Our best estimate of how many USA 914s survive in 2007, Save the 914! Options

[JeffBowlsby]

Here are the only data points we have:

1. The 1977 HO recall which only applied to USA 914s and which was issued a year after production ceased, indicates that approximately 83,000 914s (only including 914/4s) were imported to the USA.

Sidebar: If ~115,000 914/4s were produced then approximately 32,000 went to other non-USA markets. So the USA received about 2/3s of total production.

2. Marketing literature indicates 1000 1974 914 LE cars were built for the USA market for the 1974 model year. Today, 33 years after the LE cars were produced, approximately 200 surviving LE cars are on the registry. We continue to find more LE cars regularly even after 25 years of searching and recordkeeping, and its the only control group of 914s where records are available. Presumably all were imported to the USA, because they were USA market cars. So for discussion, if we assume that 250 LE cars remain, thats a 25% survival rate. BTW, most of those known surviving LE cars are drivable and not parts cars.

So from that info:

A. How many 914s can be estimated to remain now in 2007?

B. At the calculated 'attrition rate', how many 914s might statistically still be with us in 5, 10, 20 years?

I know that assumptions will need to be made and an exact number of survivors will probably never be known, all I am interested in is an educated guess based on the info we have. Please post the projection and supporting math if its easy to comprehend.