RHD 914 Options

[Unobtanium-inc]

Anyone ever seen this one, it was new to me.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-mar...rive-914-a.html

[wonkipop]

here is what i have from files on the original 11 crayfords cars.

1.

#1 Car = @9146-racer very early 914/4. white car at top of thread. originally orange i believe.^


2.
71 914/4. last sold in 2019 on UK ebay. very poor condition.




3.
73 914/4 2.0 well preserved highly original car. passed through a succession of careful owners. remains in australia.




4.
73 914/4 2.0 when i last saw this car it was still in this state that it was published in the mid 70s. it used to be in melbourne and had passed through a succession of careful owners. disappeared about 15-20 years ago and hasn't been spotted since.




5.
75 914/4 2.0 originally delivered to western australia, went to singapore. think it was owned last by meng foong. now back in the UK where it was for sale. converted later to a six cylinder car i believe. not in original condition.



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anything else that is rhd may be good or bad, or whatever (like my car for instance that i converted) but is not historically significant. apart from the two 6s here in aus.

i reckon approx half the crayfords cars stayed in the UK, the rest went to the "colonies".
ie hong kong, singapore, malaysia, australia. australia and the south east asian former colonies demanded right hand drive cars and would not permit registration of left hand drive vehicles. so for instance in japan,though it was right hand drive, there was no absolute requirement that the cars be right hand drive to be registered so they could sell new lhd 914s into the japanese market.

thats why crayfords converted cars are significant, despite the remarks of some experts that they are "hack" jobs. they are not. they were very expensive conversions to do and they were absolutely required for certain markets in the 1970s (regions described above). and because of the cost - very few were done.

the conversions to rhd voided the factory warranty. nevertheless the conversions were sort of semi tolerated by the factory and were arranged through a UK distributor. it was an extremely limited market as it turned out. though i do think Crayfords hoped they might have been able to sell more than they did. it did not work out economically.
very few takers.

as far as i can work out there were kind of two batches of cars.

early ones which didn't really take off because the talk was the factory would produce a right hand drive version of the 914 in 1972. so people hung back and waited.
especially in the exclusively right hand drive markets - ie Australia. where they could have sold 914s in small numbers, but probably not enough to justify the tooling and get the price right. hence likely why the factory never did it in the end. though i think if porsche had exclusive management decision making power it might have happened. i'm pretty certain VW would have been the 50% interest that kyboshed it. they looked at the $ return differently? a rhd 914 would have all hung off the success of the 914/6 model.
thats what the australian distributor was interested in. probably similar scenario for the UK. as we know the 6 was a sales dud. that probably killed off any chance of a rhd 914.

then there is a a second batch of crayfords cars beginning in 1973.
thats when it was clear there would be no factory rhd car and if you wanted a 914 this was it. the last chance. the 2.0 L car made it attractive. and marginally affordable if you set up the deal right as an australian. it involved going to the UK and being resident there for 6 months or a year of so. thats when the two 2.0L cars were done that came into australia. 73 models where the last window. it closed for 74 models as they did not meet the ADRs. the same may have occurred in the UK. anyone who wanted a rhd 914 jumped at that moment and jumped on the 2.0 as it stacked up in $ performance terms.

then there is the lone 75 that ended up here a year or two later. caught out by the changes in the ADRs (australian design rules). effectively a prohibited import. i think whoever owned it tried several times to get it on the road during the late 70s but couldn't do it. it ended up shipped off shore and resided in singapore. the yellow car that is in meng foong's garage. whether it was his or not it seemed to end up in his circle.
it got transformed into a 6.

i've seen photos of one other car that went to hong kong. the photos dated from the mid 80s. it was in macau by that stage and a total wreck. it would be gone by now and have come back as a chinese toaster in the afterlife.