I lived for over 20 years a half mile from the Bob's Big Boy restaurant with car service in Burbank, CA, where the S. California Classic Car Club has their weekly meet up and show case. Every single friday night, a dream series of amazing autos and the fanatics that keep them running show up and bait everyone with their jewels. My dad was a car dealer and I grew up with him restoring classics, so I know the dedication they require. Yet, a half dozen times I nearly talked myself into buying one of those beauties on the spot. Closest I came was a running, but yet to be fully restored Model A that some 50's teen made a hot rod. That 50's teen was the old man selling the car after it sat in his backyard for 40 years. Walking way from that was very difficult.
A few things to know before stealing my 914
51–60 of 428 posts
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#52> Depress the clutch as you would in any car, and pull the knob from its secure location out of first gear. Now you will become adrift in the zone known to early Porsche owners as “Neverland” and your quest will be to find second gear. Prepare yourself for a ten-second-or-so adventure. Do not go straight forward with the shift knob, as you will only find Reverse waiting there to mock you with a shriek of high-speed g…
The Deuce and a Half has an even more interesting one, just when you think you've figured out the dog-leg you find the last two are reversed again.
HN supports shift pattern unicode!
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Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#53He 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…
There's a difference between bad cars and hilariously bad cars. The OG Chrysler minivan was historically significant. I respect people who still use them as work vehicles, or people who embrace the hacker mentality to turn them into something they weren't originally (there are a few minivan dragsters). But they aren't celebrated as great driver's cars.
A better comparison to the Porsche 914 would be an MG roadster - or if you want to stick with Chrysler, then a Dodge Omni GLH. By modern standards both of these are unreliable, uncomfortable, and hard to drive, but like the 914 they are celebrated by enthusiasts. Part of the reason is because despite their flaws, and despite being relatively hard to drive, they reward skill. While slow to accelerate, they handle well - allowing a skilled driver to make good lap times on a track.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#54So, apparently there is no mandatory vehicle inspection in the US. Of course there isn't, it would violate the freedom to drive with an unroadworthy car.
When it comes to bad things that happen on the road mechanical condition is a rounding error compared to things people knew were risky and did anyway. I see no reason we should invest more than a token amount of societal effort chasing the long tail like that.
The fact that you start your comment with "in the US" when anyone even slightly familiar with the place knows that pretty much everything about it is a state by state deal is a massive red flag for a comment that serves no purpose but to convert pearl clutching into internet virtue points. The fact that you end your comment with a back handed quip deriding some imagined notion of freedom more or less confirms it.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#55I used to bother with mechanical junk like this when I was younger. I bought 10 cars under $1000 and repaired everything from shattered valvetrain to clogged fuel filters. These days if I wanted to drive a junk car with a good brand I would LS swap it and call it a day. It's more important to treat cancer before it metastasizes unlike the hospice care this person is giving that car. It troubles me to see people suffering with total junk just because it has a brand association.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#56Can I just say this is such a lovely site design. fast, clean and very readable. Bravo!
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#57My first car was a 68 Mustang, which was a gorgeous heap of junk. At one point, the clutch just completely gave up and wedged itself in the “engaged” position. To get the car moving, I had to kill the engine, put it in 1st gear, and turn the key to run the starter. This pulled the whole car into enough motion to get the engine going, then I could synchro shift all I wanted until it came time to stop again. For that c…
I had a car where the shifter broke to the automatic transmission - it was simple enough to bypass the neutral safety switch and then I could just leave it in Drive all the time. Just had to make sure if parking to park on an incline if I wanted to be able to roll back out of the parking space.
Eventually I cut a hole in the floor and welded a shifter direct to the transmission.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#58Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#59As someone who drove a 1972 Westfalia for ~10 years this had me laughing to myself multiple times in agreement.
I was gonna say, I took a long road trip in a 1971 VW microbus and this was triggering some memories. Especially the description of finding the gears!
Yes the gears! The amount of "play" in the gearbox was insane. Couple that with the like 3 foot long stick handle and IN GEAR I could wiggle the stick in a like foot wide circle.
Once you had driven it for a while you got to know the "feel" of it and had no problems, but like in the article someone new to driving it would have had a really hard time lol.
Re: A few things to know before stealing my 914
#60> Depress the clutch as you would in any car, and pull the knob from its secure location out of first gear. Now you will become adrift in the zone known to early Porsche owners as “Neverland” and your quest will be to find second gear. Prepare yourself for a ten-second-or-so adventure. Do not go straight forward with the shift knob, as you will only find Reverse waiting there to mock you with a shriek of high-speed g…
The Deuce and a Half has an even more interesting one, just when you think you've figured out the dog-leg you find the last two are reversed again. HN supports shift pattern unicode! Ⓡ②⑤ |–|–| ①③④
If that sounds crazy, it is. The M35 2 1/2 ton truck shift pattern:
https://live.staticflickr.com/4130/5082855966_efbf3c3f00_c.j...
Also, odd, but the Citroen M35 has a similar name and shift pattern, even though it's a car and completely unrelated.
https://ranwhenparkeddotnet.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/m352...
