With almost 40 years of 914 ownership, I have lots of stories about owning them. But this one is the oldest, and the stupidest.
It is the summer of 1986. Betty and I have been dating about 7 months. My friend, Glenn, really liked her car so he found one in a field near Carswell Air Force base in Fort Worth. It was a 73 2.0, with the appearance group package and delphi green metallic paint. It had been sitting in the Texas sun for a long time, so the paint had faded to OD green.
I helped him to get it running, and we drove it all over the place. One night we drove all the way to north Dallas to go bar hopping. At about 2:30 am, we finally started home. And neither of us should have been driving.
We are cruising down I-635 headed west to his house. Back then, there was nothing west of I-35 on I-635, just empty fields. I am in the passenger seat, watching the paint on the front edge of the front trunk lid ripple in the wind.
Suddenly, the air gets under the paint, and it peels back in a sheet and lays across the windshield, still attached at the back edge. Now we have two drunks, in a car doing 70 who can't see where they are going. Queue screaming and yelling, and weaving around on the road.
The back edge of the paint finally lets go, and I turn around to watch it fly through the air in a complete 914 front trunk shaped sheet. It impacts the grill of a Kenworth dead center and explodes. Queue laughing fit by two drunks in a car. We were laughing so hard we had to pull over. The driver of the Kenworth honks at us and gives us the finger as he goes by.
We finally get moving again. I-635 turns south and connects to HWY114 at the north end of DFW airport. We turn on to 114, and we see the same Kenworth sitting on the side of the road overheating. Queue another laughing fit by two drunks in a car.
We finally arrive at his house. He had his room in his parents garage. The doors had been closed off and the left one had a person door into his room. The driveway had a hump at the sidewalk, and a brick pillar between where the two garage doors were originally. He drives into the driveway and downhill into the brick post with a solid thunk.
He backs up, and we fall out of the car. He looks at the 914 and says "This car looks like shit!" very loudly. He then goes into his room and comes out with a box of rattle can spray paint. We find all of the black paint (some flat black, some semi gloss, and some gloss) and proceed to paint the whole car. Lights windows, door handles, everything but the wheels and tires.
This is how it looked afterword:
Click to view attachmentThe next morning (afternoon actually), while nursing severe hangovers, we proceeded to scrape the windows with razor blades, and clean off the lenses and license plates.
About 3 months later, the 2.0 engine dropped a valve seat, and my friend did not have the money to fix it. So he sold me the car for $500.00. That is this car today:
Click to view attachment
