1973 Porsche 914

History

In the late 60’s, Volkswagen was ready to replace their Karmann Ghia coupe and Porsche needed an inexpensive complement to their pricey 911 that would replace the 912. At the time, VW had a contract with Porsche to handle their development and the 914 became the last project under this contract that dated back to Porsche’s founding. So, from 1969 through 1976, the two German automakers collaboratively designed, manufactured, and sold the targa-topped, two-seater 914.

Two models were cooked up, one – like the vehicle up for auction today – featured an air-cooled, VW 1.7-liter flat-4 cylinder and the other with two liters of displacement. The plan was to sell the 1.7-lilter as a VW and the 2.0 as a Porsche, in North America, but ultimately the roadster was sold in the US as a Volkswagen-Porsche which is seen on the owner’s manual included with this sale.

Motor Trend named the 914 “Import Car of the Year” in 1970 and called it “one of the best-handling machines any of us has ever driven.” A notable update to the 1973 model was changing the 5-speed manual gearbox configuration from a “tail shifter” to “side shifter” as a way to improve upon sloppy shifting linkage. Though the wee, 102 cubic inch motor only made 80 horses when new, the roughly 2000-pound curb weight and 50/50 weight distribution made for grin-inducing handling, a trait still on tap today.