The Porsche 914The Porsche 914 was a mid-engined two-seat sports car available with either a VW or a Porsche engine. Handling was superb but styling was uninspired and it wasn’t a great success… A Volkswagen – Porsche CollaborationIn the mid to late 1960s Ferry Porsche was concerned that Porsches were getting too expensive for average sports car enthusiasts to afford one. Volkswagen’s chairman Heinz Nordhoff on the other hand, liked the idea of a Volkswagen sports car and so the two auto companies teamed up to build a sports car that could be sold as a down-market Porsche or an up-market Volkswagen.
The Porsche 914 did look attractive from some angles, but the styling was generally uninspired and wasn’t popular. Handling was a different matter. The Porsche 914 was the best handling Porsche to date. It had a mid-engine for an ideal weight distribution and a low polar moment of inertia, meaning the main weights were concentrated around the middle of the car for easier cornering. The mid-engined arrangement meant that the car was strictly a two seater without even luggage space behind the seats. Volkswagen Cools OffPorsche and Volkswagen had a good working relationship. They were totally separate businesses, but Dr Porsche had designed the Beetle during the 30s, the original Porsche 356 had started production with a VW engine and gearbox and VW suspension components, and Porsche carried out research and development work for Volkswagen.But the idea of one basic car that could be either VW or Porsche just wasn’t to be. Nordhoff had health problems and VW ended up with a new chairman who didn’t want a Volkswagen sports car. He also didn’t want Porsche selling the car by themselves. Eventually a new sales company was set up, the VW-Porsche company, to sell the car as a VW-Porsche. In America it was sold as a Porsche. Volkswagen or Porsche?The Porsche 914 was sold with two different engines. There was a four-cylinder version, the 914/4, with a 1600 cc Volkswagen engine giving 80 hp and a six-cylinder version, the 914/6, using a 2 litre Porsche 911 T engine of 110 hp giving similar performance to the 911 T. The 914/4 was slow for a Porsche, but a bigger motor of 2 litres, fuel injection and 100 hp gave it more punch and a top speed of 120 mph.The political problems at Volkswagen resulted in Porsche paying more than originally expected for the bodies and the 914/6 wasn’t an awful lot cheaper than the base model “real” Porsche. The 914/4 on the other hand was a lot more expensive than any Volkswagen including the Karmann Ghia coupe that it was supposed to replace. The 914/4 got the bulk of the Porsche 914 sales with over 115,600 being sold, while the 914/6 only sold about 3350. The Porsche 914 wasn’t as successful as Porsche had expected, nor as successful as it could have been. Handling was its strongest point. The Volkswagen connection was against it, as was the relatively high price and the generally unpopular styling. The 914/6 went out of production in 1972, and the 914/4 at the end of 1975, replaced by another sports car that started as a VW-Porsche collaboration, the front-engined water-cooled Porsche 924. Return from Porsche 914 to Porsche Pictures and Articles |
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