Hi: I was admiring my (car's) butt this weekend and it occurred to me that silver badging seems rare. Except for some 914-6 and European gold insignia, everything I can find online is black. Even other Marathon Blue cars.

Is there a rhyme or reason re: which cars have silver? Is it possible mine were originally black and modified by a PO, or faded?

Thanks,

Ron

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Most of the 1.7 badges i have seen have been silver.

I guess they are "rare" in the sense that the 1.7 badging was only used on the 73 cars

Generally speaking, early cars have silver/gold badges while later cars have black badges.

Thanks guys - interesting info I was not aware of.

Searching again I do see that prior to '73, the simple "914" badges were silver. But haven't found any other photos (eBay, BAT, etc.) of a silver "914 1.7" But there are many '73 1.7's in black (one that's only 5,000 units later than mine.) Mine is #4601 so they must have changed to black not all that long after they started adding the 1.7.

And doing a search to find anyone making a silver 1.7 badge comes up empty. Apparently not enough demand.

Thanks again.

Ron

I should get a commission lol....
https://914rubber.com/silver-metal-1-7-insignia-for-914

Apologize for the slight hijack, but it's kind of an interesting topic. My '75 2.0 appearance group came with gold engine grill letters, but it doesn't have the rear emblem because the PO installed a reflector. I'm planning on removing it and installing the rear badge.

Car is paint code L041 (black), so I'm going with gold to match the grill letters but wondered if gold is what was originally used. It definitely wasn't a sticker since there are holes leftover from the mounting screws (also can't imagine the factory putting a black sticker over black paint). Grill letters are also anodized aluminum rather than the plastic ones that were supposedly on all the later cars.

Btw, @jrmdir , marathon blue is one of the best paint colors on a 914, IMHO.

Thanks rjames - I love Marathon as well, but I'm biased.

Regarding your question - here is a black '75 that looks to be original. With silver badging: https://www.ebay.com/itm/294670778262?hash=...=p2047675.l2557

I'm curious about this too. My '914 1.7' badges are silver. In one of George's videos he says that on all 73-75 1.8s the lettering was black, but doesn't specify about the 1.7s (see at about 7:36 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRBvwsQDBj0). I recall reading somewhere some speculation that they were anodized black but have faded. My car is a very early 73 (662) with a lot of original 72 parts so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the lettering was always silver and they began the run using up the silver '914 badging' with matching silver '1.7' badging.

Yes they fade....The 914 and 1.7 above were originally black at one time...they "bleach out" in the sun and turn a silver over time (50+ yrs) and have a little bit of a purple hue to them.

Mine now have the purplish colour.