You know how most things suck now? I mean, except this site, whatever cars you have, and, of course, you. Everything else, though? Crap. Unmitigated AI-debased crap. But I’m here to tell you it didn’t have to be this way! It could have all been different if one crucial change had been made. That change? Well, it’s a simple one, one that even an omnipotent child could make happen: send an extremely coked-up version of me back in time to take control of Porsche in the late 1960s so that the company could release a van based on the 914.
Now before you start to argue that this course of action wouldn’t help anything, let me just stop you right there; I’ve done the math. And not just normal math – math with letters and symbols and blobs of dripped mustard, the kind of ethereal math that makes more parochially-minded people do voluminous and violent spit-takes as they are confronted with the Sacred Trigonometry of my reasoning.
Here’s how it would work: this alternate version of me – a drug-addled demon so damaged and insecure that he wears drywall stilts at all times to mask his short stature and whose personal habits makes Hunter S. Thompson look like Cotton Mather – would materialize into the world around 1964, when the Porsche 914 was first being conceived, as a way to have one model that would replace Volkswagen’s top end (the Type 3-based Type 34 Karmann-Ghia) and Porsche’s bottom end, the four-cylinder 912. The car that would result from this venture was the Porsche 914.
That’s great and all, and while I’m fond of the 914, I realize it’s not enough to change the course of history for the better. But you know what would be? A van version of the 914! Alternate-universe coke-demon me would have proposed this to Porsche, and forced it into production with a combination of blackmail, violence, seduction, and, in at least one disturbing incident, cannibalizing a human finger. Look, I never said this alternative version of me was a good man! He is most definitely not. But he understands what must be done, and focuses on that task with single-minded madness.
The 914 van would leverage as much of the existing 914 design as possible, using the entire mechanical layout unchanged and much of the lower unibody, suitably reinforced. The front seat would be mounted atop the fuel tank, just aft of the front axle centerline, and the deep 914 front trunk would become the front seat footwells.
This is a three-row van, with the last two rows sharing a lower bench that would be placed atop the engine, with the rearmost row facing backwards, its footwell formed from the rear trunk of the 914. These rear seats would slide on rails fore and aft to fold flat into a long load floor that could be used for sleeping, too.
The design concept of the 914 would be retained, with pop-up headlights in the front (a first for a van, I think?) and retaining the lift-off targa roof from the center of the van, which could be stored in a slot on the floor of the second row area.
Would this van be strangely tall and perhaps a bit narrow? Most likely, yes! Does that bother me? No. Not even a little bit. Those people in that picture, for example, would be so much happier with a 914 van there than a conventional 914. They could be camping in that rocky valley in the comfort of their van, instead of sitting out there on the damp grass and rocks like a couple of yutzes, getting their jeans all muddy. They could be making sweet, sweet love and then sweet, sweet tea in that van instead!
This sporty van with pop-up headlights and a targa roof would have, as my math suggests, changed the direction of world culture, economy, and human civilization in general, culminating in a utopia around the year 2018. Remember the whole COVID mess? In this timeline, instead of a pandemic with a virus that made everyone sick, there would be two viruses: one, a computer virus that used unexpected new neutrino-math to change everyone’s bank balances to have a minimum of $9.14 million dollars, and a parallel biological virus that somehow made everyone 42% sexier and transmutated everyone’s bowels so that human waste was now a clean-burning fuel source.
Yes, all of this from just making a van version of the 914! I don’t pretend to understand how it all works; I just know that it does. Now, who has a functioning time machine, some drywall stilts, and a lot of cocaine? We need to talk.
Top graphic base image: Porsche
I think you’ve invented the T2 Type 2.
Fudgement Day!
There may be someone who could do a nice graphically accurate version and have the one image merge into the other.
I am all for a future/timeframe where everything is van
If everyone was 42% sexier, we’d all still be the same relative sexiness. This wouldn’t help me at all.
You’ve got Mad Mike on staff at Galpin, right? Turn this fever dream into fever reality!
Would the headlights really pop-up or just roll around like a C4 Vette?
They need to roll round their z axis like Saab Sonnet headlights.
Ooo-ooo. Luv it! I’d want the Turbo S version.
It’s the all purpose mobile that would blow by all those lazy VW vans on the way to the track. I would then put a bunch of stickers on it and drive it around the track all day and sleep in it at night.
There is a youtube of a guy with a early 60s split window with an airhead flat 6 going around the ring. It sounds amazing. Unfortunately, the 4 cylinder in the 914 is the same type 4 block as the one in the late bay window VW vans. Different cams, heads, and such, but none of them were speed demons, and very few had 3 digit hp ratings.
“human waste was now a clean-burning fuel source.”
I think your ergot tainted peanut butter fantasy is crossing into our chocolate reality:
“It may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions the Earth uses to create crude oil, using high pressure and temperature to achieve in minutes something that takes Mother Nature millions of years. The resulting material is similar to petroleum pumped out of the ground, with a small amount of water and oxygen mixed in. This biocrude can then be refined using conventional petroleum refining operations.
Wastewater treatment plants across the U.S. treat approximately 34 billion gallons of sewage every day. That amount could produce the equivalent of up to approximately 30 million barrels of oil per year. PNNL estimates that a single person could generate two to three gallons of biocrude per year”
Sounds great! How does it work? Glad you asked.
“Using hydrothermal liquefaction, organic matter such as human waste can be broken down to simpler chemical compounds. The material is pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch — nearly one hundred times that of a car tire. Pressurized sludge then goes into a reactor system operating at about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat and pressure cause the cells of the waste material to break down into different fractions — biocrude and an aqueous liquid phase.”
So all you need is a virus that simultaneously triggers a fever of 660F and reenforces the bowels to hold 3000 PSI. Easy peasy.
OK you mad bioscientists, get on it!
https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/fuel-sewage-future-and-its-closer-you-think
Rear seat passengers be like, I feel a strange warmth in my loins.
Van with pop up headlights? Stop drilling, you’ve struck oil.
I’m kinda into it and it’s a better idea than the Type 4!
You could call it the Ativan after the prescription you obviously haven’t been taking.
That would an exciting sports van if you leave the 914 seats where they are.
That could open up some fun activities with the front facing rear seat passengers…things like foot massages!
This isn’t coke addled, this is LSD dosed.
That’s it. There is no maximum Torch, at least not that we’ll see in our lifetimes. Just an ever-ascending psychedelic tower of flame.