First, it’s worth noting that the 914 was the first German car to have power-operated pop-up headlights. Sure, the Opel GT had pop-up (well, really roll over) but those were operated with your own bugling, glistening muscles, via a hand crank. Porsche wasn’t going to make you have to manually crank your lights open, like some sort of filthy animal, so it opted for a pair of electric motors to do the job.
These motors even had a little plastic knob on the end so in case they failed you could still open them manually, as a last resort, and only if nobody was watching. The other notable thing about these motors is that they’re arguably overpowered for their job, which is a direct result of Porsche’s engineers going sort of nuts in testing, demanding that the motors be able to break through a significantly thick layer of ice. From Richard Langworth’s 1983 book, Porsche: A Tradition of Greatness: It’s pretty cool that the headlight motors were strong enough to force themselves through a sheet of ice around a quarter-inch thick, and I’m sure it would have made a dramatic scene when leaving the ski slopes, lights popping up noisily, sending shards and fragments of glistening ice dancing and flying everywhere – very cool. But there was an unintended side effect: The motors were more than capable of chopping off an errant finger, like a mule snapping a hefty carrot in half. Both methods were engineered so that they could easily break the thickest coating of ice the engineers could encourage in cold-weather tests. Luckily, Porsche’s engineers, possibly via direction from the marketing department that concluded that finger retention was important to their target buyers, found a solution. Again from Porsche: A Tradition of Greatness: Yes, there’s a safety, break-away panel under the headlights. It’s this panel right here:
So, yes, the headlight motors on a 914 are certainly capable of taking your fingers off, but they won’t thanks to the design of that bit of sheetmetal under there. Knowing how much 914s can be affected by rust, it’s also possible that even if the panel wasn’t there, you might just need a tetanus shot as your fingers got forced through rusty metal. Still, why take the chance? Keep your fingers out of there. (thanks, Hans!) Only four easy payments of $19.99, plus separate shipping and handling. That said. 914s we definitely not over engineered. At least not in the ways we normally associate. They were definitely well engineered to a price. That’s not a bad thing, just not over engineered like we think of. Well, two beer cans were thrown out at the side of the road after he turned around to pull over since he managed to hit a station wagon in the lane next to him while doing this. Another nice design element of the 914 are the soft corners of the pop-up. A Miata has sharp 90 degree corners on the headlights and you can hurt yourself leaning over the engine bay at night. If you look at the export version of the second generation Ford Probe, you can see the same panel insert. The US version has one-piece cover with “spike” corner while the export version has two pieces: one affixed to the body, and other to the headlamp housing with smoother and form-fitting corners. Since you take eternally, infuriatingly, inexplicably FOREVER to approve the comments with links, I will post the links in the separate comment below. Ford Probe, export version: https://espirituracer.com/archivos/2020/05/ford-probe-gt-ge-1.jpg Barn-Find Lamborghini Muira with protection cover insert (the insert is clear plastic “tube”): https://www.classicdriver.com/sites/default/files/article_images/3780b0708f66a8c74da9a609261412b51a621dae.jpg Off the top of my head, first-generation Neons with power windows and 2010s Foci both had power front windows and cranks in the back. I’m sure various European cars have pulled the same BS over the years.
