While Britain and Italy enjoyed great success during the 1960s with front-engined, four-cylinder, rear-drive sports cars such as the MGB and the recently revived Fiat 124 Spider, the Germans had done without. BMW was without such a machine entirely, and Mercedes-Benz retired the 190SL in 1963, replacing it with the more stately Pagoda. Meanwhile, elsewhere in greater Stuttgart, Porsche was cycling through variations on a theme at a furious pace. Air-cooled four-cylinders, sixes, eights, and eventually twelves?all horizontally opposed?powered the decade?s racing machines, while the road cars carried a varied collection of fours and sixes, mounted either behind the driver or behind the rear wheels.
The motley mix included evolutions of the VW-derived pushrod four in the 356 and the 912, as well as the fiendishly complex Fuhrmann four-cam race engine used in the 550 family, the 904, and the 356 Carrera models. Meanwhile, the recently introduced flat-six grew in power throughout the decade. VW?s new Type 4 pushrod flat-four saw duty in the 914 introduced for 1970, but the car proved more expensive to build than Porsche had planned. As a stopgap, the Hans Mezger?massaged two-liter version of the engine was stuffed into a 911 and sold as the 912E for 1976, but that was only to hold the line until Porsche?s first front-engined, liquid-cooled automobile was ready for sale later that year.
Like the 914, the 924 was originally developed for Volkswagen, which had recently purchased ...