30 Days of Porsche: 1970 Porsche 914/6

Our first Porsche review the 1970 914/6

I think I speak for everyone when I say I was crushed when I heard the news that Porsche had been blocked by EA (Electronic Arts, who are famous for their Need for Speed and Madden Football games) from being included in Forza Motorsport 4.

For me Porsche was one of the reasons I converted from a Gran Turismo 4 fanboy to a Forza 3 fanatic. I loved the prospect of blasting around the Nurburgring Nordschleife in a Porsche 962 or driving the incredible Penske Porsche RS Spyder and chasing down the Audi R10's and Peugeot 908's at Sebring.

Not to mention Forza was the only game that could claim that it had 'The Big Three' supercar manufacturers; Lamborghini, Ferrari, and, of course, Porsche.

To compensate for the loss of Porsche, Turn 10 took a page from the Gran Turismo playbook and included three RUF's. For those of you who aren't aware, RUF is a German car manufacturer who builds supercars off of unmarked Porsche chassis. By including RUF, Turn 10 could still market 'Porsche-like' cars in their game and get around the EA embargo. I was pretty disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, I think RUF's are very cool cars, but, RUF has not won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and RUF does not have half a decade of fantastic cars to choose from.

Like the rest of you, I still bought Forza 4 and I still enjoyed the hell out of it, but there was still a void I felt was left unfilled.



Kicking up the dirt in my Penske RS Spyder at Laguna Seca

 That all changed when I was reading Jalopnik on March 5th. That's when I found out that Porsche would be returning to Forza. In the three months that followed I waited patiently with visions of 917's, 928's and 935's and all the other glorious Porsches dancing through my head.

Finally the month of May came and Turn 10 began revealing the 30 Porsches (23 from Forza 3 and 7 'NEW TO FORZA') and once again the dissapointment set in.

The '7 NEW PORSCHES' were quite disappointing, 4 ALMS Porsche GT3-RSR's (2 GTE and 2 GTC class cars), a stupid re-done SUV in the Cayenne, a Cayman-R (an actually new car), and a 911 GT2 RS.

No 917. No 928, No 935.

The 23 'old' cars were almost equally disappointing. No less than 5 more GT3 Porsches were included and two RS Spyders (yes they are my favorite Porsche but seriously we have a livery editor we don't need two of them...) and the fabulous 911 GT1 Strassenversion was cut from the line-up.

I never reconsidered ponying-up the 1600 MS points (1200 for VIP's like myself) but I couldn't help but feel as though the Porsche Expansion Pack was a missed opportunity...

...until I played it.

Blasting down the Mulsanne Straight at 245 mph in a re-modeled 962, tearing through GT2 traffic in my beloved Penske RS Spyder, and winnng online with my old A-Class shoe the 911 Sport Classic won me back. Forza 4 is now complete.

I have started this blog to share my love of Forza Motorsport with all of you and I figured now would be the best time to start it as everything is as it should be in Forza-land. For the next 30 days (God willing) I will be profiling each of the 30 cars in Porsche Expansion Pack, starting with the 914/6 and ending with the #16 RS Spyder. It should be fun and I hope you are along for the ride.



914 in its natural habitat



DAY 1: Porsche 1970 914/6

HISTORY

The Porsche 914 was a two seat, mid engined roadster created as a joint venture by Porsche and Volkswagen and was built from 1969 to 1976. The Porsche version of the car featured a flat-six engine producing 110 hp while the Volkswagen version had a flat-four that produced 95 hp. The car was MotorTrend's import car of the year in 1970 and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970 in the GTS class.

While it is not one of Porsche's more beautiful models it is an historic car and one of Porsche first true classic road cars.

FORZA STATS

Cost: 24,000 cr

Class: F/186

Engine Placement/Drivetrain: Mid-engine/RWD

HP: 125

Weight: 2,196 lbs

Speed: 3.1

Handling: 4.3

Acceleration: 4.9

Launch: 5.4

Braking: 4.2

Body roll from the old suspension

ROAD TEST
In stock form I was quite surprised to find that the 914 is a very balanced car.  I could throw it into the bends with ease and it stuck, for the most part.

The major place this car fails is when it loses grip it is ALL gone.

This car compares very well to a dog sitting on a porch. As long as you pet the dog in the right places the dog is very tame but pet him in the wrong place you get your had bitten off.

The car is very good when you drive it correctly and very bad when you drive it incorrectly.



Cornering correctly, the 914 is awesome to drive



The way to drive the 914 is to do all of your braking before your turn-in to the corner and guide it through before getting back on the throttle.

If you take a corner too fast or try and throttle through the corner the back end steps out and you spin.

This is a natural characteristic of older cars, their suspensions are hard and their tires have low grip, so I took it to the upgrade shop to see if  I could improve our 914.



Paint by: JBT manchzeck

UPGRADED ROAD TEST

When upgrading this car I decided to try and upgrade it to the top of its stock class, F. My goals starting out were to upgrade the things I thought were the biggest issues, the 40 year old tires and the wobbly suspension.

I was quite disappointed to find that any and all tire upgrades put the 914 in the E-class, so I worked on all the other handling parts I could. I gave the 914 a race suspension, race differential, race brakes, race front and rear anti-rollbars and new rims.

I then decided I would see how high I could put the 914 on the leaderboards so I started up a private hotlap session on Rally di Poistano.

There is really no good way to say this so I will just come out and say it... I ruined the 914.

The 914 went from having a tendency to understeer to massive oversteer. Every time I went into a corner it felt like the 914 wanted to crash into the nearby see, probably because it felt like its handling would be better suited as a boat.

My race-tuned  suspension was giving the tires gain even less grip than they had previously. My upgrading had been a Jeremy Clarkson style failure I thought I was smarter than Porsche's finest and failed (I kinda feel like RUF now).

My best lap of the session was a 1:14.950 which put me in the top 6% of the F class leaderboards, not too good...

I would suggest if you do upgrade the 914 try and shoot for E or D class because it just can't handle without proper tires.

Paint by: JBT manchzeck

This is the end of the first day of Porsche Month I hope you enjoyed it! Check back tomorrow for the next entry, the Porsche 550 Spyder.