How Many 914s Remaining? Options

[nick mironov]

914 Info shows that there were about 119,000 914s built. Is this an all-market total or US only?

How many road-worthy 914s do you think are remaining? Not counting parts cars, junkers, or rollers, but including running street-legal and track cars and ones that are being repaired or worked on.

[JPB]

Still plenty to keep the cost down and not enough to get a perfect one cheap.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif) Thus the 914 Club mechanic is invented.

[gregrobbins]

914 Info shows that there were about 119,000 914s built? Is this an all-market total or US only?

How many road-worthy 914s do you think are remaining? Not counting parts cars, junkers, or rollers, but including running street-legal and track cars and ones that are being repaired or worked on.

119,00 was world wide. How many are road worthy?

If you look at Jeff's web site for the 914 LEs, best estimate is 1000 were made. 165 have been identified, some too far gone to be restored. So if they are typical, that is 15% or so. I think I remember hearing that about 85000 made it to the US. 15% of that is 12,150. I would think half that number of cars are road worthy, or could be made road worthy: 6,000. I imagine about half that number are licensed and street legal: 3,000

[VaccaRabite]

It would be interesting to know how many thre are out on the roads. They can't be all that rare. I be there are more then 6000 out there that are repairable. But how the heck would I know.

How many members do we have on this board? Do most of them have 914s?

Zach

[JPB]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif)&?

[JeffBowlsby]

The USA Porsche-Audi HO Recall campaign, which was issued after all 914s were made, indicates that it applied to 'approximately 83,000' 914s. On that, I think its reasonable to believe that ~83,000 914s made it to the USA, including all 4s and 6s.

Using those numbers and considering that 165/1000 (USA-only) LE cars are documented to exist (0.165%) then the math says approximately 13,700 914s might still exist. The LE cars were 1974, so a higher loss rate might apply to the earlier cars.

So maybe 12-15,000 existing 914 cars might be a good guess. I know of no way to absolutely verify it.

[toon1]

I know of 6 in my town, inluding mine. Mine is the only one on the road, excluding today's little problem.

[Pat Garvey]

I know of 6 in my town, inluding mine. Mine is the only one on the road, excluding today's little problem.

Would be great if we could get some finite numbers, but don't think I'll see them in my lifetime. Even if if you could get info from the various state DMV's i wouldn't included non-registered cars - & they're out there.

[GWN7]

The USA Porsche-Audi HO Recall campaign, which was issued after all 914s were made, indicates that it applied to 'approximately 83,000' 914s. On that, I think its reasonable to believe that ~83,000 914s made it to the USA, including all 4s and 6s.

Using those numbers and considering that 165/1000 (USA-only) LE cars are documented to exist (0.165%) then the math says approximately 13,700 914s might still exist. The LE cars were 1974, so a higher loss rate might apply to the earlier cars.

So maybe 12-15,000 existing 914 cars might be a good guess. I know of no way to absolutely verify it.

This subject comes up every once in awhile.

Historically 75% of Porsches sales go to North America (75% of 119,000 = 89,250 close enough to the 83,000 cars recalled) and 75% of those are sold on the West coast (CA accounts for the highest percentage of those sales).

If you use population density percentages as a base, Canada has 10% of the population of the USA, so there should have been 10% of the 914's sold here (except that they didn't start selling them here till 1972) which means there should be between 8,300 and 8,900 914's in Canada (you could factor this closer if you take out the percentage of 1970 and 1971 cars manufactured against the total cars manufactured) total production for those years is 40,874 or roughly 33% of the total production. So reduce the number of cars sold here to 5533. Where I live there is 10% of Canada's population so that means there should have been 550 914's sold here. Using the 16.5% factor shown above there should be 90 cars left. I can account for 25 of that number (known cars/opperational/rollers and parts cars). I wonder where the other 525 cars are?

We have 6,300 members registered on this site, is that 40% of all the cars left? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

While using percentages to guestimate remaining cars can give you a ballpark figure as shown above, the best way to determine the survivors is to contact your DMV and ask.

I did this the last time the subject was brought up. There were 20 914's registered here in the last 2 yrs. Two were mine and four others have been accounted for. I've met the other 3 owners (one guy had two cars). That leaves 14 other cars/owners that I've never met. This dosen't factor in the non op cars out there.

If you really want to know how many cars are left, pick up the phone and call your local DMV. You will have to ask who the right person is to call, so you might have to make two phone calls. Tell that person your doing research for a club member (student doing a college paper). You might have to write a letter to the DVM person asking for the info. That will take another 5 min and cost you a stamp to mail it (or Fax it to them). Tell them you just want the numbers, no personal information on the cars or their owners.

[Bleyseng]

I think somewhere around 10,000 cars are left, running and non-running. Numbers are reducing pretty fast as the rust buckets are being recycled.
I used to see lots of 914's stashed around Seattle parked by peoples homes. Now there is only one place I know of in West Seattle with 3 cars sitting in tall grass. He is going to restore them. Hahaha. restore what a pile of rust?? Its right by the salt water of Elliott Bay.

All to common of a story.

Calif and AZ are where the good cars are cuz they don't rust as fast there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap56.gif)

[vesnyder]

I do know that my running 914 took at least three cars to make one one, and the parts of the other two have been spread throughout North America. My car is a salvage with two serial numbers and I bought a parts car and sold it off piece by piece - I suspect that for every running 914, there is at least one donor car?

[MBowman325]

A flaw in attempting to get the info from the DMV is that in some cases, mine included, they did not record the model of the car, just that it was a Porsche. "Are you sure it's not a 924? We see that in here." Wonder if they could pull the report by VIN though...

Another population density comparison, as far as I'm aware, there are a total of five 914s in Wichita Falls, excluding surrounding rural areas. One is my old rusty thing, two more are a couple of miles down, one complete, the other is just a tub, and another older gentleman who had a '71 he bought new that could have been started and run, but hadn't been in a year or two. Mine is the only one being drivin as far as I can tell. I've run into a couple of other people who still had parts from theirs, but no car.

So, five "cars" per 104k people. Being generous with that, we can estimate 14,250 "vehicles" left in the US. ((296,410,404 / 104,000)*5), which is a little higher than other estiamtes here. With the more accurate local estimate of 2 per 104k, we get 5700, which is 114 cars per state, which sounds a little high to me.

(Edited due to bad math)


This is all just off local personal observation.

[race914]

Can any of the Admins tell us how many cars we have entered under "member's VIN numbers"?

That would interesting to know

[MBowman325]

Can any of the Admins tell us how many cars we have entered under "member's VIN numbers"?

That would interesting to know

Not to answer as/for and Admin:
914-4 /-6

213 1976
425 1975
808 1974
820 1973
422 / 3 1972
189 / 22 1971
191 / 262 1970
3068 / 287 Totals

3355 Grand Total from lists.

(Found under 914 Info and Member's VINs)

{Another Edit today}
There looks to be some duplication in the list. My '75 is still listed uder who I assume to be a PO (gman; joined in '05) or maybe a typo. )

[nick mironov]

I am making my estimate in a subjective way by comparing 914 sightings to another car of known quantity.

The new Ford Thunderbird (2003 - 2006) seems to have similar national distribution to the 914 (mostly west coast, east coast, and south), and they are probably driven similarly as either daily drives or weekend drivers. There were about 70,000 Thunderbirds made, and since they are all so new, they can all be considered as in existence and on the road. I am guessing that I see one 914 for every 10 Thunderbirds. That translates to an existence of about 7,000 914s.

I think that compares well with the 914 members list of 3,500. Some of the members no longer have their 914s and ther are duplicate vins due to change of ownership, so there are proabably around 3,000 914s in the 914 Club. I am also guessing that there are an equal number of 914s out there whose owners are not members of the Club. That makes this estimate at about 6,000 914s.

My guess is that there are 6,000 to 8,000 remaining drivable 914s in North America - pretty much in line with other people's estimates.

And possibly an equal number of junkers and rollers...

[anthony]

If you use population density percentages as a base

I don't think you can use population density to determine Porsche sales. There is also the sun factor. It's a fact that more Porsches are sold in California than anywhere else. I imagine that California would get an even larger percentage of roadster and convertible sales.

[johannes]

In germany they have very precise data because all cars are controlled...
So they exactelly know how many 914 are registred and allowed to go on the road.

see quantities here:

http://www.914-club.de/aktuell.htm

[reddog]

I have four with two as fixable (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)

[MBowman325]

In germany they have very precise data because all cars are controlled...
So they exactelly know how many 914 are registred and allowed to go on the road.

see quantities here:

http://www.914-club.de/aktuell.htm

Does that mean that as of 2005, they had a total of 1,308 914s "tagged"? That seems like a wretchedly low number... Especially as a national count.

[Crazyhippy]

i'm voting for 7...

7 total, that's it.

BJH (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)