A-Piller Vinyl, cars with black vinyl on A-Pillar Options

[plutothepointer]

Hi,
in Germany you hardly ever see 914s with the black Vinyl on the A-Pillar. Actually I only know 2 such cars, one of them is the "development" car of the late Klie. The other is mine.
How common are cars with vinyl? are there many around in the USA. Who knows?
I contacted Karman about that vinyl 20 years ago, but they couldn't give me any information because it was to far in the past.
There doesn't even seem to be a parts number for this vinyl.
Regards,
Werner

[Arno914]

According to the "Das große VW-Porsche 914 Buch" only the first 1.000 or so cars for the 1973 mj. where equipped with this vinyl on the a pillar. They stopped it because of difficulties with glueing it properly under production conditions.

[plutothepointer]

According to the "Das große VW-Porsche 914 Buch" only the first 1.000 or so cars for the 1973 mj. where equipped with this vinyl on the a pillar. They stopped it because of difficulties with glueing it properly under production conditions.

1,000 cars are roughly 1 % of the complete production of the 914. I have seen hundreds of cars (because of personal interest and because I work as a photographer on car events, like the 30 years 914 celebration and the 50 years celebration last year at the Porsche Museum) but the only Vinyl Type cars I have seen are my car and the Klie car, which is a development prototype and not a production car. Therefore my thought was, that this style was particular for the US market.

In preparation for the restauration of the vinyl I asked the current owner of the Klie car for his advice. He had to restore the vinyl as well. To glue this one piece vinyl to sit perfectly right is not an easy job. Sounds reasonable that Karman found it to difficult to fit the car with the vinyl and dropped it.