Hi - JD Classics in the UK have for sale a rhd 914 that they say is a genuine Crayford conversion. Registration number is NRX 538K. The car started life in the US and then was exported to Australia (doesn't say when) where the conversion was done. JD say that it is one of only 9 cars that were converted by Crayford. From the research I have managed to do it sounds like this cannot be true. I have asked for some proof of their claim but they have gone quiet. Could this car however have been converted under licence using genuine Crayford parts or is it more likely to be a conversion just done by some garage in Australia as I understand quite a few cars were converted there in this way.

Can't say if it's genuine, but there has been discussion here on Crayford conversions. I did a search on google and got these results: Results for Crayford cars

If it was actually converted in Australia, it can't be a Crayford conversion. It also has an ashtray, a feature missing from Crayford RHD dashboards...
Click to view attachment

Exaggeration and flowery sales ads are seldom accurate and are suspicious.

https://woodham-mortimer.com/Cars/For-Sale/...05-08db3b87ad3b

Someone here owns a Crayford conversion - http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...amp;hl=Crayford

Wow, a 914 Coupe with 14" 4-bolt Fuchs. That has to be a unicorn!

NO right hand drive 914 is genuine!

@pep1

short answer = no.


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info.

all crayfords cars converted to RHD were delivered to the UK new.
via this arrangement.

Click to view attachment

absolutely zero via the USA.

no crayfords conversions were done in australia.
though crayfords did send interior bulkhead moulds and dashboard moulds to an agent they intended to set up in Perth Western Australia in anticipation of a viable market.
didn't happen. the moulds ended up in melbourne in the early 80s.

in 1979 there were known to be 8 914s in australia.
2 914/6s imported by the australian distributor.
2 crayfords converted 914s (both 1973 MY 2.0L cars) privately imported from the UK.
2 914/4s, owned by 2 german mechanics and privately imported from germany and converted in australia.
1 914/4 that came in via the german consulate in melbourne australia.
1 crayfords 1975 MY car privately imported into australia after 1974 Australian Design Rules Legislation. it was never put on the road, the ADRs prevented its road registration. information says it was sold to a singapore buyer in the early 80s.
(i think a former member of this website had it and after he passed away i believe it has made it back to the UK, but its not the car you are inquiring after.).

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the car you are looking at is a car that would have been privately imported into australia from west coast USA in the very late 80s after prohibitive and protective customs duty/sales taxes were relaxed. a reasonable number of 914s came into australia right through the 90s.
i estimate at least 100. possibly as high as 200. but no more than that.
these cars were all converted to rhd here. the conversions vary in quality.
i recognise the dashboard moulding in the one you are inquiring about, its the same (or very similar) moulding as in my car, though the ash tray fit looks not so good. the conversion was likely done in melbourne. there were two guys operating at that time both doing very high quality conversions.
this conversion industry no longer really exists. regulations regarding historic cars have been relaxed and its possible to road register a left hand drive car on historic plates (25 years and older). as a result the cottage industry doing conversions has shrivelled.
though it is still here but much more specialised. eg dodge RAM trucks. these are all being sold new here by dodge dealers but the trucks come in left hand drive from the USA and are converted to right hand drive here to full factory standard. you would not be able to distinguish them from left hand drive factory. they are sold new and with full warranties.

contrary to some views, these 90s era conversions were to a large extent executed to a very high standard, though there were a few backyard hack jobs done by private owners that were not so good. its pretty easy to screw up a 914. its probably one of the most difficult cars around to convert to right hand drive and get it absolutely right.

i understand a number of those cars converted in the 1990s have now made their way to the UK though private buyers seeking right hand drive 914s. the currency exchange was favorable to UK buyers in the first decade of the 21st C. this car will be one of those.
it could be pretty good. or it could be pretty bad. my guess is its probably OK. i have a feeling this particular car did come from melbourne australia and at one time a fair while back it was for sale at Lorbek's prestige cars. (i designed his car yard in the 90s). i remember him calling me about a 914 he had and did i want to take a look at it, since he knew i owned one. i didn't see it but i can remember him telling me it was "egg plant".
so it could be that car.

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you would be lucky to find a crayfords car still surviving.
i estimate 3 survive in the UK.
a UK member here has listed that his car is up for sale to the right buyer.
its the #1 car converted by crayfords as the demonstrator.
in my view a valuable car with great historical value.
a green 4 surfaced about 3-4 years back as a barn find.
it was terminally rusted in the photos listed.
finally the 75 that came to aus first, went to singapore and is now back in the UK.
that car has backdated bumpers, a 6 engine fitted and is yellow.

2 cars survive in australia.
both are 1973 2.0L. i have the VINS for both.

thats it.
i doubt any others are left. long gone.

no 6s were converted by crayfords. they are all 4 cylinder cars.

ONE

VIN 9141430042
tangerine.

left the karmann factory as a trimmed lhd 914/6 japanese spec body.


left the stuttgart werks as a finished right hand drive car fitted with a 4 speed gearbox.


ordered by australian porsche distributor Hamiltons.
arrived in melbourne australia via tokyo japan (misawa motors).
still exists. still here in melbourne australia.
owned first by misawa (short time, months) as a demonstrator and then owned by Hamiltons (several years) as a demonstrator at first and in private possession of distributor. on sold and privately owned for a short time in the 1970s. bought back by the distributor and remained in his collection until 1991. has had two owners since.

more research currrently being undertaken - contact with curator of porsche museum.
above details confirmed with aus distributor and staff of the era who survive.

spot on.

crayfords parked it on the tunnel.
where they also parked the radio.
no room on the left hand side for the depth of a standard radio back then in the space left between dash and bulkhead.

also the glove box is just big enough to put a pair of sunglasses in for the same reason!

the give way on all crayfords cars is the hand stitched dash over the fibreglass mould.
vinyl skinning was a high end industrial process back then that only the manufacturers had access to. the crayfords dash was pretty good but it still looked hand made.

another give away is that crayfords did not fill in the left hand side hand brake sill panel.
you ended up with two sill panels depressions, one on each side.

and one more was they mirrored the instrument binnacle dial layout.
this was something porsche never did on its other right hand drive models.
a right hand drive 911 has the same binnacle layout as the left hand drive.
it is not mirrored. it is simply transposed.
most of the 914s converted in aus later in the 90s follow porsche practice.

and if you look behind the pedal board a crayfords car doesn't use a 911 right hand drive pedal cluster. it uses the original 914 pedal cluster and they modified it. they cut and welded the brake arm and used a welded section that shifted the allignment of the brake pedal right across to be near the accelerator. they fitted only the straight clutch arm rod piece from the 911 cluster. they did this for a reason and it wasn't being cheap.
a 911 rhd pedal cluster does not in fact work so well on a 914 which is a much wider car than the 911. with a 911 cluster you really do sit very diagonally to work the pedals.
its one thing crayfords got really right. i copied it on my car exactly.
most of the aus converted 914s use a rhd 911 pedal cluster. it made it easy but it also made it not quite so good.

@pep1

dug up my filed images.
picture is worth a thousand words.


a crayfords car looks like this if you are staring at the dashboard.
(hand made-ish).

#1 crayfords. very early car. 70 model i think.

Click to view attachment

one of the UK crayfords still in aus. 73 2.0 L
seat fabric not original. someone changed it from when i knew it.
used to be original cord fabric.

Click to view attachment

thats what you are looking for in a crayfords.
no mistaking them.
all originally european spec, uk delivered cars. all converted when brand new as part of original purchase by owners from Everest.

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later aus conversions from late 80s into 90s.
all will have been sourced from USA. generally from california.
my car. i had it converted and did about 50% of the conversion myself - 34 years ago.
still have the car. so i remember all the esoteric detail involved. also had a access to a crayfords car to guide my conversion.

Click to view attachment

instantly recognizable. dash is heat shrink vinyl skinned over fibreglass moulding.
there were lots of industry car component manufacturers and specialists attached to the big ford and gm plants here who could do this stuff for you as side jobs.
not all of them had the ashtray incorporated but a few did.
in my case the mould was indeed either the original crayfords mould or had been made using the crayfords moulding with some further modification to house the ashtray.
the mould was sourced from one particular guy in melbourne who had it. he did not do all the conversions but he had the mould.

i have seen other cars that were converted by workshops in other cities in australia that used a technique that involved sectioning up the original dash moulding to produce a mirror dash moulding and then having it reskinned. you can usually spot those as no matter what there a faint ridges that show where it was cut and shut.


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and i remembered one more give-away.
all the crayfords cars shifted the fuseboard across to the right hand side. quite a job to do and not sure why they did it. its the hard way to do it. most of the aus conversions leave it on the left hand side and extend across or rewire as necessary to get to the switches and instruments. if its got a fuseboard on left hand side its not a crayfords.

Many thanks to you all for answering my query in such detail. I'm amazed at the level of your knowledge. I certainly know where to come now for info on 914s.

Relax George no one said these were genuine but just replys here on if the car is legit as a Crayford conversion which I strongly don't think it is as mentioned the cars would have been direct from Porsche and converted from that point in the UK.
I understand they were pretty well done but I think wonkipop would know better as he has checked them out .
To me they are real special due to numbers converted and a real part of 914 history.

thanks @porschetub
given you are a kiwi you have perspective on this and understand the post british empire period of our poor old antipodean countries and the legacy of right hand drive bureaucracy.

f'n oath the crayfords were legit.
part of their ambitious (but overoptimistic?) business plans back then was to service the colonies trapped in right hand drive dogma. but it never took off.
it was the only way you were going to get a 914 into australia back in the 70s when the car was new. the distributor abandoned his plans by 1972 and he was definitely contemplating either a small production order of factory converted 914s or looking into "doing a crayfords" himself. he did at least one in his own workshops. i know one of the guys who did that one. he still alive. but mr. hamilton was only interested in doing it with the 6.
when porsche killed off the 6 that was the end of that idea.
sure the factory didn't offer the warranty for crayfords but a select group of uk dealers were supplying the cars brand new to order from a customer and offering the conversion. the dealer was backing it. and if porsche thought it was out of bounds they would have closed the door hard on it. they didn't. if anything it must have been an embarrassment for porsche not to be able to offer a rhd 914 to an original and valued distributor like hamilton. (thanks VW because 100 to 1 thats who kyboshed a rhd 914 - peanut numbers for VW the corporate giant).

as i understand it the aus porsche distributor happily serviced the few cars that were here. i've got a copy of the letter dated 1979 that proves it.

the white crayfords car that was featured in the magazine article and still exists was owned for almost a decade by the VW dealer in orange nsw. i believe he purchased it off the private importer who had returned to australia with it. that particular car has become an urban legend. it still exists and is stashed away in sydney somewhere.

and george may be eating his words when it comes to there never was a right hand drive 914 from the factory. have to see if the museum curator can dig up the story from half a century ago. alan hamilton had all sorts of stuff stashed from his time and his father's time as the australian distributor. he cut a deal with export of porsches before even max hoffman i believe. the first two right hand drive 356s ever made came here to australia. special order for hamiltons to start the whole enterprise.

i understand there are a couple of 914/6 stashed away in NZ @porschetub that have been there a long time too. kiwis. total petrol heads. have my respect.

my old mate brian who had the green crayfords car and the maybe one and only "factory" rhd 914/6 before he sadly passed away (a little too young too when he went) had photos of the crayfords car that ended up in macau (hongkong). the photos dated from the early 80s.
that one was a wreck even by that time. the customers were out there in the colonies, just wasn't enough of them.

hell i even remember going down to hamiltons to see if i could get carpet stock to make right hand drive carpets for my car. a phone call was made and i believe hamilton directed his spare parts man to see if they could find me raw carpet stock from the factory warehouse in germany. i got the last 7m of the roll left. hamilton himself was quite interested in the 914 as a car and had a bit of a soft spot for them. why he stashed away one of the demonstrators for 20 years? --- and when he let it go it was only to the right person.


and you are right @porschetub - the crayfords conversion is really well done. top shelf. the way they screwed around with the pedal cluster, most people would not understand it. i did. copied it exactly (or as close as our insecting engineer would allow). boy does it make a difference. you can't just plonk 911 right hand drive pedal cluster in. its not quite right if you do.

i'm promised a look at the red 6 again when i can hook up. what i want to do is take a real close look at the pedal cluster in that one. its been almost 20 years since i have seen that car last.

Interesting info thanks,remember when I lived Perth in the 80's ,I used to go to Waneroo Part raceway a lot,best meeting was for classics and Hamiton crew turned up with the biggest transporter anyone had ever seen ,bloody huge,inside was 2 Porsche 935's ,spare engines,gearboxs etc .
Impressive cars on the track,the crowd went nuts when they came down the hill on to the main straight,seem to remember that was the only part of the track they could crank up the boost.
Pretty sure there was a guy from Ireland on here that had a RHD car he was convertioning to a "six",it was very rusty but don't know if it was a Crayford conversion as it was a while back and he hasn't posted since.
Didn't know there 2 914/6's in NZ,I do know of one that the owner has had for many years,member on here username neven owns it ,the guy I bought my car off had this car in storage for the owner and various parts were copied and exact dimensions taken during that time.
cheers.

So cool these exist.
In a rhd car, is first and reverse nearest the driver? On any car?
The dash is simple enough
Steering and brakes requires some engineering.

Really great to know these cars are still out there.

gear lever and gate stays the same.
even on "official" right hand drive production versions of left hand drive designed european cars. that all stays as it is left hand drive
in a 914 you don't touch the gear lever, linkage or anything on that to do the conversion.

we are used to this in right hand drive countries.
its often funny when it comes to the levers on steering columns.
j cars and aus manufactured cars (when we had manufacturing) had the indicator lever on the right hand side of steering column but most euro cars had it on left. they just put the whole steering wheel assembly across on right hand side. so it used to be funny jumping from one car to another if you borrowed a friends car. first intersection you got to you would set the windscreen wipers off.

a right hand drive car is not a mirror conversion. its a transposition.
pedals, instrument cluster, steering wheel is simply moved across but not mirrored.
the main dash mouldings and assembly is a mirror. gear lever stays same.

you get some funny things in cars as a result.
my renault clio rs has the front bonnet release still over on passenger side. (left).
the brake master cylinder is buried down behind the engine and is virtually inaccessible, its real fun changing the brake fluid. the clutch cable gets scorched by the headers.
fortunately the throttle is electronic or it would be a contorted cable linkage.
and thats a factory car. thats the right hand drive models.
they basically design most cars left hand drive these days and do a compromised right hand drive version. only the japanese do a right hand drive from scratch. if anything their left hand drive versions might have the compromises.

yes there is no way you could consider those two initial 6s in australia as non legit.
george is way off track with his assertion.

both cars come in via the distributor with full support of factory as assessment cars.

its taken a bit of detective work (and a member here from australia has fully researched one of those cars which is now in sydney - for a long long time that car had disappeared and no one had taken a close look at it). the other car is still here in melbourne.
it was always thought, or it had come to be thought they were both converted here and both the same way. the story is very different. the two conversions are completely different. and it seems very very very likely that one was certainly converted before it arrived in australia. leaves only japan enroute. and thats unlikely. it would appear that car was done at the factory and sent to australia via japan to serve as an assessment and demonstrator car. the other one did come here left hand drive, remained that way for a period of time (year to a couple of years) and then was converted in the distributor workshop. during that time the cars were in the ownership of the distributor and were not owned by members of the public. the whole project was legit, it was not some backyard exercise or hack job as i have heard converted cars described (an ungenerous and inaccurate summation in my view).

as far as i am concerned both of those sixes are legit sixes which have unique and historically significant histories. comparable to significant race cars for instance.

and little needs to be said in defence of the two crayfords cars in australia, or any crayfords cars for that matter. these were cars that were sold brand spanking new from the UK dealers in an arrangment to facilitate strictly right hand drive countries with no provision for allowing a left hand drive car to be road registered.

the subsequent private import and conversion activity in australia is entirely unrelated.
it occurs at least 10 years after the last 914 was manufactured when the cars were second hand. and it occurs because economically viable examples could be purchased on the west coast of the USA and shipped to australia as viable purchases for owners who always wanted 914s. the generation of guys who did that are almost entirely dead these days. i was unique. one of the youngest guys in that circle. i was about 30 years old.
all the other guys i knew as a result of the 914 who did the conversion thing in the 90s were either retired or about to retire. i don't think any of them are alive anymore.
or if they are they are very old. those cars are now out there and being sold and owned by a new generation. anyway its entirely separate from the crayfords project and crayfords era.

@porschetub

i think rusty french ended up owning one of those hamilton 935s.
my old mechanic figgurat who has retired to NZ (and taken his 911 with him) used to work on that 935 when rusty was racing it in the historics about 20 years ago.
figgurat also worked on my humble L jet. a great guy who never looked down his nose at my 914. figgurat worked for kremer when he was very young and worked on their 914/6 racer as the mechanic in germany.
anyway we could always get into the rusty french garage down at phillip island thanks to figgurat. a lot of fun being in there while he warmed up the 935 engine.
that thing was terrifyingly fast.

Years ago I worked on a 79 Nissan Fairlady Z. It was a 280Z in right hand drive, imported by a US Marine from Japan. The Japanese designed the car so the driving position could be setup on either side. Even the firewall had the knockout ports for the master cylinder and the clutch master cylinder on it.

It was fun to test drive here. People would do double takes when they see no one in the driver's seat at 70 mph on the freeway.

My fathers manual for his 55 Chevy had all the information in it for the Right hand drive versions. Now that was a real kludge. The column shift linkage for the manual transmission was a bunch of monkey motion bellcranks and linkages to translate it from the right side of the column mounted on the right side of the car to the left side of the transmission.

spot on.
three on the tree and still on the right.
i have actually seen those.
i believe a lot of the 60s chev impalas and pontiacs that came in from canada at the top end of the holden range had that set up.

holden did sort that out and so did ford on the local design and manufactured product.
still shifted like a pre side shifter 914 but.
Click to view attachment

yep - the J stuff is really set up with the mirror in mind. they knew where to spend their yens properly to get a return. australia has always been lucky with getting the J gear being right hand drive like them. a lot of good J gear got sold in australia. of course a lot of it has been taken back by prosperous j people since and returned home.

Guys, hopefully this will help. This is from previous owner of the car that JD Classics are selling:

peterhmartinRookie
MEMBER

Location: Belfast, UK
Ride/s:914-4 (RHD)
Posted 4July, 2014
I live in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and am the proud owner of an ex-Australian RHD 914 (1972) - it won the Porsche Club GB regional concours last month - see "Best in Show" photo. I am interested in the history of this car and more generally in the history of RHD conversions of 914s in Australia.

My car was originally purchased in the US (traces of the US side repeaters can be seen within the front wings), it was originally Adriatic Blue but by the time it left Australia in 2009 (sold by Lorbek Luxury Cars of Port Melbourne) was its current "pearlescent purple" colour. The Australian reg. no was IXXI69 - indeed it still bears its last Australian tax sticker.

The chassis/VIN is 4722916129. The RHD conversion is of a very high standard - unitary dash and sill-inset handbrake - I suspect done using either a kit shipped from Crayford in England or using the Crayford tooling after it was sold off by Crayford. I am the second UK owner of the car, having bought it in 2012.

i saw your car at Lorbek's when he was selling it.
he called me up and asked me down to take a look.
i designed his showroom entrance and a few other bits and pieces back in the 90s.

in answer - there is no crayfords tooling apart from a dashboard mould.
they did not sell the tooling off. the mould came to australia via western australia way back in the 70s. there are other moulds (or were) that other people made here. and other technique for cutting up the dashboard. if the dashboard is fibreglass underneath the vinyl and external coverings and not steel it may be a dash from the crayfords original mould -- or one other that was floating around that was also fibreglass. if its a metal dash frame under there that has been cut and shut then its nothing to do with crayfords original parts.

i believe in the case of your car the conversion may have been done by a fellow called Ian Anderson. Ian did some conversions of 914s in melbourne back in the late 80s and early 90s. mostly he converted 911s from lhd to rhd. but there were some 914s in there. ian used 911 rhd pedal clusters in his conversions.

there was one other fellow who did a few here in melbourne. his are pretty much identical to ian's. he has been involved with 356 porsches most of his life.

the rest of the conversions are home garage back shed jobs by enthusiasts.

the crayfords cars and the crayfords conversion method is quite unique and a little different from how most of the aus conversions were done.

i had access to a crayfords car when i did mine.
there are two here, one at least survives intact and in good condition.
crayfords used the original lhd pedal cluster and modified it.
i copied that.

another giveaway on a crayfords is that they sliced the upper firewall where the steering column travels diagonally sideways to allow clearance. and covered this slice with a domed fibreglass cover that was pop rivetted to the metal.

generally speaking the conversions are a mixed bag.
the good ones were every bit as good as crayfords.

i remember your car. its a good one.

@914Nuts

to give you a bit more context re australian conversions.
its not like there was some big industry here converting 914s shipped in from the USA in the late 80s. there wasn't.

there was a big industry shipping in west coast rust free british sports cars (mgbs and triumphs etc). converting them to rhd and shipping them to Japan where there was a relatively large market. remember japan in the 80s. the economic powerhouse of the asia pacific. this was all pre the MAZDA MX-5.

its not hard to understand how mazda came up with that car and launched it in 89.
they were already obsessed.

there was a bit of a market for 911s the same way.

cars were hideously expensive in australia at that time.
protectionist policies to protect the local industry.

just about all the 914s that came in were personal imports.
not part of this larger cottage industry.
914s were still considered weirdo cars in the 80s/90s.
owners who got hold of them were niche enthusiasts.
owners then either did the conversion themselves or took them to one of the specialists doing 911s. a car had to rhd to be road registered in australia at that time.

i took my car to a mob that were doing mgbs for japan.
they did most of the heavy lifting. cutting welding metal work fabrication.
i did a lot of the minor work that required a bit of patience. dashboard trimming etc.
and sorted out all the detail of how to execute it dimensionally using the crayfords car as the guide. it was the one and only they did. verdict at the end of the job. TOO HARD.
fun but too difficult to consider commercially for japan. the kind of did me a favour doing mine as they wanted to test viability.

the whole industry of doing these conversions on older cars collapsed in the late 90s.
went away.

no requirement anymore to have cars in rhd with specialist club/historic registration.

i don't think its possible to find out much about your car.
i believe ian has passed away.
there is one other guy i can ask down here who is still around.
the 356 man.

Why do you feel that's unlikely? You said the car came to Oz by way of Japan...




A (now-former) co-worker of mine had a Japanese-market 240Z. He and another co-worker were taking it up go go skiing one day. He was just zipping along in the right lane, and the other co-worker was obviously asleep in the passenger's seat. Some little old lady passed them, saw someone sleeping in the left seat and .... Apparently her eyes got THIIIIIIIIS BIG and she put her foot down and sped off.

--DD

..........and - you have lined up to quotes as if to make a point.

a 240z is right hand drive from the factory.
just like every car in oz.

so...... i guess you mean that japan has an advanced or had an advanced conversion cottage industry doing niche right hand drive conversions.

i'll research it and get back to you.


and out of respect.
google norman hamilton.
and get back to me.

its not often i feel like stepping up to a yank, being an aussie and loving you guys.
but...........check it.
the destination of the car was aus. japan was merely a transit point.

oddly enough an older north antarctica rhd conversion has just popped up down here for sale.
wants a lot for it? approx = 45K USD.

https://www.carsales.com.au/cars/details/19...-22416782/?Cr=0

i'd say this one was not done so well looking close and def dates from back in the 90s.
its got VW pedals (and pedal box no doubt)!!!
strange arrangement of switchgear on dash. cigarette lighter!
i don't think the firewall was reworked or the fuel tank modified.
could be wrong but looks like it wasn't.
you would need to be a ferrari driver to fit in, long arms and short legs.
you would also need a very thin hand and wrist to grab the handbrake (no sill recess )

some funky ones out there.

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

No, it was just to avoid posting twice in a row. The Z story is just another amusing RHD in the US story.




Too many different results, none of which appear to have any bearing on 914s.
- Director of Comfy Living
- Owner, BFR8
- US Representative from Virginia
- Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

.... and many more.





Japan is RHD. Could the conversion have been done there? I know that they have LHD 914s there currently, but I don't see why that makes it "unlikely" that the conversion could have been done in Japan...

--DD

japs didn't need them to be right hand drive to be road registered.
all the 914s were sold left hand drive there.
there really is no conversion industry in japan.
its kind of a perverse status symbol thing to drive a left hand drive car.
plus speed limits are very low in most of japan so its not really unnerving or difficult to drive left hand drive.
but - key point - the light set up was right hand drive and all the indicators, running lights etc were identical to australia (and UK).
for some reason the conventions on J cars from the get go was the same as the UK standards between WW1 and WW2.

the peculiar thing about australia and other english colonial countries in south east asia was the prohibition on left hand drive vehicles. i believe it was the same in singapore, malaysia and hong kong. in all the english territories. i'm not so sure about NZ, think it was more relaxed as it relied more on less on fully importing cars so it was a bit freer.

its hard to know exactly why australia was so rigid about this until relatively recently but i suspect it dates back to the 1950s and 60s when there was no speed limit on country roads. unlimited speeds. but roads were narrow and two way undivided. i can tell you its pretty unnerving to drive at very high speed on narrow australian country roads left hand drive. and probably not really safe.

the key factor in the question of where the right hand drive 6 originated from lies with the status of the australian distributor with porsche themselves.
as i said google norman hamilton. he (and his son alan) enjoyed a favoured relationship. they were at the factory door before anyone else, even max hoffman.
the first right hand drive 356s were built for australia, not the UK. there were two of them. they are still here. same goes for the 911s. the first pre production rhd 911 came to australia. before the production lines even swung into full scale output.
i think the second of those was sent to the UK.

if anyone was exploring a right hand drive 914 it was alan hamilton and the factory would have been assisting.

i have not seen the second of the 914/6s that originally came here. its been in sydney since the 70s and i was always told it had been written off. its been rebuilt and restored and i have seen photos of it. that was converted here and it was done later than the other one. for a while it was left in left hand drive form and sat in the showroom in melbourne. after a couple of years it was switched over in the distributors workshop.
all done locally.

but the car that is still here in mebourne is completely different.
these days it does not look like it did back in the 70s/80s and early 90s.
Brian Clerihan who owned if after the distributor sold if from his collection in the early 90s redid the interior to do it "properly".
he installed a 73 interior with backpad and corrected the hand brake.
when he picked it up from the distributor in the early 90s it looked completely different.
356 centre pull hand brake under dash. little racing buckets, which when i think back were probably GT seats. no backpad. just fuzz carpet. similar to a GT. had a hand stitched dash. and some other very unusual features. not least the 4 speed box.

the reason for coming via japan was simple. it was the same reason the other car that came in left hand drive came in via the rome porsche dealer. it was to qualify them as second hand cars. back then all the importers had severe restrictions on the numbers of new cars they could sell in any year. the local car industry which manufactured here was very protected. if a hamilton had bought the assessment 914s as new cars it was 2 new 911s less on his import quotas. since neither car was originally intended to be sold to customers but were for assessment the importation was done as "used" cars.

we had a very developed car conversion industry in the 1950s and 1960s as both Ford and Holden (GM) used to bring in the big USA cars for their top of the line models.
Fairlanes, LTDs, Impalas, Pontiacs as LHD cars in many cases and then convert them under contract to small workshops. they were sold new in the showrooms of the Ford and Holden dealers as top of the model range cars.

conversion was a serious industry in australia and very few other places in the world.

thats why australians didn't hesitate to convert a 914 in the 80s and 90s.
mind you there were a lot more LHD MGBs done here at that time than 914s.
and also fiat 124 spiders. not to mention quite a few 930 turbos and general run of the mill 70s 911s. plenty of them still around now. easy to spot due to the indicator/marker lights in the bumpers. the 911 is not a difficult conversion to do.

its still on the go now with the end of australian car manufacture.
all the dodge RAMs come in LHD and are converted here.
officially with a factory warranty.
you cannot tell them apart from the LHD originals.
they can't sell enough of them at the moment. walking out the door.

the japanese just don't this - period.
they have never needed to.

i am serious about googling the hamiltons. father and son.
i know america likes to think it was #1 with porsche as a market.
and it was. in terms of a market.
but australia was in front.
the story is well known and documented in books, but you can also find details of the account on the internet if you look around.

try this link dave.

https://christophorus.porsche.com/en/2021/3...n-hamilton.html

looks like i was wrong about max hoffman being #2.
all the stories i got told was hamilton was in front.
aussies like to boast when it comes to yanks.
yanks being the international yardstick for us down here.

@Dave_Darling

this is the last time i saw the hamo 6.
went to a bit of a fun day at geelong back in 18.
a lot of b s has gotten in the way since then. covid blah etc.

luke wray who has a 914 himself and has a neat website called FUEL TANK must have been there. he has a whole lot of photos on his blog.

Click to view attachment

luke managed to take a sneak shot of yours truly getting out of my mate's speedster.
didn't know about luke at that time and didn't realise he'd taken a sneaky photo until i found this blog. unfortunately luke seems to have walked past the special hamo 6 countless times and failed to take a good photo of it, despite owning a 914. i remember this day because the very next week i pulled my 914 out of its lair where it had been under a cover for 16 years and got to work on it. took a year of a bit here and a bit there to put it back on the road. might have been the sight of the hamo 6 got me inspired to get it rolling again.

Click to view attachment

http://fueltank.cc/blog/porsche-hangar

i dug up a bit more for you @Dave_Darling from my files.

this is the other 6 that came in with the tangerine car.
came a similar way to aus dist. via another distributor in europe first.
was displayed in the melbourne motor show 1971 and was for a time kept in the showroom in south yarra on display. arrived lhd and stayed that way for a couple of years. was metallic red. disappeared off the face of the earth for 40 years.
its come back to life again and is in sydney.
(the tangerine car was originally a lot rawer in terms of its interior when compared to the lhd car here at the same time even though rhd).
from 71 until later in 74 these were the only two 914s in aus.
the two crayfords cars arrived in 74. both were 914 2.0s and had nothing to do with the distributor. both private imports those ones.

Click to view attachment


porsche australia set the rumour mill in confusion a while back when they posted this on their facebook. described the same car as metallic blue.

Click to view attachment

turned out some media type in porsche australia got the original b/w photo "updated" with colorization. photoshop jockey got it way wrong.

-------

but to give you some idea of the mad stuff alan hamilton used to get hold of and have stashed during his heyday.


there is this. paris auto show. 74 i think. or whenever it was.

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alan hamilton got hold of the paris car. exact car. from porsche.
had the RSR motor fitted to it by porsche when they finally made the engine and not a wood fake of it in the back. shipped it out. raced it i believe. lhd.
and then when he was finished with it, sold it off locally.

it looked like this for a while. note vic numberplates. thats melbourne.

Click to view attachment

some guy in the states has got it now.

Click to view attachment

the guy it was sold to after hamo finished with it racing was a mate of brian clerihan (who had the tangerine 6).
he converted the paris car to right hand drive.
no one knew the fark what any of these cars were. they were just cars.


----
hamo had other stuff. i was led to believe there was a 917 turbo can am car stashed in the shed at the farm when i went out with brian when he picked up the 6. might have been b c bullsh$ting. we were only allowed so far up the yard and told to go no further. the farm manager went the rest of the way and bought the 6 out. verbotten to see what was stacked up out there.

i still remember driving back with the car. we went out in bc's brown targa. which was a an american market big bumper converted to rhd. and i drove the targa back behind brian. after about 40 miles on the hume highway he pulled into a rest stop.
i pulled up behind. b c walked back to me. i remember what he said. "its a farken 4 speed. come and have a look". when we got it back to his place we spent about 4 hours looking all over and drank a few 6 packs to assist. we noticed the weird side wart light lenses then as i had the USA warts on my car. we didn't know what they were back then. i think b c got hold of brian johnsons book at some stage and we figured out they were J lenses.

the big mistake brian made was he didn't realise what he had at the beginning. he thought the conversion was a distributor workshop job done here. only much much later after he had "rectified" the handbrake and installed the 73 interior did it come to light that this one very likely was not done in melbourne. too late.

..

the other bit of key information was that alan hamilton spent almost the entire year in 1968 working at the porsche factory in germany. his father norman sent him there.
part of his apprenticeship before he took over the business.
1968 is the year they were putting all the early prototype 914s together and finishing off the cars. so alan would have had a very close behind the scenes look at the whole project. he knew what to get and how to get if from the factory.

i've got to hook up with the owners of the tangerine 6 again. stick a camera underneath it and take some photos for you. a lot of the interior is intact. b c never touched the dashboard or the pedal box area.

Came across this Outlaw Garage video on YT of a 914/6 RHD in Australia.

@wonkipop Is this you or do you know the guy?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8nkDFjMFug

no not me.

lives down the bayside somewhere here in my city.
but i don't know him.
have not run into him or the car.
but i think i saw this car about 20 odd years ago when it belonged to the person this guy bought it off.

Fun fact.

That silver 911 Turbo has the 1974 LE side stripes pretty sure it is the same car illustrated in Excellence Was Expected. 1st use of them that I know of.

The 1974 LE cars were developed in early 1974, with several different prototype side stripe graphics that never ended up on the production LE cars. This side stripe from the 73 Turbo was ultimately selected for USA and Japan market LE cars.

it is exactly the same car jeff.

it was obtained by the australian distributor alan hamilton back in the 70s and came here. lived in my city. funnily enough belonged to a mate of my late friend brian who owned the tangerine 6 (only factory rhd 914? - the mystery car). i saw that turbo mock up car when brians mate dropped around once to his place years and years ago when i was still a good looking young man,

it no longer had the drop out graphics etc and i understand it got somewhat hotted up by the factory before the aus distributor obtained it, enjoyed it, and then passed it on.

i'm not sure who restored it to the paris show color scheme. but it lives in the USA these days.

there is a japanese guy not far from me here with a few cars in his little cafe/restaurant.
one of them is a silver turbo with a "homage" color scheme to the paris show car.
i should go and get a photo of it. looks fantastic.

oh yes - forgot to mention.
the paris show car got converted to rhd by brian's mate in typical cavalier aussie fashion.

dunno if that has been rectified these days with its stateside owner.
but it was rhd when i saw it.