VW-Porsche 914

A new company has been formed in Stuttgart, known as the VW-Porsche Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH, or “VG” for short, and its job is to be responsible for marketing, distribution and publicity of sports cars developed by the two partners in the firm. These are Volkswagenwerk AG, Wolfsburg and the Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG, Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, and they have a 50/50 holding in the new company, of which von Hanstein of Porsche, is handling publicity. What it amounts to is that our old friends Porsche and Volkswagen have combined and the first offering is the new VW-Porsche 914, known as the 914 if it is powered by a Volkswagen engine and a 914/6 if it is powered by a flat-six Porsche engine. The important think about this new project is that at long last Porsche have produced a fully-equipped road car with mid-engine mounting. I say at long last, because for years and years they have been racing mid-engined sports cars, and some of them, in particular the RS Spyder and the 904, would have been splendid cars from which to develop a road going two-seater sports car.

The knowledge that has gone into this new and exciting sports car stems directly from the 911 series and the racing Porsche, so its road-holding and handling should be outstanding. As the diagrammatic view shows, the flat-six Porsche engine is mounted immediately behind the cockpit and there are luggage compartments fore and aft. The whole car is to the high standard of the 911 Porsches and the price in Great Britain will be over £3,000. The less powerful Volkswagen-powered version will naturally cost less and be less lavish, but even so it will do well over 105 m.p.h., while the 914/6 should do better than 120 m.p.h. The 911 series are continued in T, E and S form but on all three the engines have been enlarged to 2.2-litres by an increase in cylinder bore. The T is the “cooking” engined model, the E has fuel-injection and the S has a tweaked-up engine, giving 180 h.p. DIN.—D. S. J.