The Best Ever early Porsche 911 is a .....Porsche 916

[marankie]

THE BEST EVER EARLY PORSCHE 911 is a ….PORSCHE 916.

A lot of Early 911S registry members are justifiably proud of their cars and consider them the best of all Porsches (certainly the air-cooled “real” Porsches) based on purity and simplicity of design, no frills, lightweight and outstanding performance. This was the time when a Michelin XWX tire in 185-70 -15 was considered to be the performance tire for a Porsche 911. But the 911 always had an Achilles heel in handling and (average ability) driver safety with its rear engine weight bias. The rear engine design originated out of packaging efficiency requirements, which was a compromise resulting from the VW heritage of Porsche. It was not until much later in its development that the 911, with its new “Weisach axel” and extra wide low section soft 5000 mile rear tires, that the over-steer snap of a 911 began to be tamed.

Porsche had always recognized that a mid-engined car provided a more responsive sportscar platform, (lower polar moment of inertia) and in-fact the very first Porsche car was mid engined, as of course are all of their race cars starting with the 550 Spider.
In the sixties and early seventies the benefits of mid-engined production sports cars was widely understood and promoted, (Lotus, Fiat, Ferrari Dino, Lambo, etc) and so Porsche designed their own mid-engined production sportscar, the Porsche 914-6. The chosen method to produce the 914-6 in association with VW created a mixed and misunderstood identity of the car; a high performance Porsche sportscar, together with a lower end economy sportscar, the “VW-914”. Gradually over time, this has now been rectified with the Porsche 914-6 getting its justly deserved performance reputation from dedicated enthusiasts, and also the VW-914 enthusiasts enjoying their cars, albeit on a lower performance level. It is worth remembering that Ferry Porsche and Piech both had a personal 914-8, which are now located in the Porsche museum. I am not aware of either of them having had personal 911s. Performance wise, in the 1970 running of Le Mans, a 914-6 GT came in 6th overall, (after the 917s) ahead of all 911s.

Their can be no dispute that in the early Porsche “long nose” 911 period, the best performing production Porsche was a Porsche 916. This was a Piech driven development of the 914-6, and 914-6GT. Most 916s were fitted with a 2.7 RS 210 DIN HP spec engines, and were complete with welded on roof panel for extra chassis rigidity, fully trimmed in luxurious leather, and with (wide at the time) 914-6GT wheels and tires. Because the 916 performance was considerably better than the 911S, Porsche feared that it would threaten their 911 line, and thus only made a limited production run of 11 cars. These were quickly snapped up by Porsche family members and friends. The Porsche 916 performance (146 mph, 6.7 seconds) and price met/exceeded the Ferrari Dino 246 (but unfortunately not its’ looks).

So next time you are at a car show or drive with your 911, and you end up next to a 914-6 or 914-6GT, give the car the respect that it earned in the early 1970s, for at the time its derivative the 916, was the best early production Porsche (911) ever.
Martin Jansen

[Jack]

For me, there is no «THE best Porsche ever»! It's the passion we put in that makes it «MY best Porsche ever». There is so much factors, elements and choices to consider.

But you are right when you say a 914-6 - whatever Porsche in fact - should be seen with more respect. Finally, it's the owner's love and passion who should be treated with more respect.