This page is a collection of answers to questions you may not have asked.
How many 914/6s were built?
According to Porsche, 3360 production 914/6s and 916 prototypes were built between late 1969 and the end of 914/6 production in 1972. If you take the highest VIN for each year as the number of 914/6s built for that year you end up with 2668 built in 1970, 434 built in 1971, 260 built in 1972. This adds up to a total potential production run of 3362 cars. It is clear that Porsche started numbering production each year with chassis number 11 so you can subtract 10 from each of the three years of production reducing the potential 3362 down to 3332. There were also a very few 914/6s made after the official end of production for friends of the factory. Nothing has ever been published as to exactly how many that was.
Then there is the question as to how many were actually sold. Like all manufacturers, Porsche used a small number of cars for engineering purposes, crash testing, durability testing, testing potential future modifications and the like. Typically these are used for their engineering purpose then destroyed when no longer useful. There were also a few factory race cars and test cars that were crashed and destroyed. Other race cars used by the factory were sold off when they were no longer needed. It is also not unreasonable to expect that there might be two or three 914/6s lurking somewhere in the bowels of the Porsche museum storage areas that were used for some design study or engineering test and never sold. The number used for factory purposes which were never sold is probably a small number but cannot be known exactly. Also, there is the possibility that a 914/6 used as a demonstrator at a dealership could have been destroyed in a customer crash. The point here is that the number that were actually sold to customers is something less than the total number built, less than the 3360 that is generally accepted as the number built.
It is generally accepted that 1788 of these cars (approximately 53%) were shipped to North America with the rest being sold around the world. New information indicates that the real number sold in the USA was 1785 with the first car being delivered to a customer in March of 1970 and the last sale of a 914/6 as a new car taking place in February 1977. October 1970 was the month where the most 914/6s were delivered to customers in the USA.
How many 914/6s are left?
How many of these wonderful cars have survived the almost 50 years since their introduction? Currently my database has about 1800 unique VINs very few of which are for cars that have been destroyed. This is about 53% of all 914/6s ever built depending on which production number you use from the above discussion. Most of the cars I have information on were originally sold in North America. It has only been since the advent of the internet in the late 1990s that I have been able to find much information about cars outside North America. Every year somewhere between 30 and 40 new VINs turn up in various advertisements and web sites. Most of these are in the US but also lately many from Europe and around the world.
There is no definitive answer but my best guess is that there are somewhere between 60% to 70% of all 914/6s ever built are still surviving somewhere around the world in some condition. This could mean somewhere between 2016 and 2346 914/6s are still out there somewhere in the world in running condition or not. Any estimate of how many are left will be just that, an estimate, a best guess.
One that didn't survive
914/6 Photo Survey
In early 2015, I did a survey of the 914/6 photos that have been collected as part of this project. Most of the photos used in the survey were found on the internet, some were photos of 914/6s that I took at various events over a long period of time. This survey was done to get some answers to the very specific questions shown below. The sample size for all the percentage calculations was 498 914/6s. Only photos of cars with 914/6 VIN numbers were used in this survey. The results below cannot be considered exact but are reasonable approximations.
How many 914/6s are race cars or track prepared?
The 914 has always been a pretty good race car. From their earliest days these cars have successfully made their impression on the race tracks of the world and continue to be raced competitively in old timer events today. Part of the photo survey was to do a count of the number of race cars and track prepared cars vs street cars. The question here immediately becomes what is a race car and what is not. Some cars are obviously dedicated full up race cars while others are less obvious and may only be prepared for occasional use on track in a non competitive event.
For the purpose of this count anything with any kind of rollbar in it was considered to be a race car or track prepared. According to the observations of the photos in the database, about 28% of all 914/6s are dedicated race cars or track prepared. This was quite surprising to see such a high percentage of cars prepared for track use but it is a reflection of the sporting nature of the car. Due to the age and character of the car and the people likely to own one, it is my guess that it would be difficult to find a 914/6 that hasn't been on an autocross track or race track at some point in its life.
How many 914/6s have fender flares?
Flared fenders are a pretty common sight on 914s of all varieties. As part of the survey, a tally was kept of cars with flared fenders vs cars without flares. Wide body vs narrow body. Amazingly, about 54% of all the 914/6s in my photo collection have flared fenders. All but a very few of the flares are the 914/6 GT style.
Narrowbody cars with slightly rolled fenders were not counted as having flares.
What is the distribution of colors?
Another question the survey was able to answer was the approximate distribution of colors. What percentage of cars are in which colors?
For this survey there was no attempt made to verify that the car color was a correct factory color or that it was not a color change. For example, some of the red cars looked to be Guards Red, not one of the correct 914 red colors. If it looked any shade of red, it was counted as red. Both Irish Green and Metallic Green were counted as Green. Some of the black cars were obvious color changes but were counted as black even though black was not on the factory color chart for 1970.
Cars in the OTHER categorey were mostly cars painted in two colors where it was not possibe to determine from a poor quality photo or two which color was the primary color. There were a few dark gray cars and brown cars and a few other odd ball colors in this category also. Cars that were in primer were not counted.
There was no consideration given for the quality of the paint. Many photos showed concour quality cars with concour quality paint. Other photos showed rusted 914/6 shells with body panels in several colors. For these cars the color on a part of the chassis that would be unlikely to have been replaced was used as the color of the car. Sometimes it took careful examination of poor quality, low resolution photos to make a determination of what color a car might be.
- 19% -- RED
- 13% -- WHITE
- 12% -- YELLOW
- 12% -- ORANGE
- 12% -- SILVER
- 10% -- BLUE
- 9% -- BLACK
- 7% -- GREEN
- 5% -- OTHER
There appeared to be no large blocks of cars all in the same color. It was uncommon to find two cars with consecutive VIN numbers in the same color.
This survery was originally done in Jan 2015 and at that time the sample size was 498 cars. In Dec 2017 I updated this survery again but this time the sample size was 821 cars. There were very minor changes to the color distributions due to the larger sample size. Changes to the color distributions from the first survey were in the 1% range.
Remember, the numbers above are at best good approximations and are based on a sample size of the 821 different 914/6s that I had photos of for this color survey.
Last Update February 2021