Is this the quirkiest Porsche ever made?

It is certainly a Porsche you don’t see every day – a special version of the already scarce mid-engined, targa-topped 914. With the car you see here in Bonhams Spa Classic sale on May 21^st, here is your chance to own a car that not even the Porsche Museum has!

Collector cars don’t come much more sought-after today than limited-edition Porsches but this one has the advantage of coming in at the lower end of the price scale: Bonhams’ guide on the car is £25-42,000, with no reserve.

Worth it? In condition and provenance yes, for this car was extensively restored between 2015-17 and comes with all the required history including a Porsche Certificate of Authenticity. And any 914 is an interesting machine, if no 911. Indeed at its birth it was not even going to be a Porsche – the four-cylinder 914 (there was also a six-pot 914/6) was originally going to be badged as a Volkswagen.

Porsche did design the car (no less than Ferdinand Piech had a hand in it) for coachbuilders Karmann to build, but there is quite a lot of VW in it, including that four-cylinder engine. The original 1.7 was deemed too slow and a fuel-injected 2.0-litre, which this 1974 car has, quickly arrived. The engine still boasts only 99bhp…

For all its mid-engined sporting intent, independent suspension, all-round disc brakes and five-speed ‘box, a 914 like this one took almost 10 seconds to get from 0-62mph and was all out of puff by 118mph. It’s as far in the performance scale as you can get from the car this special edition model was meant to celebrate.

That would be the mighty Can-Am-dominating Porsche 917 whose turbocharged 12-cylinder engine put out about 15 times the power of the little 914. Linking the most powerful sports racer ever built with the 914 is not the most obvious marketing initiative, but it obviously did the trick because 500 specials were made and sold, primarily in the US.

And, yes, it was indeed called Bumblebee. Not because of any sting in the tail (914s probably handled better than 911s of the time) but because of its yellow and black paint job. It’s still a bit unfathomable since the Can-Am 917 racers were never yellow and black. 

As least it wasn’t called the Porsche 914 Creamsicle. That was the name (honest) of the previous special edition. We wonder if the Porsche Museum has one of those…?