I was checking my alerts tonight and happened back on this thread and reread the reactions to my post about the unusual Brumos 914/6 livery. And I realized that I am a racing elitist. I worship at the altar of F1, IndyCar and high-powered prototypes vying for overall victories, but usually totally ignore the many "lower" classes in multi-class sports car racing. Classic Le Mans races are a perfect example, where I can go on and on with details about the Ferraris and Maseratis and Jaguars and Fords battling at the front while relegating the MGs and CDs and Tojeiros sometimes performing equally amazing efforts at significantly slower speeds to mere rolling chicanes.
For instance, I learned about Max Moritz Racing because of the research I did into my Exoto Porsche 934/935 set of MMRs Jägermeister-sponsored cars. But I almost completely ignored that team's entry into racing was via the Porsche 914/6 - despite the fact that that car was the first racing car to bear the legendary J-meister orange livery (the first pic in that set's history is of that car, as a matter of fact):
Max Moritz Racing 914/6.
So tonight, after I noted Jon's simple statement ("I'd buy this"), I did my due diligence - and started my research. And I realized how little I knew or cared about this car and so many others sharing its more humble origins:
Ferdinand Piëch, legendary Porsche sports R&D head, was in charge of the 914 project, intended to be a joint VW/Porsche effort to create a successor to the two companies' aging product lines. Initially the same chassis would be sold with a four-cylinder engine as a VW model and a six-cylinder as a Porsche, but it was decided that might confuse the U.S. market and reduce sales so both were sold as Porsches.
The prototype 914 debuted March 1, 1968, but the death next month of the VW chairman resulted in the verbal agreement between the two companies of sharing the model falling apart because of the replacement VW head, Kurt Lotz, who had no association with the Porsche dynasty. He saw the joint agreement as favoring Porsche since VW carried all tooling costs and backed out of it, forcing the pricing of the 914 chassis to skyrocket, destroying the foundation of the shared project. That ultimately shortened the production life of the 914 despite significant sales (outselling the 911 worldwide substantially).
From a purely racing point of view, the little car accomplished quite a bit. It was an instant hit with private and small-team racers worldwide and shows up in race results everywhere. For instance, in the 1971 24 Hours of Daytona, 914/6s finished 7th and 8th OVERALL (aided by substantial attrition, true, but still...). And the Brumos 914/6 whose picture I posted above in this thread? It won the new IMSA GTU season title, including winning three of the six races OVERALL against big-engined GTO competition. Now, granted, this was IMSA's first season and the competitor list pales compared to any of the subsequent seasons, but that still is noteworthy.
So HUZZAH to the Porsche 914/6 and the minnows it represents!