best guess on how many 914's are still on the road, Doing an alblum of the rebuild Options

[NJTom]

Ok I'm doing an album on my 1972 project, a before during and after. I'm working on getting a reproduction window sticker, have scores of pictures and would like to add some history. I have numbers of 914 produced by years and was wondering if anyone had any idea on how many are still on the road? No right or wrong answer here, I did find a thread from 2008 and the range was from 2400-12,000.. I think this would be interesting reading at local car shows and the like. THANKS and enjoy!

[lalee914]

Ok I'm doing an album on my 1972 project, a before during and after. I'm working on getting a reproduction window sticker, have scores of pictures and would like to add some history. I have numbers of 914 produced by years and was wondering if anyone had any idea on how many are still on the road? No right or wrong answer here, I did find a thread from 2008 and the range was from 2400-12,000.. I think this would be interesting reading at local car shows and the like. THANKS and enjoy!

Well I was waiting for someone else to reply first but nobody did so here goes. I maintain a data base of 914/6s. Of the approximately 3363 that were built, I have information on over 1670 which is just under 50% of all /6s built. Almost none of the cars in my database indicate that the car was destroyed. Some are little more than rust bucket basket cases but could be rebuilt. Every year I find somewhere between 40 and 100 new VINs. Most of the cars in the database were originally sold in the US. Right now my best guess is that somewhere between 60% to maybe as high as 75% of all /6s ever built still exist somewhere in the world in some condition.

As for how many 914/4s are left, that is a much more difficult proposition to quantify. There were a LOT more /4s sold and being considerably cheaper, a lot of them ended up in the hands of people who never maintained them properly. It is much more difficult to track the /4s because there are so many more /4s and many of them sell with only local advertising without a VIN number being listed. When I first got into 914s, I used to go to the local junk yard from time to time and pull parts that I needed off whatever 914 I could find there. A lot more /4s got sent to the crusher than /6s. Today if you look at web sites like COPART.COM or IAAI.COM you almost always see one or two 914/4s every month.

If I were to take a wild guess as to how many /4s are left somewhere in the world in at least a state where they could possibly be restored, I would guess there could be as many as 50% of all 914/4s ever built are still in existence. This estimate could be a bit high. I don't know how you could ever prove anything like this because so many cars exist in an unregistered state.

There, that's my 2 cents worth.

[SixerJ]

Just looked at the howmanyleft.co.uk website to check out if 914 data is there or not, looks like not, but maybe buried deep in the original data set but not via the website

I suspect that the 914's are hidden in the 'missing' model info for the Porsche and / or VW data sets i.e. model has not been tagged properly so could include all kinds of models Porsche data set clear must include 356's because if you search for those, again none would appear to exist / lumped into the missing bucket

This is publicly available data from the government vehicle licensing database (central unlike the US). In the UK your car has to be either road taxed or SORN status which is basically a statement that your car is off the road and not being used. Both are renewed every year at a maximum / status could obviously switch mid year

New SORN system came in probably 10 years ago so over time more and more cars have been caught in the system / data has become more accurate over time

Screenshots

[914_teener]

Ok I'm doing an album on my 1972 project, a before during and after. I'm working on getting a reproduction window sticker, have scores of pictures and would like to add some history. I have numbers of 914 produced by years and was wondering if anyone had any idea on how many are still on the road? No right or wrong answer here, I did find a thread from 2008 and the range was from 2400-12,000.. I think this would be interesting reading at local car shows and the like. THANKS and enjoy!

Well I was waiting for someone else to reply first but nobody did so here goes. I maintain a data base of 914/6s. Of the approximately 3363 that were built, I have information on over 1670 which is just under 50% of all /6s built. Almost none of the cars in my database indicate that the car was destroyed. Some are little more than rust bucket basket cases but could be rebuilt. Every year I find somewhere between 40 and 100 new VINs. Most of the cars in the database were originally sold in the US. Right now my best guess is that somewhere between 60% to maybe as high as 75% of all /6s ever built still exist somewhere in the world in some condition.

As for how many 914/4s are left, that is a much more difficult proposition to quantify. There were a LOT more /4s sold and being considerably cheaper, a lot of them ended up in the hands of people who never maintained them properly. It is much more difficult to track the /4s because there are so many more /4s and many of them sell with only local advertising without a VIN number being listed. When I first got into 914s, I used to go to the local junk yard from time to time and pull parts that I needed off whatever 914 I could find there. A lot more /4s got sent to the crusher than /6s. Today if you look at web sites like COPART.COM or IAAI.COM you almost always see one or two 914/4s every month.

If I were to take a wild guess as to how many /4s are left somewhere in the world in at least a state where they could possibly be restored, I would guess there could be as many as 50% of all 914/4s ever built are still in existence. This estimate could be a bit high. I don't know how you could ever prove anything like this because so many cars exist in an unregistered state.

There, that's my 2 cents worth.

Think there are two questions here:

How many are registered and are "on the road"?

And how many are still in existence...meaning haven't been destroyed and cut up?

The first is easier to estimate by statistical sampling.

The second is a lot harder to estimate....but you might be able to get close.

[JeffBowlsby]

This subject has been revisited many times here, search the archives. 2 important data points:

Only ~83K 914/4 came to the USA as indicated by recall HO (dated 1977 after the last 914 was made). The remaining ~30K 914/4s must have gone to ROW markets.

The 914LE Registry I maintain records about 30 years of data (thanks Dave Pateman!). Of the approximately 1000 914LEs that were allegedly made, only about 250 still remain, and many of those are frankly in marginal condition. Nonetheless, thats a 25% survival rate of some of the last 914/4s made. 25% of 83K is about ~20K 914/4s that may have survived, and many of which are also marginal condition.

We'll never know the exact number.

[SirAndy]

Our own VIN database is still growing, albeit at a slow pace.

I suspect that 25% for the /4 cars is much closer to the truth.

I have spoken in length with the people at EASY, Parts Heaven and HPH and the consensus is that they combined have probably cut up well over 3000 /4 cars over the years.

That's 3000+ cars for just 3 dismantlers here in CA.
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[ConeDodger]

I'd guess at 40K 4 cylinders and 1500 real 6 cylinders...

[mrgreenjeans]

Our own VIN database is still growing, albeit at a slow pace.

I suspect that 25% for the /4 cars is much closer to the truth.

I have spoken in length with the people at EASY, Parts Heaven and HPH and the consensus is that they combined have probably cut up well over 3000 /4 cars over the years.

That's 3000+ cars for just 3 dismantlers here in CA.
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And other than accident casualties, Cal. climate kills far fewer teeners than the rest of the U.S. Did those in Cal. die from mechanical death and accidents ? Because they sure seemed to have a better chance of longer life than say those in the rust belt.

By the mid 90s when I finally located my 2.0 litre, the cars in some parts of this country were already disappearing due to severe rust issues. NOT from mechanical fatigue.

I had gone from the upper Midwest, westward and southward to look at cars that I thought perhaps had potential. By far, the abundance of offerings were west and south and I must have looked at well over 100 cars before finding the rust free, dry example I did. It had originally sold new in Mt. and lived most of it's life in the dry, unsalted weather there.

Point being:

23 years ago, I looked at an unreal number of cars which were broken in the middle. The longs were eaten up, chassis was sagging, and holes in the body and jack points common. Hell hole rust was in 90 % of the for sale 914s I looked at. Where did those cars go ? I am guessing they were cut up for parts. I know some were beyond hope for saving. Rotten floor pans, rotten trunk pans, and holes behind the passenger seat. ALL. DAY. LONG.

So, what is available today is even far less than 23 years ago. I can count the number of great cars I know of from Parade or local car shows in the dozens. Not hundreds. I can count the number of cars I know of that have been lost locally and scrapped out in the dozens OVER the ones I know of which have been saved.

I believe from my own observations, Andy's closer to the mark with that 25 percent figure than the mentioned earlier 50 percent figure.

Just my 2 cents from a perspective from a Porsche enthusiast owner since '84 and a 914 owner since '94.

"rust never sleeps". And am convinced, most of our's were born with it.....