Fifteen Eleven Design 914 review: a 975kg lightweight with a Cayman's sixer

What is it?

Another restomod Porsche if you take the bare headlines, something a little more nuanced if you have a minute. Not least because the base car isn’t yet another 911, but the 914 - VW and Porsche’s co-production from the late 1960s and ‘70s. It was Porsche’s cheapest car back in the day, so it’s not the most obvious candidate for an expensive re-working, save for the fact that the 914 has always been an intriguing, sharp-edged design. Almost like a German Fiat X1/9, although the 914 came out before the Italian.

Thing is, we never got them in the UK officially, so they’ve always been fairly rare on these shores - meaning that the European analogue became more familiar. Still, that’s where Fifteen Eleven Design of Bakewell in the UK has stepped in, deciding to up the humble and little-known Porsche’s game.

Photography: Rich Pearce

It’s a thorough job; the mechanicals are all 987 Cayman S, so there’s a 3.8-litre flat-six in the middle, rear-wheel drive and a six-speed manual. Carbon body bits and a petite size produce a kerbweight of just 975kg (plus fuel), and an output of roughly 375bhp mean this is a car that’s got more than enough mouth to match the trousers.

Hang on, rewind a bit; this is a VolksPorsche?

Yup. The story goes that in the late 1960s Porsche needed a cheaper, entry-level car, and VW wanted something a bit sportier in its line-up, so they teamed up and bingo - out pops a targa-top, two-seater mid-engined sportscar with either a flat-four or flat-six engine - with the original idea that the six would be a Porsche and the four would be a VW.

That all got a bit messy, but the reality was there were 80bhp 1.7 or 1.8-litre VW fours and 110bhp, 2.0-litre flat sixes out there, some badged Porsche, some badged VW. They’ve not been hugely loved over the years, but the past decade has seen them gaining popularity, probably because they look particularly of their time. Amorphous modern blobs, they aren’t.

So what’s been done here?

Let’s start with the outside. There’s precious little of the original car here, to be frank. Mainly A- and B-pillars, bulkheads and floors. The panels are carbon, the doors steel. The front bumper and bonnet have been re-designed for better cooling, and the car has been widened both in wing and arch. That extra width has allowed for a set of LED headlights in the wing turrets - rather than the original car’s pop-up headlights - which could look a little OTT, but don’t.

Shame about the pop-ups, really, but the solution works. There’s a set of 935 “Moby Dick’-esque driving lights under the main units, too, one of several little historic nods to iconic Porsche details.

Then you’ve got modern Fuchs wheels in a more generous size, modern rubber, still a simple, manual-catched targa top that needs stowing in a garage. At the rear it’s clean, simple and intentional, again with the black bumpers and a central twin exhaust. It’s a neat upgrading of the 914 without losing any of the character, and that’s actually quite fun - this isn’t a car you’d mistake for anything else, and all without look-at-me wings or bodykits.

It also has to be said that it looks much more resolved than even the in-period 914 racers, which had bulbous arches strapped onto wider tracks. It’s much more elegant.

Is the inside the same?

Same careful, thoughtful vibe. So it’s actually incredibly plain inside, although trimmed very nicely. Unsurprisingly, you can have it any way you desire in terms of fabric/leather/colourway, but the dash is a big lateral spar, the steering wheel small, the dials simple and direct. Custom gauges by the way, they just look old-school.

The gearstick comes with with an exposed linkage, is in the right place for your palm to strike, the wooden gearknob an homage to Porsche’s own 917 racing cars. There’s a motorsport AP pedalbox - which would mean some available adjustment - and the room is surprising; despite the small road footprint, a 6ft driver can still adjust forward with the seat. It’s not infinite, but bigger and more comfy than it looks.

One thing’s for sure - if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by tech, complexity and touchscreens putting out the radiation of a small sun, this is a balm.

This all sounds great, but how does it drive?

The best bit here is the Fifteen Eleven 914 drives as well as it looks - although that might mean different things to different people. It’s not a re-work that has kept the character of the donor car. With more than three times the power of the original, a much stiffer chassis and much more sophisticated adjustable motorsport coilovers, this is a car that feels weirdly like a Lotus Elise or Exige rather than a Porsche. And that’s no bad thing in this case.

The 987 six revs cleanly, there’s a decent slug of torque and the lack of weight makes itself known in every action, whether accelerating, braking or changing direction. No, it’s not a GT and it’s pretty firm, but off the bat it’s got good balance, decent compliance and welds a smile to your face. Which has to be the point of a car like this, surely?

If this were mine, I’d back off the brake pedal a bit for the road - it’s racecar hard at the moment, which makes it annoying in town - make the exhaust a little less loud at low-revs (exhaust valves are due for full production) and possibly even soften it off slightly in terms of damping/springing. A tiny bit more roll would, for me, make it a bit easier to get a handle on where the grip is. Or was, in one slightly slippery moment.

The best compliment? The basics feel manufacturer. This does not feel like a start-up car, and the same cannot be said of quite a few restomods.

So why is this one different then?

Not hard to see why the Fifteen Eleven Design 914 works out of the box, because the company is actually a restomod offshoot of Mellors Elliot Motorsport. Mellors Elliot being one of those rally prep and build outfits that are the mainstay of modern rallying. MEM has been going since the 1980s, owned and run by father Chris Mellors and his two sons, plus a cadre of skilled support, it’s a proper old-school family business. Chris was BTRDA Champ, National Rally Champion for Ford Motorsport in ’94, ’95 and 1996, and both sons are keen rallyists in both historic and modern rally cars.

There’s silverware to back up the expertise, too. There are Production World Rally Championships secured in MEM cars, Asia Pacific Championships, WRC2, USA Pro Rally, and they’re now prepping Proton’s Iriz R5 plug’n’play rally car. The company diversified during Covid-era weirdness, and now does a myriad of different things, from concours restorations, to light improving and restomodding of classics, from ‘60s Morris Travellers to Maserati 3500 GTs from the early sixties. Aston DB series cars with all the screwheads pointing in the same direction. Even the full re-commissioning of a 1980 Williams FW07/04 Formula One car driven by the Aussie Alan Jones. There’s also a modified 1972 Ford Escort Mk1 that plays with all sorts of forbidden ideas - and that’s worth time on it’s own.

Safe to say the Fifteen Eleven 914 comes with a bit of engineering provenance. It’s a sorted car made pretty, rather than a pretty car that then has to be sorted.

Ok, sounds great, so what’s the damage?

Deep breath: £350k, plus a donor 914, plus taxes and shipping. Which is ironic when this was Porsche’s cheapest car. Sounds faintly ridiculous, but frankly, all restomod prices seem insane, and this seems reasonable in context. Plus, it’s a bit different, and that makes it notable.

Double plus? The familial nature of the business gives it a lovely feel; you’re paying for the 40+ years of rally experience with a new-school restomod flavour. And that’s worth something.