1989
parked outside of frank lloyd wright's johnson wax hq in racine wisconsin.
might have been one of my first biggish drives in it.
think i was pretty stoked that day. 29 - grin from ear to ear.

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2020
some place upside down. feeling a lot older. but still grinning.

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i've tried to look after this car.


been pottering about in some boxes over christmas.
found some stuff.
stickers from swiss and italian 914 registry.
these must date from mid 90s when we started up 914 aus registry.
all three or four of us.
we swapped them our stickers for theirs.
wonder if these two mobs in switzerland and italy are still going strong?

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still got one of the orig 914 register stickers on the car.
the sticker was designed by B C, founder of the club.
he was a graphic designer. did a nice job.
he passed away about 10 years back.

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found a delivery docket for the car in amongst the documents.
forgot i had this.
car came from capitol porsche/audi in washington.
(wasn't a swamp then that had to be drained? or maybe it was).

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and a photo i had dating from back in 1992.
the whimpering 1,8 fresh back from chicago parked next to a crayfords 73 2.0 belonging to BC who founded the register.
would have been the first time two 914s were parked side by side in aus since the days when the distributor had two sixes parked next to each other in 1971.


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Wow, what a great history and caretaker. The car looks even better now.
So, you have shipped the car back and forth from the States?
I love the Club decals, especially the Australian one!
Thanks for sharing.

no mate.

shipped the car from usa to aus 29 years ago.
it just went across the pacific once. (and the atlantic back in 74).

its not better than it was then,
just a trick of the brittle aus light (2 x texan sun).
the factory paint is holding up...........just. from 10 feet away.

My dad actually worked at sc Johnson waxdale during the 80's and drove his 914 , 912, 924 turbo, and 356 over the years. Very cool. I probably saw your car at some point. My family's car dealership was down the road at that time

you might have.
but i was in chicago going to UIC on a fulbright.
i ducked up to racine to check out the wright building.
hammered up the expressway.
i was not living in racine.

though i did do a trip out to frank's taliesen east home office once and the lads out there still running his office had some nice cars. i particularly remember a corvair monza belonging to one of the guys. a very clean and very hopped up monza.

i just noticed in photo that the passenger sunvisor is off.
it always fell off.
still does, but now it falls in my lap on the drivers side.

chicago is a great part of the world.
i have good memories and the car to remind me.

the car originally came from washington and the original owners moved with it to madison wis. where i bought it from them.

The car looks cleaner now

Good stuff - thanks for sharing.

Mr. Wonkipop...by chance are you an architect or trained as one? Your architectural references above suggest your interest in that.

Great story and really good to hear from another long time Australian owner. Coming up for 33 years of ownership of mine this year. Bought it in LA in 88 for 1500.

I don’t think people realise how rare these cars are here.

could be mr. b. but my hand lettering is not as neat as yours - refer your electrical diagrams.

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@ panel billy - can assure - not as clean as in 89.
time takes a toll. it survived impulses to restore/take out small dents and dings. for about 15-16 years i left it alone - had other things to attend to. its never driven as well as now.


found photos from a brighter day in chicago when the sun was actually shining.
better idea of its state back then.
phoenix red was still "liquid" on the top surfaces.
only like that on sides and inners now.
look close - theres some sp57s.
don't think they were original tyres, but could have been?
possibly reshod with a set when sp57s were last available?
spare was original/unused.

there were a lot of rusty beater 14s around back then cruising chi-town and taking hell from the climate. the summer only cars were the ones to find.
did not mean they were rust free. no such thing. but weren't composed of rust as the main ingredient.

if you look close at the side on shot you can see a dirty big touch up scar on the rear fender right above the wheel. thats still there. one of the things that attracted me to the car. it was honest, warts, door dings and all. had not been mucked around with. even in 89 many of the cars were repaints by that point in time.
first wave of "restorations".
still got that touch up bottle of paint, it was in the glovebox. original owner left it there.



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good on you phil for keeping it.

you are right, they are rare here. lhd drive restrictions kept numbers down for a long time. you had to get off your arse and go get one from the USA like you did. that took balls back then. a few blokes did it. wonder how many of them have still got their cars like you have. i'm trying to remember them all.

Did you do a RHD conversion on it? If so, I would love to see some pictures.

About 10 years ago, I got offered a job in Brisbane. Betty and I really considered it, but I had to turn it down. Her father was in poor health and living in Florida. A trip from Brisbane to Orlando was a 23+ hour ordeal, not including layovers. So I turned it down. They were going to pack everything we owned, including cars, and ship it to Oz. That would have been a rude awakening when they got to the 914 spare parts.

I was really leery about LHD cars on RHD roads. But it would have been really neat to live there.

Clay

i did convert to rhd.
so did phillstek who commented here.
did not have a lot of choice back then.

you could get used to driving lhd.
just need to be careful in traffic around unpredictable drivers.

process to convert wasn't much different to the crayfords method documented elsewhere fairly well on websites/literature. (thats how we all knew it was possible, + there were two crayfords cars around melbourne in the 80s, the green one and a white one, so you could see how it was done). photos - i thought i had some somewhere but can't find them yet. all pre digital camera days. you did not photograph things like people do now.

driving it (and driving here) is all just back to front.
no big deal after 1/2 an hour behind the wheel.
only thing you have to get used to is driving upside down.

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ps think what people are noticing when they say its cleaner now - is the stance?
and as i say, filmed in australian sunlight, which i can tell you is definitely different to american spec sunlight. its way more brighter down here.

back in 89 it was still arse down, nose up, us sales lot spec stance.
several versions on that i have heard.
deliberately set up for understeer for average us drivers? (a bit unkind of porsche if true/or still scared of ralph nadar).
nose set high for collision bumper regs? (more believable i think).
euro cars seemed to be set level in old photos you see.
we took a bit of time setting it up right this time around with new shocks etc and full suspension rebuild. have it sitting dead level. the arse is sitting up right now on new bilsteins. the springs are still original but reset right on the struts. nose has been dropped a little.
i see some folks seem to set their cars up slightly nose down, esp the 6 guys.

ps the one thing i will confess to tearing out of the car and throwing away.
(it aint in a box).
the seat belt interlock system.
it was still in this car in 89.
what a pain in the a.
you couldn't put a bag on the passenger seat without doing up that seat belt or it would not start. + it had some hot relay problem under the passenger seat that was part of the system and would cause no start situations at random times.
it all came out in 91/92 and was thrown away in a bin with the lid slammed down.

re rhd.
i think the best rhd cars would be the GT40s and 917s set up for Le Mans.
you get the best of both worlds then with the shifter on the sill.
its much better shifting across the body like you do left hand drive.
left foot clutch. right hand shifter.
the whole left of body side for shifting when rhd is in my humble opinion inferior.
i should be defending uk standards shouldn't i, but why would i do that, l'm old school and thats pom rubbish. at least the swedes had the sense to swap over to lhd.
which leaves us stranded with the japanese going about it all wrong.

Don’t know if it took balls but yeah, it was a process for sure. All I knew was that I had get one after years of reading out of date copies of Excellence and VW & Porsche magazines in the early 80s. The clincher was an article in Excellence about a red ‘GT’ owned by Steve Gaglione (?). I drooled over the pictures and read the article over and over again.

Having owned air cooled VWs pretty much exclusively since being able to drive the 914 was a logical progression into something interesting yet sort of simple. Sold my ‘64 Baja to fund the trip to LA and found a ‘72 with a carbed 1.7 and shipped it here.

As soon as it landed the 1.7 came out and a 2.7 went in along with the rhd and 5 lug conversion. When I thought it would pass the road worthy test I took it the Registration office where the inspectors, who had no idea what it was, proceeded to check a few items and asked me to show them where the engine was.

I filled in the paperwork and said nothing about the rhd and six conversion. To my astonishment they called my name and handed me the plates and rego papers. That’s how it started for me.

It’s been a journey owning this car for this long.

After 34 years of 914 ownership, I found that that adding forward rake to the car (nose lower than the tail) makes it more stable at highway speeds. It also looks better, at least in my opinion.

And OZ is on our bucket list for places to visit. I so want to drive mount panorama, even in a rental car. But, knowing my wife and her driving ability, I will probably be in the passenger seat for it.

Clay

These days if you tried to bring a car in to Aus you’d have to prove it contained no asbestos. The process is expensive. I follow the Mighty Car Mods guys on YouTube and their adventures with importing look pretty intimidating to be sure...

yes - mount panorama circuit is well - incredible.

if you can - go to the bathurst 12 hour endurance race in late jan/feb.
though its not likely to be going on this year with co-vid.

i think its a better race than the better known v8 supercar race in october, which now with the end of production of fords and holdens in australia really is over in a sense?
but that is just an opinion.

to date the crowds at the 12 hour have been smaller and more manageable than the traditional race and better behaved (ie the crowd on top of the mountain).
on top of the mountain is where you want to be.

i went in 17 and 18. nothing prepares you for a GT international series car coming over skyline and down into the esses leading into the dipper at full tilt. i could not believe they can get through there at the speeds they sustain. the first of the essess has a curb they all just touch and bounce off if they hit it right and after leaving it you can see the downforce smash the cars back down just in time for the next curve.
the final of those tight essess in that series is the dipper. its a skatepark contour not a corner. (the sight of those big bentley coupes doing it is especially improbable).
occasionally someone does not get it right. not so good then.

do i sound overexcited. sorry. its just that its up there with tracks like Spa or the N ring. the spectator positioning on the top of the mountain section of track is second to none. you are standing on the edge of a cutting directly above the cars some 15 to 20 feet below.

after the 17 race i walked the track back up from forrest elbow to skyline. its twice as steep as it looks on film.

the drive through the blue mountains to get there from sydney is a fine piece of the planet as a bonus. you can drive that at proper speed. the bathurst track has a regulated 60k (35mph) speed limit all the way around and a cop sits there with a radar camera 24/7 from what i hear. they probably even have unmanned speed cameras these days. australia - home of the speed camera.

one of my colleagues here in melbourne is the daughter of the former owner of Wyong Motors. they were the entrants who won the 1968 Bathurst 500 with the infamous devil's # Monaro. #13. the driver was bruce mcphee. it was around that time the famous ford v holden rivalry started. the car is long gone that won it. race cars were nothing special in those days. after the race it had the stickers removed and it was sold to a customer and put back on the road as just a regular car. there is a replica of it in the museum at bathurst. the original car disappeared a long time ago.

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thanks for the tip on forward rake.
i'll see how mine goes when i get it out on the highway at proper speed.
been a bit restricted down here due to insanity of worlds longest lockdown.
hope to get out soon. things still a bit wobbly in this town.

my story is pretty much the same as yours mate.
first car was my mothers 64 beetle.
progressed to a 72 type 3 squareback from there. i bought that car in 82.
it took me everywhere. i have photos sitting out in the sturt desert at camerons corner when there was nothing out there and nobody went there. just desert.
i drove it out on to the salt lake at lake eyre. went everywhere. even places 4 wheel drives found it hard to go.
the 914 was to me the ultimate air cooled vw.
top of the pile.

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i could afford vws. i could not afford porsches.

i did not have quite as easy a run putting mine on the road.
took a couple of goes.
there was a lot of debate over the lighting set up.
i did not put euro indicators on but kept the full amber usa front indicators.
we wired the parker lights into the pop ups.
that sent the bureaucrats into a frenzy.
eventually it was decided that because the pop ups had manual winders on them the solution would be accepted as it had a fail safe if the lights did not raise for any reason.
they also knew what the car was.
i suspect there had been one or two through before me in those years which might have set off alarm bells with work that could have been less than desirable. who knows.
i recall the inspector coming out and saying, oh another one of these hey.

yep, they will make you tear the clutch out if you can't prove its a new non - asbestos one. and they will charge you for dealing with it all as a hazardous material. its gone mad. you are at the mercy of the bureaucrats.

it was not like that when i bought the 914 in. fortunately. we just pulled the original clutch out of it. one of those rubber core clutches. museum piece. and fully asbestos loaded. i could be wrong, but i suspect the brake pads which i still have not needed to change are asbestos. but i am not poking my nose into that ants nest just yet.

Much as we would love to go to Oz and Mount Panorama, it is not going to happen until Covid is long gone. I am not getting on an airplane for 22 hours when the possibility of catching that little bastard is still around.


Until then I will have to be content with TV pictures.

i don't even go inside restaurants.
forget about planes.
and its more or less eliminated here, but it still keeps popping up out of the blue.


good sense of what the mountain is like on the ground here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nUMPOaz2IE

with a bit of luck co vid gets licked this year but i'm not counting on it.

see you yanks when its over whenever that is.

conversion photos from back in 91/92 still can't find.
but found these in a box of slides.
kodachrome starting to deteriorate.

would have been the first meeting of australian 914 register.
91. can tell my car is still lhd.
would have been the first time 5 914s were all in one place in aus!

73 metallic chrome yellow (always seemed green to my eye or am i color blind?) 2.0 belonged to BC, who started the register. one of two crayfords cars in aus.
car is still around and lives in sydney.

white 75 belonged to a senior colleague of mine. he imported it from cal and converted it. still around and belongs to a member of the 356 register. i see the current owner often with the car. he loves it.

i can't remember who owned the blue and the yellow - have not seen either of them around since those days.

there were other cars around, still in sheds and workshops finishing being rebuilt and converted.

914 register faded away after B C passed away. i think guys in sydney have resurrected a new version of it. a good thing to be part of back then - everyone shared their knowledge. handy in pre-internet days when you struggled to find out how to get parts or how to do repairs. this web site is very handy and would have made life back then much easier - found so much information here.

there was a bit of enthusiasm in aus for the cars back then.
it died off, but seems to have come back.
maybe its a cult car to a new generation?
hope so as the cars are at that point where the idea of them as having been new cars is passing from living memory.





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Awesome piece of Aussie 914 history there.

I’ve seen the green looking one at Autobrunch in St Ives a couple of times along with Dennis’ (Gulf 908 here) -6. He has revived a 914 register through PCNSW.

Thanks for posting those pics.

yes, dennis (mr. gulf) dropped into the workshop when my car was still up on jackstands, just before co-vid hit. down here for phillip island historics. unfortunately i could not join a gang of several 914s that went down there, including some guys from sydney i think.

dennis gave me an old uk porsche association magazine with the crayfords 914 story in it. very nice of him. i enjoyed meeting him. he showed me some pics of his car, he has a very nice 6. lucky bastard.

we are still chasing the missing white crayfords for dennis to have a look at. i reckon the same guy who bought it back in about 86 still has it. its never come up again for sale since it was sold back then to him. he was about 50 years of age. he'd be 80 odd now.
i remember meeting him, the kind of guy who would keep it until he died.

was the one in modern motor, there is a brooklands collection book that has the article on it.

i also just found a copy of an old 914 register news sheet that BC used to put out.
its got a very interesting classified in the back of it.
says -

"Dennis O...... Long-time 914 campaigner and Register member is pruning his collection of 914s. The story has it that a famous American Rock Star once owned the Six. The car is in need of restoring and has an asking price of $21,000. Give Dennis a call on XXXXXXX. Who knows, he may even throw in a couple of Heavy Metal Tapes."

The Dennis O being referred to here is not mr. gulf.

Typical of BC the news letter has no date on it. But it features his 6 on the cover. So its got to be some time around the mid 90s say 95-98 some time. I seem to remember BC saying the Dennis O car belonged to a member of the Eagles. But then Heavy Metal Tapes doesn't sound like the Eagles does it? There was some kind of 6 with rock star pedigree here at that time. Must still be here?

A mate of mine knows Dennis O and he is still around. I should ask him and find out.

The ‘rock star’ 6 story is intriguing, I would love to know more about that and if it’s still around.

no worries phillsteck.

see what i can find out.

there are maybe 3 seriously interesting 914s down here in aus. could be 4?
the 2 crayfords cars.
had a bit of a debate with mr. gulf about that, but i can tell you the white car that has disappeared is a crayfords car. i've seen it. i've sat in it. its one of them.

and then there is one of the hamiltons cars that BC owned. the red six.
seems that came in to aus in rhd.
either it was converted in japan by or through agency of mitsuwa (unlikely i think). or it went to J already rhd and then got dropped at the docks here with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

there are a few interesting porsches in upside down world.