In high school, my friends and I managed to resuscitate a 914 that had been stowed away in a garage for over a decade. We towed it to the top of a hill with a pickup truck and attempted a clutch start after we'd picked up some speed. None of us (especially me in the driver's seat) expected this to work, but amazingly it fired right up. One of my friends managed to jog alongside and jump into the car as I tried to keep it puttering along, and we ripped a few laps around the neighborhood. Soonafter, we stopped the engine and were never able to get it started again. Thanks for bringing up this memory. Cool article.
A few things to know before stealing my 914
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Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#12I get
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Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#13Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#14As someone who drove a 1972 Westfalia for ~10 years this had me laughing to myself multiple times in agreement.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#15Wow, I could write almost the same article about my '85 Westfalia Vanagon.
I was thinking exactly the same thing, except
① it was '83, not '85 (and thus air-cooled);
② it was an aftermarket camper van conversion with some slight design issues in the pop top, not a Westfalia;
③ after I rebuilt the engine a second time we sold it, so, blessedly, it's not mine anymore. My engine rebuild survived for a couple of years until the new owner drove it in second gear for an hour at highway speeds, overheating the engine to the point where it punched a pushrod through the crankcase.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#16Not loading to me anymore
https://web.archive.org/web/20220401144722/https://www.hager...
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#17Hilarious, and also such a fun tour of the quirks of this old car.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#18This remind me of how amazingly complex a modern car is in terms of making it easy to drive and how may iterations / how much evolution has taken place.
A friend of mine tweaked a sensor on his car and it wouldn't recalibrate, which disabled all of the electronic assists. It drives like a shopping cart now.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#19Reminds me of my first car, a Mini Clubman estate with the fake woody panels on the side. The only thing you needed to know was that it had been re-engined with a hill-climb tuned Cooper S engine. Great on an island with a 40mph speed limit and too many rich folk with Ferraris and the like, as it could out accelerate them anywhere on the island. Sure it wouldn't go faster than 50, but that was fine as it got to that speed almost instantaneously.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#20He could write pretty much the same article about owning an OG Chrysler minivan, which is arguably a more historically significant vehicle but built by a make that prompts sneers about reliability and credit scores from most here, and it would just be considered trashy or prompt pearl clutching by most of the readership. Amazing the breadth of preconceived notions that can be leveraged with a badge on a grill. Having…
You might be overanalyzing a bit. I think it really comes down to sports cars being cool & vans being…vans. All the “Porsche” part really does is get more clicks (because people know what it is).