I pulled the lower dash off (my Ivory white 73 1.7L) to deal with the steering column recently and was surprised to find yellow paint - I believe this is an original unpainted car . . .

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Also please note the red (primer?) under the driver fender in the door jamb. . .



I just read in another thread (excerpt below), however that an L96 car also had the yellow bottom dash . . . please enlighten me . . .

I have the same yellow dash and my car is red
Well known fact. Apparently there might be some hand writing too.
You think your car was never repainted But what is the orange shade we see on the inside of the fender

Phew, thanks! Thought I was gonna have to start cutting on this car since it's wasn't as original as I thought . . .

I’ve parted a dozen 914’s and the dash has always been a different color from the car.

And what about the hand writing? Wasn't it the chassis number or something?

And yes lots of them have hand written numbers on them. Not sure if they match the chassis number or not.

Thanks, Gents . . .Mark-that's the kind of facts I love!

My 73 Alaska Blue freaked me out for a moment when I replaced the radio. Same exact yellow dash.

When I pulled a green dash out of a one owner, all original white 75, I knew the story was true.

Parted the car because owner let it sit outside for 4 years when it needed a new clutch. Rust wasn’t terrible but more project than I wanted. I gave the roller (for free, so no complaints from that buyer - lol) to Paul Petition and his brother built it up from parts from a crash damaged car. Even had the original bill of sale from the dealer.

red primer, new fender

Yes, all dashes were multi color. On a rare occasion your dash might be the same color as your car. Dash numbers indicate the sequence the car was built that day.

My dash could never be the same color as the car. I have a 98 paint.
But....funny enough...I have a yellow/greenish-ish dash too !
(instrumentpanel removed revealed this)

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Plenty of evidence here - and thank you for the dash pics, Frank!

Now I have to take shots of any chips that show primer . . .guessing the fender was replaced then. Tubs (near fender vin) in the frunk (still dislike that word for some reason - weird sounding . . .guess I'm lazy enough to use it now) are shiny white . . .

So as the factory oem fenders did not have red primer, what color primer should I be looking for if it's still original paint?

Factory bodies were in white primer. Listed in parts books as "Body in White"

Got it - funny, engineers still call the painted chassis "body in white" whether it's white or not.

My Bahia Red car came with a blue dash...Alaska Blue?

Ok-we’re going in deep on this one, submariners!

I’m halfway through this complete brake job including e-brakes on the old Odyssey and I need a break- —sorry!

So I just took a few pics (since this red primer is not “original” thing is eating at me), and this is what I found: there’s red red primer on a few spots under the hood (front trunk-yep-spelling it out -old school)

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Here’s another shot:

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My car was built in October 1972.

It also has white headlight surrounds, which @Pete000 said was unlikely (but a little research proved otherwise I believe) and in all aspect seems very original. Is it possible they used red primer when they built this one?

I had the same color combo. With a dash number that did not match the VIN, but was close to the Karmann chassis number (4219593 on the dash, 4219606 on the Karmann plate).

Lots of NOS factory replacement panels with red primer...

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No...they didn't use red primer. It's been replaced at some point.

I would investigate a little more...
Are you sure your car was originally white? This front trunk and fender seemed to have been repainted.
Have you pulled up your carpets to see the floor tar color?

White floor. White everywhere-L80e on the tag.

Guess it had some panels. a bit shocked and disappointed-still a pretty straight and solid SoCal car according to the sticker and the records.

Sawzall warming up now.



Guess I should go ahead and add a front anti-sway bar so I can have more fun on the tight mountain roads I like to drive. . .

What were original factory primer colors?

The car could’ve been repainted more than once. L80E originally from the factory, then red, then back to white.

Maybe we should put this in our signature line:

74 1.8 Saturn Yellow, Zambezi Green dash.
Parts car 72 1.7 Alaska Blue, Signal Orange dash.

My yellow car has a yellow Dash !!

Interesting fined @MM1 I don't recall my Saturn yellow 74 having an odd colored dash. I believe it was yellow which sounds plausible. Your car might have received a factory replacement hood and fender in the OEM red primer back in the day, so perfectly correct repair with OEM Porsche parts. Interesting discovery in 914 weirdness. !

The removable dash section was painted and assembled separately from the body. The color coat was in whatever color happened to be available at the time; perhaps done during body color changes so as not to waste paint while flushing the guns. Then they had the flat black paint sprayed over the front and top faces.
The handwritten # on the underside of the dash is a production #. The production # and the Karmann body # (stamped on the paint badge and either stamped into the rear trunk floor or on a body tag riveted in the front trunk) are independent date codes, but for the 914/4 are almost 95% the same as one another. For some 35 years I thought they might be always the same, then I was able to get source for factory data and found a few that differed. Then I was able to prove the handwritten # was the production #, and the other was a Karmann body #.

Looks like @simonjb and @pete000 got lucky . . .

Thank you @davep - I love a proper history lesson!

My ‘73 has a 74 front clip, so not sure what year the dash is but it was green, and the glove box lid was red.

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I just checked my 914-6 # 1937 as the dash is out of it and it is painted ( over spray) the same color as the rest of the car , Tangerine . It also has a grease pencil # 1301952

My silver car the dash is light metallic blue.

My 1971/4 is white L80E and I remember when pulling the dash some 30 years ago it was painted in blue with a handwritten note "Enzianblau"on it. Enzian is a flower of the alps an can be used to make some high octane booze.

Back then I figured that maybe the factory used the dash panels to judge the look of new colours?