My 73 came with white headlight surrounds and since I am totally redoing it, white wouldn't look good with the color I am going with. I have read some of the topics on white surrounds, and decided that maybe I shouldn't paint them. Are the white ones really becoming rare ???? Should I just shop around for a pair of black surrounds or go ahead and spray my white ones black???

The white surrounds were used on at least the first two years, maybe the first three. So, close to half of all of the 914s made came stock with white surrounds. I'd say this doesn't qualify as "rare". I've seen the hoohah over them on the CW forum, and frankly just don't understand it.

I think the big ta-doo is the fact that most of the white ones got painted black or some other color. Finding clean white ones is getting difficult for six and early 4 restoration.

I send my set to Eric Shea for his car

I can't imagine anyone getting into much of a fuss about white vs black...they are only visable when the lights are up, ie, in the dark...

Like a lot of 35 year old parts, especially plastic and rubber, these parts are hard to find in good condition. If your parts are in really nice condition, please sell them to someone who needs them. If you want black parts, purchase them. If you want to paint some other color find some less stellar examples. That tends to help everyone. Of course, you are entitled to do your own thing.

This piece of advice is brought to you by the committee to preserve as much as much unobtanium as possible.

The rarity is because most of them didn't get removed before the 914 got "scheibed" and so most of them have overspray on them. They are also not available new. So to find them you have to either find a car with original paint, or find one where the PO was smart enough to take them off before the respray. I prefer black, so I sold my white ones on ebay a long time ago. I got enough to buy new black ones.