914-6 unfinished seen Options

[Stuckon914]

In my recent search for a 914 I’ve come across four partly finished conversions; about 1 per week. I’m not looking at many cars so they seem more common than should be. All Four conversion attempts were about 6-8 years old.
One had been blasted and primed with a 6 cylinder installed, rest of the car was in boxes. Other three were in about the same unfinished state; car had even modified to where I couldn’t take it back them back to stock 914.
Was there a surge of conversion in early 2000s? Maybe an article or magazine story?
Also the guys doing the conversions weren’t really the hands on kind and didn’t appear to be too knowledgeable about the process, they appeared more of the hiring type. Not intended to be a negative comment.

Did I just get lucky or is this common? For the guys that are successful in completing a decent 914-6,how much experience do they usually have?
The four cars I saw, one sold for $1500, second one said he would take $2000. I think they got too much.