well he's right most are up on blocks, now he's never driven one

I feel for his wife not only does she have feed him but push him around in a shopping cart then film it

I was there, you must have been walking the dog

Enjoy in good health

No imbedded video shows on MacBook, or on iPhone sorry, is there another link ??

post #39

Insulted yet again! Just received the new Pano. Not sure who the new scribe Lyn Woodward is but she sure doesn't think much of our Teeners. At least she didn't NARP it. Well, she kinda did.

Being insulted in Pano is a little more personal than some random Youtube "influencer," but I still have mixed emotions. In a way I feel like any insults within Porsche circles are bringing the world back into balance to the way things should be. Every time I get a wave or headlight flash from a 911 these days, I get dizzy and disoriented because my brain just can't quite process what is happening. It just seems so wrong.

I'm glad he doesn't know how popular 914s are with the general population.

Not to long ago, when I was about to leave the beach, a couple of tong clad lovelies asked if they could take a picture with the car. Not wanting to put a black spot on our marque's name, I said sure, I'd be happy to take their picture with the car.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't of happened if I was driving an Escort.

This guy has never seen a nice one like the one that just sold on BAT for $171K ?

Does anyone really care what he thinks? I don't. He never drove a 914 especially GT or some of the fast 914's, so what could he know about the car.

I do not get Pano. What did she say?

She described the subject's 914 as a "... glorified VW in Porsche clothing...."

A pretty hefty insult allowed by the editorial staff at Pano.

same old reason I stopped my membership back in the late 90's after attending a couple events in Mlps. Got the cold shoulder and the breeze.

Well that makes me feel even better. It's the same old misinformed but often regurgitated counterfactual... just like the good ol' days. And the fact it was sanctioned by the editors means she's not alone in still believing that nonsense. Thank goodness! I thought I might have slipped into a parallel universe for awhile. Glad to know I'm still here in the stupid one.

After attending the PCA national event in Traverse City MI way back around 1989 and getting snubbed by nearly everyone, I long ago decided I’ll never support PCA, Panorama, or anything else associated with these folks. Porsche ceased to exist for me as a marque when they quit racing to go build a SUV. Porsche is now just another Lifestyle brand.

Hypocrisy, ignorance, and snobbery have been a hallmark of the PCA / Pano crowd as long as I’ve been in this hobby. There are exceptions but they are the minority in my experience.

Been that way since 1987 when I got my 1st 914. I thoroughly enjoy that the 914 is the black sheep of the family.

"... glorified VW in Porsche clothing...."

Could she please explain what she means by that? Is it the 901 transmission? The engine that was used in the Porsche 912E? The 911 pedal cluster and all the parts that have Porsche numbers on them?

Way to go! Excellent job insulting your readership and the people who are paying you to write.

i believe she drives around in a porsche SUV.

what is a cayenne?

a glorified audi Q8?

what is an audi Q8?

a glorified VW toureg?

who built the platform model as the basis of all present day VW group (empire?) manufacturing.

f. piech.

what was his first road car project?

the 914?

lyn whatever is fairly typical of journalists. stuck in their present with no history and even less sense of the future - just jabbering cliches. the world is full of them covering every subject from military conflicts to dishwashers.

I sent an email to Rob Sass, the Editor of Pano, asking how did the staff miss this blatant insult. He emailed back stating he will talk to the writer, but thought the comment was tongue-in- cheek.

Editor passing the buck rather than owning up to his job.
I’m sure he’ll give her a good stern talking’ to.

Far more informative to just let people speak freely rather than enforcing some fake political correctness that thou shall not insult the lesser 914 owner’s among us. They can’t help it that they can’t afford real Porsche’s.

Well said

every time i hear or read a comment like that i think about all the parts of modern Porsche not made by porsche or made in Germany or US, and not even assembled in the main facilities in Germany, including the Boxsters in Finland , and we could go on and on on how stupid that is. Really it should have been caught by editor, but if this it now the standard at PANO , and their just employing Hack-for-hire journalists , yep im ready to cancel mine as well, but they need to know its not just a small slight and you are talking about a car that basically saved that company from extinction!, sold 118,000 cars. i guess if he reads these comments and if more current members that are now buying and paying $100k for a 914 say something maybe we see an editor note in the next months magazine and just maybe she's done writing for PANO.

I've written something to this effect before - The essence of 914 ownership is to cheerfully endure insults and ridicule while silently relishing in knowing that you and your car are superior to them and theirs.

I'm inclined to just thank the writer and editors for helping me appreciate my 914 a little more and move on.

I think it goes to the pettiness of taildraggers as our cockpit embellishments, door handles, window cranks and dashboard knobs are VW not the sacrosanct Porsche knobs.
Dumped PCA when the interweb became a thing, I always looked over every issue of Pano that I got to find tips, parts for sale and some vendor advertisements never saw a car like mine featured so hello world wide web good bye snobs.
Old adage what is the difference between a Porsche and a porcupine?
The Porsche has the pricks on the inside.


I don’t care what anyone thinks of my car, it’s what I chose for all its issues it is still the fun factor. I’ve been asked what is the best view of your 914? I say it’s from the drivers seat, carving up a canyon road.

I think an article that walks through just how much VW or Porsche is in a 914/4 would be quite interesting. We already know that 100% of the design was Porsche, including the Type IV engine. That is even before Hans Mezger tweaked it for the 2.0L. VWs design contributions were to cut costs and cheapen the car like use rear drum brakes instead of disc which Porsche vetoed.

The parts count would be quite interesting. Mostly it is just switches, light fixtures, and seat belts outside the Porsche-designed VW engine. Even the instrument cluster and ventilation controls are Porsche. I don't know how you categorize brakes and steering rack which have VW part numbers but are from the same OEM with identical design and function to Porsche counterparts. And IIRC, there are a couple VW parts that were shared with the 356. Once you cataloged all the parts that are shared with other Porsche models along with parts unique to the 914 with 914.xxx part numbers, I doubt you'd have even 20% VW content. Nothing against VW parts at all, but the fact is that I don't think the 914 borrowed from the VW parts bin nearly as much as the media has led people to believe from the time the model was first introduced.

Better yet, somebody should pull all the VW parts out of a 914/4 and weigh them.

well said, that's what i was talking about. perception is 90% of reality right so for the casual observer they hear and then regurgitate this stupidity like this writer did, but maybe if she actually were presented with facts and data some of that perception changes. and also as it does thru experience, so maybe someone could offer up a ride in their 914 sometime, . we say dont care what others think or say but yes we do because we know its not true and this bothers us i think .

All good points but it doesn’t matter.

Does anyone insist on the same standard for 924’s and the other water pumpers?

Exactly! If someone says the 914 is ugly or they drive it and say they hate the way it handles, I truly don't care. Their statements are true from their perspective and equally as true as my opposite opinion. But continuing to regurgitate empirically false statements bugs the out of me. That applies well beyond 914s but I won't go there.

I realized back at that PCA national event in 1989 that most that own a Porsche do so for the perceived brand status. Most of the people I talked to didn’t work on their cars, had little real appreciation for those that did.

Since I lived in the area at the time, the backroads were also heavily traveled by Porsche’s. Mostly driving too slow and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Little has changed over 30+ years.

There was a great spot on Car Talk years ago from a 911 owner that wanted Click and Clack to give pointers on the high-points of a 911 so that the listener could talk more intelligently about the car when gear heads asked questions.

Edit: found it. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/17/212962401/-1...rsation-stopper. Starts around 37:16 mark.

Let’s face it the average Porsche buyer isn’t buying one for the engineering and driving dynamics any more than your average BWW buyer was buying the ultimate driving machine. It is for the lifestyle brand image. Plain and simple.

To expect others to know the history and to honor a 914 in all its glory is asking too much.

+1, thanks for the chuckle. I could care less what Pano or whomever authority has to say, they can all kiss my %$#.

Well let's be fair. Porsche has unapologetically been marketing their brand as a statement of success so no surprise about who is buying them. Let's also acknowledge that they still make some marvelously engineered machines even if I personally dislike a lot of model offerings (no Porsche should have four doors). Frankly, I think most cars made these days are fugly as hell. That includes the new corvette. Sorry if I offend, but it looks like a transformer toy That's just my opinion though.

As for the Pano author. She is not the average Porsche customer. She's an editor for Motor Trend and a Rally racer. Presumably a gear head who should be held to a higher education standard when it comes to cars, but I suppose the writing gig pays just as much for repeating false tropes as it does for original thought.

He kept promising "gut punches" but all I heard was comments that made me go "what an idiot".

well - if you count the body as VW (i think karmann was owned by VW at that point) you could probably put the porsche parts in your coat pocket and walk away comfortably.


the journalists for the most part (not historians) seem to ignore that up until the crisis of circa 1971 porsche was basically the design and engineering bureau for VW. VW had only a modest design/engineering department.

so how much porsche is in a beetle? if you measure it by intellectual effort which doesn't have a molecular weight its going to be a bit hard to come up with content figure.

but what you can say.........prior to WW2, porsche himself was imbedded inside VW at wolfsburg, or as it was known then by a group of goose steppers - Stadt des Kdf-Wagen! porsche wasn't just an engineer, he was a political operator - he managed to get a certain vegetarian to fund his operation as a state financed industrial giant? and....he sat right at the centre of it in a design bureau.

losing the war kind of ruined that business idea. sort of. for a short time (in historical terms). and created the curiosity of a sports car cottage industry as a diversion project to legitimise a design consultancy to..............VW.

the history from 1945 to about 5 years ago is still to be written properly?
though its been sketched out a few times.
and it does not involve convoluted arguments that try to convince us that a 911 is a medieval teapot rather than a 20th century industrial object.

what am i saying?

you can't unpick VW from porsche and vice versa.

and why would you?

its an idiot project fit only for journalists to even try.

Well if you did that, you would have to count the 356, 911, 912, and 968s they built as VWs too. That should get some panties in a wad.



And this is a subject that deserves a series of articles. It's why the 914 is so fascinating because any examination of its NARPness forces one to face the false distinction between the two marques.

i do count them as VWs.

-----been doing it for years every time a smart alec in a 356C tells me i'm driving a VW and to go park it somewhere else.

yep. as far as i am concerned there is no distinction. its a made up idea.

f piech would probably agree if he was still around to yell at us.
he closed the circle in the end? it took him about 60 years to get it all wrapped up right back where his grandfather had started it. whatever the porschephiles might think?

probably why shortly after doing so he went off to the restaurant, enjoyed a file meal and decided to call it all quits on the pleasure of earthly delights. nothing left to do? mission accomplished!


always had a soft spot for the audi spyder concept back in 90.
probably because of the door handles.
either piech was having a joke on the side or having something serious to say 30 years after the event. i understand his mother personally intervened to beg him not to build it.

Click to view attachment

Just saw this thread, and watched the first segment of the video...

Reminded me of my ignorant 15-49 year old self; basing my opinions on here say, visual interpretation and total lack of knowledge otherwise. Then I actually drove one. That was some tasty humble pie...

Obviously he’s never driven one, nor do I believe worked on one. Brilliant simplicity

We owned a total of 4 Escorts and one EXP. 4 out of the 5 were good cars. The 5th was only bad because it had some special "higher fuel mileage" engine that ended up with carb problems. They had no more or less horsepower than other economy cars of the time. My 1981 SS had particularly comfortable seats.

The US Escort GT was not the equal of its European counterpart, but it had 4 wheel independent suspension that VW, Dodge and others did not, good ergos, a happy revving 1.8 liter hemi head, good reliability, good looks and a decent price.
Here's my 86 back in the day

I'm inclined to think he had something serious to say. There is so much more 914 in that car than just the door handles. It's dripping with heritage. A pity it wasn't made but also the right decision not to do so I suppose. I'm sure you've seen this, but this is a fantastic article on the subject.

"Today nobody seems to know if the idea came from Porsche or Audi, but there was serious discussion between Ingolstadt and Weissach, Porsche s research centre, regarding Porsche producing two versions of the quattro Spyder.

The first, of course, was the Audi; the second was to be a Porsche. This would be history repeating itself: from 1969 to ’76, VW/Porsche built and sold the mid-engined 914 in four-cylinder VW form and with a flat-six for Porsche, both developed at Weissach by Ferdinand Piech, who then worked for the family firm. And the idea would presumably keep Louisa Piech happy."

I take this as more strong evidence that the 914 was no redheaded step child. Piech was still chasing his mid-engine production car and Porsche was entertaining the idea of repeating the 914 experience. And let's be honest. That car looks like a modernized 914 - especially from the rear.

thanks for the link @bbrock .
i enjoyed reading that article which i had not come across before.
but probably not as much as f piech enjoyed building the concept car and inflicting discomfort on his past tormentors who by that time were well and truly looking at the end of a cul-de-sac.

in 1990 porsche were just building the 964. released initially (at least down here in aus) as only 4wd. audi quatto anyone? when was that again. 1980!

I listened to the Click and Clack bit. They basically told the woman to just make shit up and that the men wouldn't know anyway. She mentioned they were asking about HP and all that. Seems like if they really knew anything, they would already know that.

I love telling all the wanna-be Porsche snobs I encounter that my car is "Columbus Gray". I painted it myself and the paint code on the can was #1492. Very rare color, I tell them. I've never been questioned about it.

People like the guy in the original video like getting everyone's panties in a twist because it gets them views and they feed off the negative energy. Do not engage them.

Go drive your 914.

Very fitting since 911 owners often like to claim “rarity” status based on what color their 911 is and how few were ever painted in that shade of whatever color it is.

Love it

Thank you. I sent him an extensive email that he is unlikely to forget.

You will not believe his email response to me today!!!

David Long claims that my email is the ONLY COMPLAINT that he has received about the video!!!!!

Shall I post his response? I am flabbergasted that he claims that while I am the only one that disagrees with his viewpoints about Porsches, I just "...did not like what I heard, and am angry about it."

Not sure if he is well grounded in his opinion if he has never owned,built, raced, or been in one..............

Not sure if he is well grounded in his opinion if he has never owned,built, raced, or been in one..............

Uhummm
Click to view attachment

...probably only as the #40 hashtag on the 'Gram & I'm sure that he's a proficient there as well

But at least they got a unique front valance / air dam.

Wouldn’t be any fun if I can’t risk offending someone.