Ferdinand Piech's 914-8, Video of the car from 10/2025 Options

[Robarabian]

I visited the Porsche Museum in October. Took some video of the 914-8.

It's short but shows some good details.

Robert

https://youtu.be/G5sTmYOuHuA

[wonkipop]

nice photo of the bumper detail @Midway

i recall reading somewhere that in the early design phase of the 914 there was an intention to have "impact absorbing" bumpers. i do not think this was in response to the later USA impact bumper regs. it well predates that. i think it was an idea about the car being able to take parking nudges without damage.

the 8 being a prototype 6 appears to have been built with this concept of a nudge bumper. there are one or two photographs of it when it was a 6 undergoing evaluation testing and it had the bumper then. along with the twin headlights. so probably the same car that later became this 8.



the rubber cap seems to be attached to the body shell and not to the top of the bumper.
would make sense if the bumper is a movable element either on spring mounts or crushable rebound mounts. quite different to the production cars but does explain the indentations which remained in the production cars - the indentations would allow the main bumper to move inwards towards the body before rebounding.

in any case they dropped the idea. i suspect the twin headlights and nudge bumpers were only for the 6. i have seen photos of a prototype 4 from the same batch of first cars that had single headlights and the production bumpers with larger cap attached to top of bumper. makes me think that the early intention for the 6 was to be more upscaled and equipped than the 4. but these differences were dropped before production.