That's cool that you were able to keep in contact with the original owner.
I bought my first one (a '71) in 1973 from a friend who's dad owned a wrecking yard. He and his dad rebuilt the motor, repainted the car metallic gold, including the sails and a smoothed-out top, as well as putting a set of Gurney 'bottlecap' wheels on it. They also lowered the car a couple of inches. It looked totally different than any other 914 I had seen around before
... Sorry, no pix. Had to sell it a short time later, as I needed to buy a van to haul my dirt bikes around ...
I picked up a second one (the 'BB') 33 years later, from a body shop in Orange County in 2006.
Click to view attachmentIt was a botched-up '75 that took a lot of work to get back on the road. I think it had a few, or even several DAPOs before me. After I pretty much finished it, in a dumb move, I sold it to Bill (
@billh1963 ) in mid-2018
Click to view attachmentThe third one was a '71 ('HOWARD') that I picked up for my wife in early 2007. I purchased it from the original owner (Jack - who was not a member here) and it was as stock as it could be. One of our beloved members, Howard Drano (
@Howard ) hooked me up with Jack when he found he was thinking about selling it. Howard unexpectedly passed away a few months in July of 2007, so my wife decided to name it 'HOWARD')
Click to view attachmentI stuck the set of polished Empi 8-spokes that were originally on the 'BB' on it, replaced all the F.I. system's hoses, changed the oil, did a tune-up and drove it on the 2008 Rt-66 Run up to Winslow, AZ and back to So Cal ... and it ran great
Click to view attachmentI still have this one, although it suffered some damage in an incident on it's way to AZ in late December of 2020, so it's going to take a bit more work than originally anticipated
Click to view attachment I bought my forth one (a '72) from Scott Kline (
@skline ). I grabbed the motor & trans, then sold the car to Thomas Spretke (@T H O M A S).
Click to view attachmentThomas transformed it into the awesome 'Dark Knight'.
Bought my fifth one, a 5-lugged '73, from Eddie Brown up in Bakersfield in 2009.
I started de-rusting the surface rust on the body, and planned to stick my 2.7L/6 in it, but that's as far as I got by the time I was ready to close up the shop my brother & I had.
Sold it to Steve (
@pneuhyde ) in mid-2013.