80, and IIRC the 1.8 @ 76. Not much difference on paper, but in that little car, it was a pretty big difference.

BTW, if you look at the pic of mine, you'll see it was sitting right on the ground--in "Stock" racing trim. Torsion bar front suspension allowed adjustment as low as you'd dare, and SCCA rules permit "designed range of adjustment" on suspension. Rear springs in that pic were probably the only set of truly legal (not yet sagged out, met free length spec) rear springs in the country--we found them NOS sitting on a dealer's shelf in Phoenix, in 1993. Those cars were extremely difficult to keep stock legal under SCCA rules which is probably the biggest reason we defected to a '92 Miata the next year.

Fiero and 914 are to the MR2 as the Sloth was to the rest of the Goonies.

Porsche has an unhealthy obsession with VW. First the 914, then the 924, now the bid to buy the whole company.

There is hope for the little 914, they seem to be popular little racers

My dad used to own two of these little bastards, a blue 2.0 he owned and crashed well before I was born, and a rather rough black one with the 1.8 bus engine, with wire wheel hubcaps which I distinctly remember puttering along the side of the road as the dying motor slipped in and out of consciousness. Gave it away.

I think it actually has held up well, style wise, but damn, it is a squared off little s.o.b.

Renegade Hybrids in Las Vegas makes a kit to fit Subaru WRX motors into these things. Hmmm, let's see, a full-boat STi motor making ~400 hp, a few 911 pieces (suspension, brakes) and 914-6 fender flares to fit the appropriate rubber to put it all to the ground, and then the bitchin' Gulf Racing paint scheme that Heep showed us above...would make it just about perfect for my commute over Hwy 17 from Santa Cruz. The CHiPs would NEVER catch me!

Check out my 914-6 race car www.914-6.org

It is painted like a German police car --> POLIZEI, complete with German police blue light and European siren.

I have raced in in SVRA, VSCDA, PCA, and MCSCC events around the Midwest including Road America, Blackhawk Farms, Gingerman, Mid-Ohio,and Gateway International.

Love my 914's, have 3. 1 junk, 1 1.7, and 1 6. I believe that they get a bad rap and are truly a sportscar. Not a cushy ride for the 6 figure set.