You could take one look at the Porsche 914’s crisp, angular lines and think it was a typical product of the eighties or nineties. But you’d be wrong. The 914 first hit the road in 1969, the year Nixon became US President, the first Apollo moon landing took place and supersonic jet Concorde made its first flight.
It stayed on sale from 1969 to 1976, during which time around 119,000 were made. It was awarded Motor Trend’s Import Car of the Year for 1970 and became Formula One’s first safety car at the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix.
The 914’s beginnings looked promising but proved difficult. It came about through a collaboration between Porsche and VW, two companies which had a long-running development arrangement – and in the late sixties both were looking for a new sports car to re-invigorate their line-ups. Porsche needed an affordable, low-end sports car to add to the bottom of its range, while VW badly needed a modern replacement for its graceful-but-ageing Karmann-Ghia sports coupé.
The 914’s design was thoroughly modern. It was built as a mid-engined two-seater with a targa top – a semi-convertible design which uses a fixed roll bar behind the seats and a ‘roof’ made of removable panels. Mid-engined cars bring internal packaging problems – the engine has to go right behind the driver – but they also offer nimble handling and even front-rear weight distribution.
There were to be two versions: a VW-powered 914/4 and a more expensive Porsche-powered 914/6. The VW engine was an air-cooled 1.7 liter fuel-injected flat-4 producing 80hp, while the Porsche engine was an air-cooled 2.0 liter carburettor-equipped flat-6 producing 108hp.
On test, the 914/4 delivered a top speed of 116mph and a 0-62mph time of 13.3sec. The heavier 914/6 raced away to 129mph with a 0-62mph time of just 8.7sec.
But straight away the cars hit trouble. The death of Volkswagen’s chairman Heinz Nordoff in 1968 effectively ended VW and Porsche’s collaboration, which meant that the Porsche 914/6 proved much more expensive to manufacture and hence to buy, and only around 3,350 had been sold by the time it was dropped in 1972.
It was the much cheaper 914/4 which was to prove the big seller, accounting for around 115,000 units. In fact, during its production run, the little 914/4 was to outsell the Porsche 911. The original 1.7-liter engine was eventually superseded by more powerful 1.8 liter and 2.0 liter versions.
Originally, it was planned to sell the 914/4 as a VW and the 914/6 as a Porsche, but this was considered too confusing for the important US market where both versions were sold as Porsches (except in California, where they were sold as VWs). In Europe, they were sold as Volkswagen-Porsches.
By today’s standards, the performance of the Porsche 914 is modest, but its light weight helped make up for that – it was born in an era where sportscar engineers gave as much attention to weight as they did horsepower. The 914’s avant-garde design also paved the way, arguably, for the pretty Fiat X1/9 and the first-generation Toyota MR2.