OEM Black Door Handles Options

[pfreiburger]

I am now quite certain that the factory did install some black door handles. I came to this determination in a roundabout (and expensive) way, starting when my inner hammer mechanic escaped and broke the driver door handle.

As no black ones exist, I picked up a new chrome (Sierra Madre) handle and was surprised to find that my old lock cylinder (after removing the black paint) would not fit the chrome handle. The length was fine, but it fit so tight it could not be turned. At all. Measuring the ID of the handle bores confirmed that the black handle was larger, even with paint on it. The used chrome-handle lock cylinder I bought on line later fit and turned in the new chrome handle just fine. And that used chrome handle cylinder definitely had more clearance when inserted in the old black handle. Measuring the cap ends of the lock cylinder confirmed it – the cylinder from the black handle was larger in diameter.

Dissimilar sized handle components are almost certainly no customizer job, and damn sure no hot rod job. The only conclusion I can draw is that Porsche had a supplier make a run of black handles, and for whatever reason some components were made a little different. This fits with what I found when I scraped some black paint from the broken handle: no evidence of chrome ever being applied to the casting. Lastly, there are factory pictures (albeit poor ones) of black A pillar cars that look like they have black handles also.

Am I missing another explanation?

[wonkipop]

nothing more to tell mate.
vw and porsche have all the pics.

but VW do have the one and only EA266 parked up in their museum.
they crushed the rest and don't much talk about what explains it.
and they sort of prop up their golf story with it, but its,.....not much of a story the way they tell it.

still to be written.
some one has to break into the archives and given carte blanche.

......my version is this.
piech got sent to siberia.
they hoped he died in the audi gulag amongst renegade nsu ro80 corpses.
his cousin turned to designing watches,..... had time to spare.

but he came back at tree top level.
unlike elvis he never left the building?

meanwhile in porsche land...
steve mqueen totally f%cked up the opening scenes to le mans.
(piech's masterpiece moment rendered in glorious cinema).
opening scenes.... calm country driving in a brownish anachronism...when he should have been driving a you know what.
despite the fact mr. mcqueen was making a movie about the 917s annihilating everything.....and #40 had won its class (how big has the hint got to be).
don't get me wrong, i liked steve mcqueen.
but........he was not completely concentrating and pointed into the future?

thirty years later.
mr. piech must have loved this.
the bbc got it right (with the benefit of history - a bit of post modern "irony").
would have made mr. p grin from ear to ear?

blood orange too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmifaKiPa6M

anything mr. piech was doing in the 1960s was not looking back but going forward.
and thats the problem with all 914 history pretty much.
they try to make it fit in.
it doesn't.
its outside the envelope.
its not about a brand.
its about a man?

or maybe it is about a brand.
and the brand turns out to be the man.