What 'obvious' 914 thing did you not know?, I was a 914 owner for X number of years before I found out..... |
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What 'obvious' 914 thing did you not know?, I was a 914 owner for X number of years before I found out..... |
ClayPerrine |
Nov 25 2020, 08:02 AM
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Life's been good to me so far..... Group: Admin Posts: 15,442 Joined: 11-September 03 From: Hurst, TX. Member No.: 1,143 Region Association: NineFourteenerVille |
I just saw this thread http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=350102 about how to open the engine lid. It got me to thinking about things that "everyone knows" about our beloved little cars that was not glaringly obvious to me when I was a new owner.
So.. post your list of items that say "I was a 914 owner for X number of years before I found out....." Think of this as helping to educate new 914 owners. I will start it off: I was a 914 owner for 5 years before I found out that the left and right outer door handles are different. |
horizontally-opposed |
Dec 4 2020, 08:40 AM
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#2
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Advanced Member Group: Members Posts: 3,431 Joined: 12-May 04 From: San Francisco Member No.: 2,058 Region Association: None |
Another one…
The 914's roof/greenhouse design solves several problems at once: *Excellent rearward visibility with minimum blind spots vs other production mid-engined cars of the time, which were pretty unusual/exotic back then (think Miura, Mangusta, Pantera, etc) *Top can be stored as one piece without folding (like 911 Targa top), reducing legroom (as in Dino), or taking up much in the way of trunk space (911 Targa, again, and just about everything else). Unlike the 911 Targa's top, the 914 top offers coupe-like protection from the elements as well as vandals/thieves. *Wide enough for three passengers across, unlike 911 (this was conscious, if you look at the three-across 918E drawings, with one more person sitting sideways behind them); Porsche was looking for ways to make a 2+2 sports car more practical than the 911, and an argument can be made that a 914 with three people on board is more comfortable than a period 911 with three aboard. *Flat rear window not only excellent for visibility, but very inexpensive to produce. *Minimum silhouette saves money on materials, saves weight, and significantly reduces susceptibility to side winds too. The roof is, to me anyway, another example where the mid-engined 914 was cleverer as a piece of engineering than the rear-engined 901—as it should have been as a more modern project driven by none other than engineering genius Ferdinand Piëch (think 906-917, Audi Quattro, Audi Le Mans programs, Veyron, etc). The first example that got me to thinking about just how clever the 914's unibody is came as I stripped the car down for another paint job: The 914 has six crossways bulkheads to the 911's four, and a far smaller void for passengers—a boon to structural rigidity (offset, of course, by its lack of a roof). And two of the five voids are very shallow. I used to think the 914's roof was kind of ugly. 30 years later, it's one of my favorite elements on a design that's aging very well indeed… |
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