The Porsche 914 as featured in this article was among the 914 models built from 1970 through 1976. The car was first unveiled in 1969 at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

This model was to replace the Porsche 912 and was an effort to appeal to the mass car market. Not that Porsche was ever thought of as an automobile for the masses but this was their intent with the 914. The 1974 Porsche also represents a close collaboration with Volkswagen as the automaker had done once before.

A Low Priced Sports Car

The Porsche 914 was meant to be a light weight sports car with rear wheel drive that was intended to be affordable to many. The collaboration between Porsche and Volkswagen would also allow for fewer manufacturing costs. When the Porsche 914 was first introduced in 1970 the car was priced at about $3,500. Not a bad price at all even in 1974 with a sports car fashioning a Porsche emblem.

Porsche 914 Styling

The Porsche 914 was without a grille but did feature flip-up headlights. One body style was offered and that was the notchback coupe with a lift off roof panel. Some of the car’s interior resembled the Porsche 911 but a good deal of VW hardware was also used. This Porsche model also featured two trunks. Not bad at all for a sports car.

The Porsche 914 engine was placed behind the cabin.

Porsche 914 Sales and Marketing

Volkswagen’s interest in this car was that the automaker needed something different than it’s Beetle. A sports car would fit the bill but they needed the experience of Porsche to enter the field. Make no mistake however, while VW was a partner in this project and they were the one’s who marketed the car, the Porsche 914, regardless of it being called at the time in Europe, a VW-Porsche, the sports car was considered a Porsche by the American car buying public.

The arrangement by the two European automakers certainly was different. The Porsche 914 was the only Porsche model that the automaker gave up it’s own rights to market. The agreement between the two automakers was even more complicated when the chairman of VW passed away in 1968 prior to actual production.

Quite a lot has been written about how disappointing the Porsche 914 was, especially in sales. The fact is that the Porsche 914 was received pretty well in the U.S. Better than it was overseas but still not to what was hoped for. Some design flaws were uncovered with the first models. They were remedied by Porsche but as often happens, bad press has a habit of snowballing and this did hurt sales.

The press at the time seemed to fixate on the VW / Porsche collaboration as a negative without giving the car excellent grades on engineering. The car structurally was built very well.

One drawback pointed out however was that the Porsche 914 was equipped with a 1.7 liter VW flat four engine and this wasn’t thought by many to be what sports cars are about. There were also problems with the transmission linkage which hurt engine performance even more. Some also suggested that access to the engine was difficult and that the cabin space was limited. The cabin space had good width but the length/ leg area was a bit short. On the plus side the removable targa top was made to easily store in one of the trunk compartments.

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