Anyone ever seen this one, it was new to me.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-mar...rive-914-a.html

the #1 crayfords car.

an important historical object.

two of the later ones down here in north antarctica.
crayfords proved it could be done -
contrary to the views of a well known 914 expert/retailer/etc, they are not butcher jobs. really well done conversions to rhd done back in the day when the cars were new.

i've driven one.

this.

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another one made the cover of CAR magazine.

(probably a pile of rust that got turned into a chinese toaster by now but... if only it had been preserved?).

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Hi, Yes I do know about that car.............it's mine, and has been for about 30 years.
But I'm considering selling now.
Any questions please ask.
cheers

Ian
ian9146@gmail.com

I would check with George at Auto Atlanta.

Just checked on the government site - it was last on the road in 1989 so, yes, probably a Chinese toaster by now!

Converted RHD in Singapore, formally owed by Meng Foong

Hey Jim,

Wasn't this car crashed into a railing in Singapore several years ago?

Bob B

i believe the late Meng Foong had two rhd cars before he died?
there was also a yellow one.
the yellow was a 75 model and definitely a crayfords car and is now back in the UK.
i believe it originally was ordered by an Australian and was delivered to western australia.
it was unable to be put on the roads here as the cut off for new Australian Design Rules prevented it being registered. it was sold to a buyer in Singapore in the 80s.

i am not sure about Meng Foong's red car that he rebodied.
it may have been a Crayfords converted car delivered new to singapore in the 1970s or it may have been a later conversion done in singapore itself? but i would say its likely it was also a crayfords car.

there are only a handful of these crayfords cars that were done when the cars were new in the 1970s. thats what makes them special.

there is an abundance of rhd converted cars that were done in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. whole different kettle of fish.

the #1 crayfords car is significant for that reason. i believe it featured in the London Motor Show.

the blue car on the cover of CAR magazine is probably the second car that was done.

a green car, terminally rusted was advertised for sale in the UK approx 5 years ago.
it did not look like it was salvageable.

of the two cars that remain in Australia. one (saturn yellow metallic) is in very good preserved condition and is in Sydney. the other a white car has disappeared off the radar. it was still around in original condition about 20 years ago when i last heard of it. i believe it also went to Sydney. previously both cars were in Melbourne right through the 80s and 90s.

so there are not many left. my estimate is 3-4 cars that still are on the road internationally. 2 in the UK and 2 in Australia (if the white one still exists)

nearly all the crayfords cars started out as UK delivery european spec cars.
except maybe this one being shown here.
9146-racer would know all the details on this very first one.
i think crayfords got hold of it so early in the piece to look at the viability of conversion that they sourced it from a VW porsche dealer in Europe.

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there are two other significant rhd cars that were done back in the 70s when new. both are sixes. both of these are still in Australia. these are another kettle of fish again.

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then there are many more that were converted to rhd in australia in the 1980s and 1990s. all were sourced from the USA. these are not significant. not like the crayfords cars. the quality of the conversions varies from excellent to poor.

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admittedly its a specialist interest, and probably has limited appeal or meaning in the USA to a collector. so difficult to know what its worth. i guess it takes an auction where there are two buyers. like any auction?

with the state of things internationally its not a great time to be having to sell a car like that. i hope the sale goes well.

Meng only owned the red car The picture is pre crash. After the crash Bruce Stone shipped Meng a body and lots of new parts. Meng had that body converted to RHD locally in Singapore. Here’s a post crash pic;

And here’s the yellow RHD parked next to Mengs

here is what i have from files on the original 11 crayfords cars.

1.

#1 Car = @9146-racer very early 914/4. white car at top of thread. originally orange i believe.^


2.
71 914/4. last sold in 2019 on UK ebay. very poor condition.

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3.
73 914/4 2.0 well preserved highly original car. passed through a succession of careful owners. remains in australia.

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4.
73 914/4 2.0 when i last saw this car it was still in this state that it was published in the mid 70s. it used to be in melbourne and had passed through a succession of careful owners. disappeared about 15-20 years ago and hasn't been spotted since.

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5.
75 914/4 2.0 originally delivered to western australia, went to singapore. think it was owned last by meng foong. now back in the UK where it was for sale. converted later to a six cylinder car i believe. not in original condition.

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anything else that is rhd may be good or bad, or whatever (like my car for instance that i converted) but is not historically significant. apart from the two 6s here in aus.

i reckon approx half the crayfords cars stayed in the UK, the rest went to the "colonies".
ie hong kong, singapore, malaysia, australia. australia and the south east asian former colonies demanded right hand drive cars and would not permit registration of left hand drive vehicles. so for instance in japan,though it was right hand drive, there was no absolute requirement that the cars be right hand drive to be registered so they could sell new lhd 914s into the japanese market.

thats why crayfords converted cars are significant, despite the remarks of some experts that they are "hack" jobs. they are not. they were very expensive conversions to do and they were absolutely required for certain markets in the 1970s (regions described above). and because of the cost - very few were done.

the conversions to rhd voided the factory warranty. nevertheless the conversions were sort of semi tolerated by the factory and were arranged through a UK distributor. it was an extremely limited market as it turned out. though i do think Crayfords hoped they might have been able to sell more than they did. it did not work out economically.
very few takers.

as far as i can work out there were kind of two batches of cars.

early ones which didn't really take off because the talk was the factory would produce a right hand drive version of the 914 in 1972. so people hung back and waited.
especially in the exclusively right hand drive markets - ie Australia. where they could have sold 914s in small numbers, but probably not enough to justify the tooling and get the price right. hence likely why the factory never did it in the end. though i think if porsche had exclusive management decision making power it might have happened. i'm pretty certain VW would have been the 50% interest that kyboshed it. they looked at the $ return differently? a rhd 914 would have all hung off the success of the 914/6 model.
thats what the australian distributor was interested in. probably similar scenario for the UK. as we know the 6 was a sales dud. that probably killed off any chance of a rhd 914.

then there is a a second batch of crayfords cars beginning in 1973.
thats when it was clear there would be no factory rhd car and if you wanted a 914 this was it. the last chance. the 2.0 L car made it attractive. and marginally affordable if you set up the deal right as an australian. it involved going to the UK and being resident there for 6 months or a year of so. thats when the two 2.0L cars were done that came into australia. 73 models where the last window. it closed for 74 models as they did not meet the ADRs. the same may have occurred in the UK. anyone who wanted a rhd 914 jumped at that moment and jumped on the 2.0 as it stacked up in $ performance terms.

then there is the lone 75 that ended up here a year or two later. caught out by the changes in the ADRs (australian design rules). effectively a prohibited import. i think whoever owned it tried several times to get it on the road during the late 70s but couldn't do it. it ended up shipped off shore and resided in singapore. the yellow car that is in meng foong's garage. whether it was his or not it seemed to end up in his circle.
it got transformed into a 6.

i've seen photos of one other car that went to hong kong. the photos dated from the mid 80s. it was in macau by that stage and a total wreck. it would be gone by now and have come back as a chinese toaster in the afterlife.

There was a red one in UK that I looked at with a good friend many years ago, but because of it's poor condition and price then, we declined to buy it.
Subsequently it was sold to another guy who advertised it for sale possibly 5 years ago.....did it sell? I don't know.
There is an article on www.356-911.com on a red car in Singapore.
if you look at that article there are copies posted of some photos from the very rare Crayford brochure, which incidentally is of my car.
cheers Ian

i've got a photocopy on file of the crayfords brochure.
was given to me by the guy who owned the saturn yellow metallic crayfords 914 here in aus, along with the engineers report.
i got given the stuff in the early 90s.

what you are saying is that mr. meng foong picked up a red car from england?
and it ended up with him in singapore quite some time post the 1970s?
and this was subsequently crashed and replaced by another body shell by him
??????????

all kind of important in untangling where these original rhd converted cars went and ended up.

and completely aside from your car which is RHD numero uno.
maybe? but i will not go into that, because that is still be investigated.
and it does not diminish your car. its just that there is two of them.
yours and something else that is here that cannot yet be determined. - conclusively.
both are significant. see EDIT.

if i lived in the UK i'd buy your car and end all this chit chat.
but i don't. but you know.....it is actually important.
the porsche museum should probably buy it to make up for their complete failure as a company to back the first person to back their cars----one norman hamilton of australia.
i think he might have even been in front of the USA entrepenuer max hoffman.
but don't quote me.
the point being - there was no RHD 914 because everyone forgot who they were and who everyone was.
the first two RHD 356 cars were built for australia and sent here.

EDIT
there may have been a right hand drive car pre crayfords.
but its just guess work at present.
and it may have come from germany?
but its just guessing at the moment.
and it didn't look anything like a crayfords car.
just another one of the those historical curiousities.
i think there are photos of it but i am still trying to track them down.

I actually have a genuine brochure, bought many years ago at the Hustbourne Crawley Porsche swap meet. I have met the upholsterers and one of them furnished me with a couple of period photos.
I hear what you say about another car being built prior to mine by a German, very possible. But not by Crayford.
My car was built on 1st December 1969 then sourced by Crayfords at the Porsche distributor, Nordrhein in Dusseldorf early in December 1969.
It was finished in 2310 Tangerine , and fitted with leatherette/corduroy black seats, heated rear window.
There was another company over here (CC Classics) that did at least 1 car that I've seen. But I found it undrivable as they had'nt moved the pedals forward so there was restricted room.
This is turning out to be a great and interesting topic.

the one i mention is not built by any old german.
it would have been factory. in the race department?
and its not necessarily before yours.
probably around about the same time.
and an entirely separate enterprise.
and in detail execution, absolutely nothing like crayfords. whole different approach.
(as i say its something to do with the aus distributor who had a lot of pull due to his special status with the factory-----and everyone is still trying to get to the bottom of it, but its nothing to do with crayfords or their efforts).

thats not quite the point i was making.
at all times crayfords are to be elevated as very important.

as to the firewall modification, there were several aus rhd conversions like that.
short legs, long arm job. they were done here early on and are hack jobs. there was a little apple green car that ran around down in my city back in the late 70s that was like that. originally it had come in with someone attached to the german consulate in melbourne (i believe that was the story). it was around for a while down here but it disappeared. i sat in it once. it was awful.

my own car was converted using a crayfords car as the guiding model.
the metallic green car.

but.........you have THE CAR.

i sincerely hope you find the right buyer for it.
as i say - if i lived in the UK i would be knocking on your door.
i know what it is.
but its completely a pain in the a to try and import a car into aus at present.
even harder than when i did it 30 years ago.

the porsche museum should buy it as a penance for their failure to make a rhd 914.

That German car sounds really interesting, please keep me posted if anything firm surfaces.
When we went down to the museum for the 50th back in 2019 a couple of the old guys from Porsche who worked originally on the 914, were interested in my cay and came out to view it.
It would be nice to sell it to the museum but I can't see them buying a car not built in it's present configuration by them.
I think a buyer in UK or Australia are the most likely to buy it.
I've just got to think whether I market it as-is or restore it (even though it's still used occasionally on nice days), and return it to Tangerine as it was built. or sell as is. decisions decisions.

a few folks here are still trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of the hamilton's six #1. when we find out......
i'll let you know.

i saw the car when it came out of the hay shed where it was sitting with all the race cars mr hamilton owned. that was 30 years ago. but i have a very good memory.
its not in the state it was in then. it has been "improved". but we are trying to track down the photos from back then. they are with the daughters of the guy who bought the car who i knew very well. it was built as a japanese spec car, ie set up for right hand drive roads ( rhd headlights and it had jap spec warts with working j spec indicators as warts) and it was converted to rhd, apparently sometime before it got to australia. (it was driven straight from the docks here to the dealer and it was already right hand drive).
i very much doubt that was done in japan. and it came to australia via japan, it spent a short time with the japanese distributor.

all sounds like it might have been a "demonstrator" for the right hand drive world????
it did not have a production line interior.

my memory is it sure looked like a GT interior. with a curious pull handbrake under the dash from a 356.

if i was you i would leave your car as it is and pass it on. its got to here and its sort of semi intact really. why trouble yourself. you have done your job. the car still exists.

if i was you i would leave your car as it is and pass it on. its got to here and its sort of semi intact really. why trouble yourself. you have done your job. the car still exists.

Yeah Good point, now all I need is an Aussie buyer visiting UK soon.

Hi All.
just to add more to the Crayford saga I now own another!
As I believe I've mentioned earlier I am in possession of copies of the factory (Crayford) invoices, unfortunately they don't all have chassis numbers--things were a lot easier back then, no computers etc.
My new acquisition is the 7th done, according to the dates on the invoices. however in a terrible state, I am currently on the lookout for a suitable shell to rob bits off to restore this car.
cheers
Ian

Can you fellows please provide me with the VIN's of the known Crayford's cars.
Dave

Really cool to hear these exist!

is it this one?

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vins from my records of aus 914 register (dating from the late 90s)

vin 4732901686

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vin 4732909340

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have some crayfords documentation of the saturn yellow metallic car that i got copies of back in the 90s.

both cars were ordered from UK addresses.
won't be any documentation indicating australian orders in crayford invoicing files.
back then is australians would do a stint working in the UK professionally for a year or two. order their car and be in possession of it for at certain time period. qualified them to return to australia with it as a private import and avoid punitive import tax charges. this was also how a good number of australian 911 owners would buy their new 911 back then. (same laws were still in operation when i bought my 914 while i was living in chicago in the late 80s - i bought mine back to aus the same way from the USA).

i believe the last crayfords car done, #11 is the yellow 75 that ended up in singapore or malaysia and has now gone back to UK. that one might have an australian address invoice as there was a hitch getting that car back into aus and on the roads.
it was subject to the just introduced ADR regulations of 1974.

there should be an order for a 914 to hong kong amongst crayfords invoices.

and i believe there was one more that went to south east asia somewhere.