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Osnabrück –'fours' ready to ship.

You'd think the cars in the foreground were destined for the USA – note side marker lights, but also the 'Porsche' script on the engine lid of the second car in line – but the car nearest the camera has amber/white European turn signal lenses. Note that this same car also has a passenger door mirror fitted. Silver car is non-appearance group with bare sail panels...

The cars in the second row are European-spec, with no 'Porsche' script. Fourth (orange) car in line has bare sail panels.

Some of the cars on the train appear to have optional fog lights fitted, although the white one doesn't have the appearance group vinyl-covered sail panels. Customer saving money in one area to spend it in another?

Also note that some cars have their mirrors folded back )logical, to protect the glass) but several have the mirrors folded forward...

Love old factory photos...

car nearest camera.
re - two rear view mirrors.
lhd for a rhd country?
side markers (but different prismatics) + euro front indicator lenses.
says J spec for land of the rising sun?
might have been other markets dictated warts also, but i have seen J spec warts on the assessment 6 sent here back in 70/71 in combo with euro front lenses. different beast - they worked as indicators only. that car came via japan.
and was right hand drive (but thats another story yet to get to the bottom of).


nice observations you have made.

Great observations!

Note the rain: The 914´s develop their first RUST while waiting to be shipped.

The blue car and the fourth in the closest row stand out among the other colors.
What color is that fourth car ?

Pictures like this always make me wonder "Is my 914 in this picture?"

5th car in the pic is mine

Now I know how some are “rust free”… they started inside the train

Extremely interesting... Thanks for posting this pic.

None of the cars have wipers fitted. Second car has no hubcap. Those items are probably in the trunk (which one?) for the dealer to install. Wonder what else is in the trunk?

I can remember a discussion about whether the factory would put two or only just one side mirror. and the dealer added the second. Nice to have a visual for an answer. Great picture

Did the dealer install the antenna's too?

but all the ones on the train have hubcabs on, no warts. hard to tell if wipers are fitted on those euro/german market delivery?

Good point! Hadn't taken in the fact that none of the cars have antenna...

the one closest the camera with two mirrors is an odd one out!
it has euro lenses at front, you can just see it - but has warts. of some type.
i can't remember all the wart countries, but i know Japan was one and maybe Sweden?, i can't remember - someone will know. italy did as well but were clear i think.

so the mirror might be more a mandated requirement of regulations in a market.
i know for a fact that J cars have had to have two rear view mirrors since the early 60s in the home market (whether rhd or lhd and it is a rhd country). I don't know about sweden, but it is the home of volvo!

i'd say there is a fair chance that car is not a USA delivery.

Its a thought provoking picture, it makes you wonder how the cars were shipped to Japan. its basically nearly equidistant to either ship west through and via the USA or go east around the indian ocean and up to J. they only sold just over 90 porsches of any type in J in 1970. i wonder if they were shipped with american cars?

i know australian cars came east via the indian ocean.

refer dr 914's J spec bumblebee.

Swedish sold cars did not have the warts but had mirrors on both doors and some had headlight washers I think? Niklas would know better than me.

thanks falcor, thats narrowing it down.
interesting too to hear of swedish requirements.
the cars would have had to have been built to regs in each country for delivery,
mirror not an option as per USA, so its interesting to know.
i would have thought sweden had the two mirror thing because i can remember all the volvos and saabs here in the 70s were unusual because they all had two mirrors when aussie cars either had one or none.

god i miss saabs. what fabulous cars.

OK< so here's another question: how many 914s were supplied under the 'Tourist' programme, where a customer could order his car and arrange to pick it up from the factory, while on vacation or if serving abroad with the armed forces? It was a common thing with 911s (and VW Bugs) back in the day, and many were purchased by people in the military for use while stationed in Germany or the UK.

What if (OK, it's pure hypothesis...) 'that' car was due for collection by a US soldier/airman stationed in the UK, who wanted a right-hand mirror to help him on UK roads, along with those funky (to him) Euro-style turn signal lenses... Yeah, I know, unlikely, but who knows what secrets are hiding in these old photos?

Right, back to work... ;-)

maybe, ------but, i don't think the fashion/cult of replacing american lenses with euro lenses was established at the stage of the game the factory photo was taken.

and a tourist car would not be laying about in a rail head shipping yard.
you picked those babies up from the proper porsche factory in z.
i'm not even sure you could really do the vw porsche tourist pick up from the proper porsche factory. the few aussies that did indeed do a tourist pick up did it via the english dealers in the UK. you could do it with a 6 for sure. but a 4?

heres another J spec car that came to aus in around 1971.
there is a story to it, but too unresolved historically to go into here.
you can see the lens set up and mirrors.
and its from around 70/71 that was the case of this car when it came in.

if the photo posted here at start of thread was high enough res instead of kodachrome grain you would pick it up easily. the J warts have vertical kinds of slats in the moulding, not the kind of hex prism of the USA warts, they look real different up close. they would not have qualified as USA regulation side markers. its not the same wart. its amber, but thats the only thing that is the same.

the photo is interesting - it raises the question of how the f&ck did porsche rationally ship these things all around the world. its probably not of interest to americans because it was just a fire hose of supply directed at california, and they peeled them off along the way, but everywhere else in the world they were rare - hard as that is for americans to understand - that photo at the top of the thread is like the pointy end of the logistics chain.

it is a brilliant observation by KScarrera that that car at the front is different.
i would never have spotted it, but now that i see it i can't unsee it



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Slightly offtopic warning...
I miss Saab too because I work in Trollhättan less than 5 minutes from the old factory. Reasonable cars but the marketing outside Sweden was always quite underwhelming. Interesting now that everyone is doing turbocharging and downsizing engines when Saab went to a turbo only engine lineup as early as 1998 if I remember correctly.

My own Saab-aussie connection is that I became good friends with Steven from Tasmania who started the Saabsunited website and later moved to Sweden to work for Saab (very briefly) and then Koenigsegg for a couple of years.

My 1971 was originally delivered in US spec. to a member of the US Forces stationed in Karlsruhe/Germany.
I still have the original document folder from the dealership.
Sometime around 72 or 73 he took the car with him to California.

Next month is big 50th birthday Party!!!

arno, the trick would be to find out where he picked it up.
be interesting. from a dealer? from the factory? where did you go to pick up a vw-porsche 914. and what spec it was delivered in.

there is heaps of american cars here in aus too, mostly in western australia,
that were shipped out for american service men.
it was an incredible set up that american service men had.
and who would deny them it.

i heard that a whole lot of karmann ghia type 3s ended up stateside that way too.
never officially sold in america. (thats another nice car and there are a few of them here where they were officially sold).

off topic, but worth a reply.
they did not even need to market them down here.
they walked off the showroom floor.

strange you should mention tasmania.
i was walking down the street in hobart about 3 years ago and i walked past a 99 EMS and nearly fell over. immaculate. i think all the saabs of that brilliant era hide out down there. outstanding car. apart from the 914 of course.

The rail head is, in fact, the back of the Karmann works in Osnabrück, with cars ready to be shipped wherever. I'll ask my friend Dieter (head of the VW archives, and formerly of the Porsche museum and archives) if he has any record of how 914s were distributed and if or how many were sold via a Tourist programm – and where they would have been collected from.

Who knew one (non-racing) photo would generate such discussion!

yeah, get to the bottom of it.
i never thought twice about this photo.
good on you for picking up what might be an abberant 914.
germans, you just know whatever is going on there is rational in some way.

...not anymore...

its a global degeneration problem.

but once when we wanted to be rational and those of us who did ...looked to the germans.

fingers crossed, because if no one is rational..............?

Same photo was posted on world a couple years ago.