The Porsche Museum in Stuttgart Germany keeps 800 cars in its collection. Of those, some 600 are kept in running condition, able to be driven with just the turn of a key. The collection houses everything from the very first ever Porsche, to nearly new keepsakes just a few years old and everything in between.
If you could drive anything from this divine collection what would you pick? Would you choose the limited edition 2016 Porsche 911 R? Go classic with a 1972 Carrera 2.7 RS? Or maybe something from the fabulous 1980s like a 930 Turbo or a brawny 928 GTS? Well, I happened to be in this enviable position and I walked right past all those legendary cars and kindly asked Porsche for the keys to a lowly 914. The four cylinder version.
From the day it launched in late 1969, the 914 has been something of an outcast. The spectre of its supposed Volkswagen lineage has kept prices low even to this day while air-cooled 911 and 912 prices have surged dramatically. Many people contest that it was truly responsible for the Lamborghini Miura’s beautiful design but amusingly, none have stepped forward to claim the 914’s unique design as their own. The 914 also looks a little odd, to be frank. It was one of the very first affordable mid-engine cars ever made and stylists were still trying to figure out the new proportions that this drivetrain dictated. It was also the result of an unusual design brief which requested that the 914 look different from any Volkswagen or Porsche model that had come before. Well, mission accomplished on that front.
The 914 certainly stands out among other Porsches. Even in the Porsche Museum’s own garage, the 914 looks a little out of its depth. When I arrived to pick up the car, they had it parked next to a 1963 356B/2000GS Carrera 2 GT Dreikantschaber (quite the name) and a 1,000 horsepower twin-turbo 917-10 race car. See what I mean about this being the overshadowed Porsche? On any given day, technicians in the Porsche Museum workshop are tuning wrenches on some of the rarest, most significant, and most valuable Porsches ever made. Unless someone requests to drive a 914.
The workshop boss walked me through the quirks of the car. “We don’t get a lot of requests to drive this one,” he told me. He explained that the dogleg shift pattern put first gear down and left with reverse located top left and that this can be confusing. Some people have confused the unlabeled heater control lever as a parking brake before but he said, “It’s pretty easy to drive” overall. In the museum’s loading bay, I took some warm-up laps with the car to get used to the odd shifter and clutch before heading out into the real world to see what this little car was like to drive, as well as learn if the negative press was deserved.
Plop yourself down into the black (but tan was optional) vinyl cabin of the 914 and you simply cannot fathom how a car of this exterior size has so much room inside. The mid-engine layout means the interior can have an almost perfectly flat floor and the lack of a centre console (the console being another optional extra) makes the area feel even more open. The seats are low, snug, and have only vestigial bolstering. In order to not flop over when cornering hard, you have to brace your left knee on the door. If you are turning hard to the left, well, then just hold on tight and good luck.
How does the 914 drive?
And you will be cornering hard because handling is what the 914 does best. Despite its modest tires, the 914 grips through turns like a much more modern car. On a beautiful two-lane road outside of Stuttgart, I had the opportunity to drive the 914 up and down this hillside as briskly as I pleased. The mid-engine layout makes the 914 drive differently than pretty much any other classic car I’ve driven before. The Lotus Europa was also mid-engined and affordable but compared to those, the 914 is much more spacious and feels more like a “real car.”
The weight split is slightly rear-biased at 45.9% front and 54.1% rear but the headline feature is that the central engine reduces the polar moment of inertia, which is nerd speak for how easy something can change direction. The 914 seemed to pivot directly under the driver’s seat. You can stab it into a corner and just feel the chassis load up and haul you out the other side. It can pull 0.82 lateral Gs which is honestly mid-pack amongst its contemporaries (an MGB can do 0.80) but the way it’s delivered is much more confidence-inspiring. I would call the 914 the best-handling classic car I have ever driven. It just felt so neutral, predictable, and trustworthy. You can corner harder in this car than most classics because of its predictable handling characteristics.
What powers the Porsche 914?
That said, you won’t be pulling many G’s in the acceleration department. Located low, in the centre of the car is a barely visible 1.8L air-cooled flat four engine. Porsche 914s came with this same basic engine in 1.7, 1.8, and 2.0 litre forms over the years. Our 1974 car uses twin downdraft carburetors but North American models would have used a Bosch fuel injection system due to emissions regulations. Many will call this a Beetle engine and with a sneer, but that would be incorrect. The 914 uses the “Type 4” Volkswagen engine which was also used in the 411, the 412, and the “bay window” buses from 1972 onwards but not in the Beetle. The engine generates 85 horsepower and makes the familiar VW clatter while doing so. It’s not a huge headline figure but on a section of de-restricted Autobahn, the 914 had no problem holding 100 mph. However, the zero to 100 km/h time is a little less dramatic, taking around 11-12 seconds.
Most 914 haters focus on the oddball looks or the double-digit horsepower rating but what they could be rightfully hateful about is the shift linkage. The shifter is the Achilles heel of an otherwise fabulous driving experience. The problem is that the 914 basically uses a Porsche 912 transaxle turned backwards. Thus the shift linkage needs to go from the lever in the cockpit, past the mid-mounted-engine, all the way to the tail of the transaxle just ahead of the rear bumper! Any linkage with more twists and turns than a James Bond plot is going to feel strange. The five-speed is already a dogleg pattern, which is unfamiliar to myself and most drivers, and add to that that there is almost zero positive feedback to let you know that you are in the correct gear or that you have selected a gear at all. It means you kind of have to second guess every gear shift you make and speed-shifting isn’t really possible. I suppose if you owned this car you could eventually master the quirks of the shifter but it is a noticeable drawback to the car.
You might think that the shoddy shift quality of our test car was a result of poor condition but our test car was not a restored car, but actually an original low-mile example in incredible condition. At the time I drove it, this 914 had covered just 20,000 km. This is about as close as anyone could come to driving a brand new 1974 Porsche 914. Interestingly, this car was previously owned and driven by Horst Marchart, who was one of the minds behind the Boxster program. I have to imagine that he spent a few drives home from work in this 914 as he thought about the eventual successor. The Boxster would go on to be a commercial success for Porsche rivalled only by the Cayenne SUV a few years later. Unlike the 914, the Boxster had a six-cylinder engine as standard and graceful styling which looks good even today. A good used Boxster is much more valuable than your average 914 but if I had to buy a Porsche with my own money, I know which one I’d choose.
At the end of the day, I parked the 914 right in front of the Porsche Museum on the front patio. A group of Porsche Club of America members were just returning from an assuredly spirited drive at the same time. Parked next to all the various candy-coloured 911s and 718s, the 914 was once again, seemingly overshadowed. Kai Roos from Porsche Communications commented to me that it was a busy year for media requests to drive classic models. Most were for the 930 Turbo as 2024 is the 50th anniversary of the Porsche 911 Turbo. Across 15 years, Roos said that he estimates the 914 has been requested for drives just 10 times. As they wheeled it back into the museum, I felt very happy to once again give the humble 914 its moment in the sun.
Is it a Volkswagen or a Porsche?
Based on a handshake agreement between the bosses of Porsche and Volkswagen at the time, the 914 was designed by Porsche for VW. The idea was that Porsche (the company) would be paid for its design work, and Volkswagen would cover the cost of tooling a factory to build the car. Afterwards, the four-cylinder versions would be sold as Volkswagens and Porsche would be free to sell six-cylinder versions under its famous crest, piggybacking off VW’s tooling investment. In this way, the 914 was planned to be the successor for both the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and the Porsche 912.
However, the deal fell apart when the Volkswagen boss who made the handshake deal, Heinrich Nordhoff, died and his successor, Kurt Lotz, wanted no part of the previous agreement which had never been on paper. This left the much smaller Porsche company with a mostly-completed sports car for which they had to foot the expensive bill of tooling up a factory to produce it. (They eventually selected Karmann for this.) Because of this, the cost of the 914 was drastically above expectations, even for the humble four and this deeply hindered sales of the six-cylinder model.