Richard Attwood gets behind the wheel of an original 914/6 GT
We head to the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone and, courtesy of Export 56, witness 1970 Le Mans-winning Porsche driver, Richard Attwood taking to the wheel of chassis number 914 143 0137, one of the very few works development 914/6s, now restored to its full M471 ‘GT’ specification
Mick Pacey is the enthusiast’s enthusiast: he founded Export 56 in the early 1990s to deal in his passion, older Porsches, and explains his penchant for the slightly oddball 914. ‘As a teenager, I had hopes of playing soccer. My father played for England and scored a goal in the 1959 FA Cup Final, I was an England schoolboy and I played professionally for my home club, Luton Town. But my career didn’t come to anything at senior level and the club and I parted company. My greater passion was always Porsches, but I couldn’t afford a 911, but I did have enough to buy a 914.’
That was in 1978 and since then scores of 356s and early 911s have passed through his hands, but also a few 914 and 914/6s. ‘I have always had a soft spot for the 914/6 and I suppose we’ve restored about a dozen of them over the years. The 914 and the 914/6 share most parts, much like the 912 and the 911, the exception the sixes run the Porsche engines.
‘I had known of this 914/6, #143 0137 for some years: it was an early works development car which did not compete although it has its Fia-approved factory homologation papers; the next three chassis numbers were allocated to the Monte Carlo cars. I knew this car had never been dismantled, had had two owners since Porsche and as it wasn’t a million dollar purchase. When it became available, I acquired it. I had a customer building up an early Porsche collection (he purchased the Carrera 2 292 NOJ featured in CP #51 – Ed) and he agreeed with me that the 914/6 is a much under appreciated model. This one also has an exceptional pedigree.’
It certainly does, for besides its documented existence at Porsche, its two subsequent private owners over the next forty four years also maintained detailed historical records. Zuffenhausen kept the car until late 1972 when it was purchased by John Rulon Miller, an American based in Germany. He was also a 911 racer of some repute, competing regularly at the Nürburgring and attempting Le Mans four times, twice finishing 14th overall, in a 3.0 RSR entered by IMSA in 1976 and in Charles Ivey’s similar 911 in 1978.
Through contacts at Porsche he’d made as a racing customer, he acquired 914/6 #143 0137 in September 1972, mainly he said for his wife to use. The car had clocked up 28,000 km, though for what experimental or development work Porsche had used it, if not as general transport, is not clear. The car’s paperwork did specify that its engine number was
640001, the very first 914/6 flat-six built.
The Rulon Millers used the 914 regularly before settling in the UK in summer 1975, at which point the car, now showing 85,880km was registered with the correct age-related ‘P’ suffix. Sometime at the end of the decade, an engine rebuild included fitting 2.2 ‘S’ heads and ‘T’-spec cams, and boring from 80 to 84mm (to make 2195cc). The flat-six was given new main bearings and Weber carburettors. In the 1980s, a major body restoration was started, but never completed. The car went into storage for ten years and it was at this point that the third owner Mike Smith acquired it.
In the small world that was Porsche forty years ago, fellow 914/6 owner Smith had met Rulon Miller, probably through the Porsche Club, and so knew his car. Fifteen years later Smith decided he wished to own a 914/6 again and approached Rulon Miller, thus acquiring a partially dismantled 914/6, much of which was in accompanying boxes. Mike Smith observes:
‘When I bought the car in March 1997, it was a roadgoing 914/6 with no GT parts, and completely stripped. Initially I attacked the restoration with gusto and spent ten solid days blasting the bodyshell with plastic media. I noted that apart from a few repairs and the normal corroded boot panel, the shell needed very little further repair. But these restorations are always very time consuming and I was diverted into other projects.’
In fact it was 2013 before #143 0137 emerged from its dust sheets for renovations to be completed by a third party. Although correctly finished now to 914/6 GT specifications and duly Fia-homologated, Smith, now more than fifteen years into his 914/6 project, ended up using it very little and was receptive to an offer from Mick Pacey’s Export 56.
‘The car had been very correctly restored to 914/6 GT specification with Bilstein dampers and springing, and modified bodywork,’ says Pacey, ‘and it seemed a shame it wasn’t being used. The 914/6 was always a very nimble package, particularly with the works-spec stiffened body and I always felt these cars were underrated from the beginning, the poor relation of the 911.’
He has a point. Porsche did have plans for a second generation 914 with larger engines, but these were abandoned when a change of management at VW meant Wolfsburg no longer supported the project: air cooling and rear engines were out and the Golf (and its sporty offshoot the Scirroco) were already on the drawing board.
Porsche found itself paying Karmann full rather than a subsidised price for the bodies, making the 914/6 uncomfortably close to the 911T at retail level. The upshot was that the 914 lost impetous and only a handful of 2.7 914/6s was made to special order. The larger engine would never make it into production and
“I ALWAYS FELT THESE CARS WERE UNDERRATED…”
by 1973 Porsche was clearing the ground anyway ready for production of the 924.
Today, #143 0137 is probably the most original surviving works car. It is currently running a 911R type engine with twin-plug ignition and 904 fan. This is the correct unit for historic racing, and this does not impugn 0137’s originality because the works cars were, as documented, never allocated specific engines. Indeed this car has had at least three different engines fitted over the years and the orginal unit, 640001, remains with the car, accompanying its extensive history file.
The Works 914/6 GTS
As Karl Ludwigsen puts it, marketing the Vierzehner (the ‘fourteener’) would need all the help from competition success it could get, yet on the other hand, Porsche’s engineers were keen to show what they could do with this midengined car. Preparations for competition 914/6s began in early autumn 1969 and ultimately twelve works GTS would be built by the following summer.
These comprised three prototypes and test cars (the third of these was #143 0137), two Targa Florio cars, three Marathon de la Route cars (by then an 84 hour endurance event at the Nürburgring), three Monte Carlo cars and one RAC rally car.
The GT conversion had substantial reinforcement at the rear chassis, and the suspension incorporated stronger front wishbones and rollbar at both front and back, unlike the production car which had neither as standard. On track-destined versions the ride height was reduced to four inches and negative camber increased.
For the body, Plexiglass replaced side and rear windows and glassfibre bumpers took the place of the steel production items. A wider engine lid grille covered a two-litre twinplug flat-six,numbered 901/25 and derived largely from the 210bhp 911R unit. Weber carburettors, cylinders with chrome bores, forged connecting rods and a specific crankshaft with additional counterweighting completed the specification. With a 10.3:1 compression ratio, the 901/25 was rated at 220bhp. An additional oil cooler was mounted at the
“PROBABLY THE MOST ORIGINAL SURVIVING WORKS CAR…”
front, as was a larger capacity fuel tank.
914/6 GTS were offered with the full M471 racing option. These were assembled by Bauer at Cannstatt on the east side of Stuttgart and finished off at Zuffenhausen. Just 47 were built. An unknown quantity of 914/6s were also sold with dealer-fit M471 kits.
Of the original twelve works cars, two were scrapped, one of which was the Monte Carlo car driven by Björn Waldegård, the car allocated to Andersen was sold to Recaro and converted to the ONS Nürburgring rescue car driven by Herbert Linge, while the third test car, 914 143 0137, is the subject of this feature.
The 914/6 GT’S competition record ended up being short, in Europe at least, but the Vierzhener still made a fair impression. The first outing was in May 1970 at the ADAC 1000km where four 914/6 GTS finished 19, 20, 21 and 23rd, and second in the 2000cc class. At Le Mans a few weeks later a Sonauto-entered 914/6 GT finished sixth overall, an outstanding achievement, the car immortalised in the Steve Mcqueen film, Le Mans.
Porsche’s thorough organisation saw its three Marathon de la Route cars finish one-two-three ahead of shoals of 911s and BMWS in an event where a mere 23 of 64 starters finished. By contrast the 1971 Monte Carlo Rally was less successful. Run in heavy snow when Porsche had counted on dry tarmac, and hampered by the 914/6’s cramped cockpits, which had insufficient space for all the rally paraphernalia, the midengine Porsche 914/6 lost to the nimbler Alpine. Afterwards Waldegård grumbled that through the special stages he could have gone ten seconds quicker in a 911S.
A 914/6 GT was tested at the 1971 Targa Florio, but not entered and at Le Mans that year the only 914/6
GT, a Swiss private entrant, failed to finish. The 914/6’s competition career was largely over although American teams raced them extensively in the US for the remainder of the 1970s.
Richard Attwood’s impressions
The Porsche 914/6 GTS were built at the same time as the 917 which Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann famously drove to Porsche’s first Le Mans Victory exactly fifty years ago. These days, Attwood is an instructor for Porsche, working mostly at the Experience Centre at Silverstone.
‘Of course, Porsche recruited me to drive the 917, not these,’ he explains, climbing into the cockpit of 914/6 #143 0137, ‘but I do remember them. In 1971 I tested one on the Targa Florio circuit, but the car
wasn’t entered in the race itself’
The fixed seat of this competition 914/6 is set a couple of inches further from the wheel than Attwood would like, but he quickly adjusts the four-strap harness and makes himself comfortable. The Wolverhampton man was renowned for his ability to drive at the highest speeds yet always staying within the mechanical limits of the car. Leading the 1969 Le Mans 24 Hours, the 917 Attwood was sharing with Elford expired with a fractured bellhousing after 22 hours while the latter was at the wheel. Attwood blames his teammate (‘Vic always drove as if it was a ten-lap race’) and chose the veteran Hans Herrmann as his partner for the 1970 event. The pair’s victory was in large part due to their skill at conserving the car through heavy rain and exceptionally hazardous conditions which saw off many more impetuous competitors.
That smoothness is immediately apparent as
Attwood takes the 914/6 on to the Porsche circuit, gradually increasing his speed around this tight loop of almost a mile. Deliberately designed to be slow as most users are Porsche neophytes, the track has six quite significant corners and no more than a 250-yard straight. After three laps Attwood is circulating at a steady seven/eight-tenths. Third gear suffices for the whole lap, minimum revs falling to 2900 on the tighter bends, though even at this speed the torque is more than adequate, he feels. On the short straight revs rise to 5900rpm before the last corner.
‘It’s not understeering or oversteering. By comparison, the SWB 2.0-litre 911 used in the historic championship is very oversteery, although that’s running on period-correct cross plies.’
The 914/6 is shod with Michelin TB radials which unsurprisingly offer rather more grip, but the main reason for its superiority is the position of its engine. From the passenger seat the cornering speeds seem extraordinarily high, but there is no sensation of lateral movement from the tyres. To outside observers, though, Attwood is clearly lifting an inside front tyre exiting the two tightest corners.
Although Richard Attwood has probably driven a thousand laps here, from the passenger seat his corner lines and entry and exits points, lap after lap are visually identical, as are the engine speeds visible on the large diameter rev counter. That Le Mans pedigree, the metronomic regularity is still apparent. This 914/6 quietly impresses him: ‘It’s good – properly set up, well balanced,’ he remarks as we pull off the circuit. ‘It’s torquey and it really does feel like 200 horsepower.’