{"id":50340,"date":"2026-07-07T23:53:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/50340\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T23:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:53:16","slug":"the-porsche-912es-impossibly-stupid-climate-controls-will-make-you-want-to-punch-a-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/50340\/","title":{"rendered":"The Porsche 912E’s Impossibly Stupid Climate Controls Will Make You Want To Punch A Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t fully explain why, but for whatever reason, certain air-cooled Porsches seem to have the most needlessly convoluted HVAC controls. This is surprising because, as far as HVAC systems tend to go, the ones in older air-cooled Porsches aren\u2019t especially complicated. Like their air-cooled ancestors, Volkswagens, the heating and defrosting system is mostly just a series of cable-actuated flaps that guide and direct fresh air heated through the engine\u2019s heat exchangers. It\u2019s not exactly rocket science. And yet, somehow, I think Porsche managed to make, in the case of the heating and defrosting controls on the one-year-only 1976 Porsche 912E, the most convoluted and needlessly baffling defroster\/defogger controls the world has ever seen.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m genuinely impressed by the achievement; I think the 912E is unique among all automobiles in that it has a windshield defroster setup that would, at least for a decent period of time, baffle almost any driver, from any point in automotive history and any part of the world, even accounting for translating the surprisingly ample amount of text involved in the controls. In our modern era of HVAC controls that tend to have dedicated windshield defrost buttons or positions on a dial or even icons on a touchscreen, this may seem hard to conceive, but I\u2019m here to show you exactly what I mean, so you can feel the same awe and wonder that I do.<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

First, to fully appreciate the madness of the 912E\u2019s defroster controls, let\u2019s just get some control samples out of the way. We\u2019ll start with how defrosting\/defogging happens in a huge number of modern cars \u2013 and I\u2019m being\u00a0really\u00a0generous with \u201cmodern\u201d since this basic method started in earnest in the 1980s. This is the \u201cthree knob\u201d method, one that uses one knob for fan speed, one for temperature, and one for where the air blows, as in on your face, feet, or directed at the windshield, to defrost\/defog it. The little \u201csnakes slithering up a fan<\/a>\u201d icon is normally used for this. Here is this basic setup, as seen on the Slate pickup:<\/p>\n

\"Slate<\/p>\n

Okay, so that\u2019s a relatively modern way. You want to defrost the windshield, you crank the heat and fan, and turn the dial to the snakes on the windshield icon. Easy!<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s see what some setups closer to the 912E used, as in other maybe air-cooled car setups, because those were always, let\u2019s be honest, a little weirder. My Citro\u00ebn 2CV, for example, is a bit odd, but not really difficult. There\u2019s one funny little lever for how much heated air is coming into the car, and then there\u2019s a little ball-topped rod you pull or push depending on if you want that heated air directed to the cabin or 0nto the windshield:<\/p>\n

\"2cv<\/p>\n

The volume of heated air lever is the thing in the upper right, with the red and blue circles. Closer to red is more heated air, blue is just regular ambient air. Pull the black ball back for windshield defrosting, push it forward for cabin heat. It\u2019s a bit odd, but pretty simple, really, and I\u2019m using this as an example because, fundamentally, this is all that the 912E\u2019s HVAC system is doing, too.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at how a VW Beetle accomplishes the same thing, because it\u2019s similar:<\/p>\n

\"Vw<\/p>\n

In the Beetle\u2019s case, there\u2019s one lever between the seats for the volume of heat coming into the car, and another lever between the seats to direct that air to either the vents by the windshield or on the floor of the cabin. Really, the same thing as the 2CV, just with a different placement of levers. If we look at the more up-market VW Type 4, the car that actually donated its engine for use in the Porsche 912E, we see a bit more complexity, but mostly just because the Type 4 has a more advanced fresh-air ventilation system\u00a0and an auxiliary gas heater with such nifty features as a timer you can use to pre-heat the car on cold mornings.<\/p>\n

Even so, the basics of windshield defrosting aren\u2019t really different than in a Beetle:<\/p>\n

\"Vwt4<\/p>\n

Looking past all the ventilation and gas heater stuff, if you want hot air to melt frost or clear fog from your windshield, you\u2019re still pushing that DEF\/HEAT lever to the DEF setting. That\u2019s pretty much it!<\/p>\n

Okay, so we\u2019ve seen what these close siblings to the 912E ask of you if you want your windshield defrosted; let\u2019s see what the 912E herself demands:<\/p>\n

\"Porsche912e<\/p>\n

Wait. What? This is the part that gets me:<\/p>\n

\"Porsche912e<\/p>\n

\u201cDEFROST: MOVE UPPER LEVERS LEFT, LOWER LEVER RIGHT.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something about that sentence just takes a moment to process, at least for me. If I was driving and having trouble seeing out of my windshield, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d be able to grok it any quicker?<\/p>\n

Okay. So, the red lever \u2013 which I think is for the volume of heated air coming in, which is sort of like temperature, in that it mixes with ambient air, in this case needs to get cranked all the way up to full heat, because it\u2019s the lower lever, and the upper\u00a0two\u00a0levers both go all the way left? Okay, but that seems to mean the fan gets turned off, which I don\u2019t understand why that would be, and then that makes me realize I don\u2019t really know if it\u2019s the middle lever that controls the fan or the top one, and whichever one it is, I\u2019m not clear on what the other lever does?<\/p>\n

Is the middle lever like the defroster\/cabin slider? I think it may be, though the markings and position all make it more confusing. There are up and down arrows at each end of these right-to-left sliders, and I think it\u2019s DEF.MAX on the right and DEF.MIN on the left, but if that\u2019s the case, then why would I be told by that sentence to move the upper levers to the far left? Wouldn\u2019t I want the slider to DEF:MAX for maximum defrostery?<\/p>\n

Or is the bottom lever, the red one that suggests heat, the defrost max\/min lever? Because then at least I\u2019d be told to slide that to DEF:MAX, which makes a bit more sense? But then what does the middle lever do?<\/p>\n

This all feels like someone way overthought this to the point of madness. It shouldn\u2019t be this hard! And here\u2019s the amazing thing: Porsche seems to have kept this baffling system for quite a while: the same basic setup is used on 1980s Porsche 911s, just augmented with other air-conditioning controls and the traditional between-the-seats heat\/defroster levers. This guy seems delighted to show you the weirdness of it all:<\/p>\n

I think the 911 implementation of the strange 3-slider setup is less bad than the 912E because it (A) eliminates the confusing sentence and (II) it can be mostly ignored because of the other sets of A\/C and heat\/defrost controls? Still, it\u2019s hilariously obtuse.<\/p>\n

Now Porsche isn\u2019t the only carmaker that has managed to make defrosting strangely difficult; look at what the Fiat Brava asks you to do before you can defrost your windshield:<\/p>\n

\"FiatbravaPhotos: Murilee Martin, in one of his junkyard excursions<\/p>\n

The Fiat asks that you close the central heater outlets your own damn self so the air can get re-directed to the windshield. It doesn\u2019t really have any separate defroster controls at all, just six words that tell you how to make defrosting happen. That feels pretty lazy, but at least it\u2019s pretty straightforward.<\/p>\n

\"Alfagtv6<\/p>\n

The Fiat\u2019s cousin, the Alfa Romeo GTV6, is sort of similar; while it has a setting for defroster (slider all the way to the right, by the universal snakes-on-a-fan icon), it also takes the time to note that if you want MAX DEF (which I think just means either the defroster actually\u00a0doing something or, less likely, Mos Def\u2019s older brother) then you need to close those two central vents yourself.<\/p>\n

A slight step up from the Brava, still not great, but still fundamentally understandable.<\/p>\n

Either way, these are both a million BTUs better than the Porsche 912E setup which, I\u2019ll be honest with you, I\u2019m still not entirely sure I understand. If we have any 912E owners reading this, I\u2019d love to know more: how exactly do you get your windshield defrosted? I really like 912s, even the odd US-market-only, one-year-only, VW-engined 912E, so please don\u2019t consider this a slight. If I had a 912E, the baffling HVAC controls would be one of my favorite parts of the car, and I\u2019d ask everyone I gave a ride to please, if they wouldn\u2019t mind, turning on my windshield defroster, just so I could witness that delicious moment of perplexity and confusion.<\/p>\n

I bet it\u2019s really satisfying to see.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can\u2019t fully explain why, but for whatever reason, certain air-cooled Porsches seem to have the most needlessly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21181],"tags":[41257,41258,41259,41260,4481,41261,41262,3216,41263,8406],"class_list":["post-50340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-porsche","tag-41257","tag-912e","tag-baffling","tag-confusion","tag-controls","tag-defogger","tag-defroster","tag-featured","tag-hvac","tag-porsche"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}