Original color...

[Peter Zimmermann]

I was looking at a '74 914 recently. While checking it out I made a couple of interesting discoveries...

1. The car was black on black, and about a #3 driver; all in all, not too bad. Looking through the windshield, past the A pillar, the dash vinyl was pulled back (shrunk) just enough to see a little splash of orange peeking through. There is not a single trace of orange anywhere else on the car, including below the dash, except the inside lip of the glove box (at the glove box door) looked like it had been orange and had been blacked out. Is this normal? The inside of the front and rear trunks were clean, and black, with no evidence of orange anywhere. Were all 914s originally orange on the dashtop metal, prior to being painted and upholstered by the factory?

[Matt Monson]

There's actually been a number of different dash colors documented on original cars that have not been resprayed. I've seen a couple of explanations about why that is, but the short answer is that you likely were looking at an original black car that has always had orange under it's dash from day one.

[Peter Zimmermann]

Matt, thank you! I think that I knew about that back in the day, but then I started to think that I was hallucinating! I passed along the info as being OK, because I just couldn't form a picture in my mind of a relatively clean car having just the metal dash section replaced!

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

In fact, it seems to be a rare thing for the dash frame color to match the exterior color. It looks like they just sprayed the dash frames (out of the cars) with whatever color was in the sprayer already, then bolted them into the cars on the line after they dried.

--DD

[Peter Zimmermann]

Originally Posted by Dave at Pelican Parts

In fact, it seems to be a rare thing for the dash frame color to match the exterior color. It looks like they just sprayed the dash frames (out of the cars) with whatever color was in the sprayer already, then bolted them into the cars on the line after they dried.

--DD

Thanks, Dave, I guess that beats no paint at all! Pantera rear suspension frame and spring mounts come to mind...