Was every single Nova of this generation painted either this color, or that horrid butter-yellow? It sure seems that way.

Of course, about 95% of Malaise-era cars in general seem to be one of those colors, by my reckoning. I suppose it's possible that those colors somehow had properties that allowes said cars to outlast everything else built in that era in this car-destroying climate.

viva la nova!

Sadly, one of the better looking cars built in 1977

These vehicles were perfect fodder for A-Team bad guy car crashes. Is it me, or do all still-running Malaise-era cars emit a particular odor while running?

hmmm i beat the crap out of my '75 nova, rarely ever brok on it, and even drag raced,was a really decent car, but had some handling quirks.

My first car was a '76 Nova (4-door Concourse, 8-track, factory tach and formerly-gen-1-Camaro gauge cluster, F41 suspension) my dad bought new and handed down. It was my sister's first car first. Then, after me, my brother's. 350, auto, posi, de-catalyzed exhaust. It'd do sub 9-seconds to 60. I can't tell you how many times I raced it. It didn't have an easy middle-agedness. Once, when a power steering hose blew, the guy at the shop kept pulling driftwood out of the front coils from when I forded that one river..

My sister, now in her early 40s, finally let it go about two years ago.....always wanted to restore it. It didn't have a good piece of sheetmetal on it. You could see what was in the trunk through the rear fender. The car had well over 350,000 miles on it at that point.

BUT.

That engine is still running in a hot-rodded 50-something Chevy pickup. The motor was never apart, except for a valve guide replacement. Original timing chain, even. The transmission was never apart. My sister ran the car out of antifreeze once and drove it 30 miles home. Dry. The rear axle had a vibration at one point; when we took it apart, the bearings fell out on their own.

Before the valveguide replacement, I can't tell you how many times I changed spark plugs on the road somewhere, or in a McDonald's parking lot with the temp hovering around -3F. I also rebuilt that Quadrajet untold times. And water pumps, oh lord, the water pumps..

But the thing never, ever stranded me. And with studded tires would go anywhere.

I've got a soft spot the size of Texas for Novas.

@TheSchwartz: And the Dukes. Lots of Novas died in Hazzard County.

I don't know what a Super Nova is, but if it's anything like my old Chevy Nova, it'll light up the night sky.
/Fry

I owned a bright red '76 with white (vinyl, of course) interior and the classic half-vinyl top, also in white! It was a hand-me-down from my mom when I turned 16. I loved that 305. The car never gave me any problems and was a blast to drive in the snow. My dad sold it when I left for college in 1987 (with 120k miles!). I am still pissed at him!!!!

@paul_y: My dad has a similar theory about green cars from the 50s. My theory is that people who bought them in these colors were too ashamed to be seen in the cars, so they never drove them. A couple of decades later, the car is still remarkably original and still-running...

Too bad it's not a Concours. Triple panel tail lights, vinyl roofs, and stand up hood ornaments get me all googly-eyed.

I think this is the most depressing set of DOTS pictures I've seen in a long while, I'm not even sure why but that car does not look like it's a happy car. Needs a more jovial colour or something...

Also, how the hell is it that Murilee - as far as I can tell a bloke with a beard, a camera and a beater camry (among other vehicles) can take such exceptionally fine pictures of cars on the street - even rubbish boring ones - but somehow the presscorps of big auto companies completely fail at taking interesting pictures?

It doesn't make any sense. (He has got a beard right? I remember a beard. Sounds like he's a bloke with a beard...)

@B:
Relevant Futurama quotes should always win COTD.

The very first POLAR-mobile! WHAT A PIECE OF CRAP!!!!!

I had a '76 Pontiac Ventura hatchback. The edges of the hatch (which probably weighed more than me at the time) were mostly jagged rust which combined with the gas struts that had long since given up the ghost made a guillotine that would deliver post mortem tetanus. The Olds 260 V8 wasn't one of GM's greatest motors either. But for $600 the thing never broke down.

There is a four door Nova (not sure of year and it may be a Nova Concours - can a Nova expert type & date?) with Ohio plates (front missing) that I have seen at one of the casket factories near the Gowanus Canal usually around 3rd Avenue and Union Street. Not sure of the year and as you can see in the more recent photos it has a newer plate. It is in much better condition.

A great car suceeded by an even better one.....
[en.wikipedia.org]

@beercheck: This proves my point about GM vehicles. They run longer in limp mode than most other cars will run at all.

Back then, I was very prejudiced against GM. This was due primarily to the Camaro/Monte Carlo on blocks in the front yard thing, and the fact that I didn't have a mullet. Spent my time with AMC, Ford and Fiats mostly.

Looking back, I wish that I had bought that old Vega and did the 350 transplant that I was thinking about. Life's too short to worry about appearances.

God, my Mom had an olive green '72 Nova with the black vinyl top. That car was a total piece of fecal matter. Oddly enough, she wrecked it doing dougnuts in a church parking lot one cold Michigan winter an then bought another Malaise era classic, a copper brown Olds Cutlass thing. Ugh, my parents had the worst cars ever when I was growing up.

I always associate Novas with my crazy neighbor. I was just a kid and scared to death of him. He was like Frank Booth in Blue Velvet only he drove a green and white tape-striped 78 Nova with lifters, traction bars, cherry bombs and a wing.

He crashed it, but only after a high-speed chase that involved drawn weapons and sand pit.

@Triborough: I can't Flickr here, dammit. Wonder when that happened. Concourse will have an "NC" in fancyfont on a stand-up hood ornament and just below the trunklid above the bumper. Might also have chrome along the front of the hood, around the headlights and over the wheel arches, but that may have been a separate option.

Does it have the Polycast wheels? I still have those for some reason.

@beercheck:
Or the same 3 Novas. Ever notice the "city slickers" roll up one week in an all green Nova and a month later, Boss Hogg's crooked revenuers show up in an all blue Nova. Even with our 19" TV I think you could probably see the overspray on the tires.

But yeah, I've always had a thing for the other X-body cars of this vintage: Pontiac Ventura, Buick Skylark, Olds Omega, and the best of the bunch, Buick Apollo.

@lounatic: Heh. That's what my Dad replace the Nova with. Then the X-11 got handed down to me and I wrapped it around a telephone pole. Then I bought another. And then another. Then my sister borrowed the gas cap without me knowing, leading to a seized engine, leading to an eventual breaking of the cycle.

I still hate her a little.

Growing up, my parents' tennant had a Nova in chalky and decayed metalic pea. It never ran in my memory, and all he ever did with it was push it back and forth a bit to fool the city if they paited the tires. When they moved out, we held onto it for a few months for them. Once they dropped off the radar, we waited almost a year and sold it to salvage.

Amazingly, when they came to pick it up, they were able to get it to turn over before they put it on the truck.

@DoctorNine: /This proves my point about GM vehicles. They run longer in limp mode than most other cars will run at all./

I got yer close-tolerances right here, Mercedes.

I had a 77 Ventura I got from my dad. 6cyl, velour bench seats, lil moon hubcaps....But still, that car ran forever and amazingly never rusted. I still have fond memories of that car...........then again, I have fond memories of my Atari 2600 and of the original Knight Rider....so maybe I better just let it stay locked in my memory.

Even though it was the Malaise Era, you could actually make the Nova a bit of a performer if you checked the right options boxes.

The 'Nova Rally' had bucket seats, a dash full of gauges (or as Chevy insisted at the time, "gages"), and a sort-of-nice suspension package that included a rear anti-sway bar.

Buyers in 49 states could also get a 350 four barrel with a 4-speed manual transmission, though California buyers had to settle for a 305 and automatic. Kind of a Camaro Z28 in sleeper clothing.

And don't forget, the Nova 9C1 Police Package was feared for its pursuit capabilities against scofflaws in other Malaise-mobiles.

@beercheck:
I was just about to make the point that the Nova was a fantastic example of GM's unspoken mantra from 1975-2000. "Runs Terrible Forever"
Saturn actually apparently ran with it up through the R & D process of the 2003-2008 Ion... Craptastic like it's being paid for it.

I had a '72 Rally Nova with a 305 V8. Olive green metallic, of course. It was a great car, until an oak tree ran out in front of me late one night.
My mom had a '76 Ventura, 305 V8 "radial tuned suspension" catback "dual" exhausts. Silver with red interior. Pontiacs are exciting, right?
The plan was that when she got too old to drive, I'd get the car.
One day, while it was sitting in her driveway, a fire started under the dash, and the car burned to scrap.
Up until that day in 1986 the car was perfect.

I heard that back then, if you got your girlfriend pregnant, you could take her into the back seat of one of these babies, put on some Barry Manilow, and the sheer Malaisity of the situation would actually turn the girl unpregnant...
Apparently though, if you tried the same thing in a similar vintage Chrysler Cordoba, the girl would begin popping little furry babies out of her back Gremlin-style...

At least that's what I heard...

It does score points for the original American Racing 200s wheels with the tuff offset.

If you could do something about the freaking bumpers, it could be a really neat car.

Queue Axel-F music..
dun dun dun dun dun dun dun... yo man, I aint gonna fall for no banana in my tailpipe!

@Buckster: And here I was, reacting to how ugly this little beast is. I thought so when these things were new, too. I've had two friends that have owned these (okay, the Buick and Pontiac versions) and they were wallowy and rough to ride in.

@toyotaboy:

You used to drive a crappy blue Chevy Nova. What are ya drivin' now?

@BigEnusBurdett: @bentoboxx: Wow, I'm shocked to see the Ventura references. My family had one and it was the first car I can remember from my youth (therefore I don't know the model year). My mom kept wishing they would've kept it for me for my first car as it was dog slow.

@toyotaboy:

"Be sure to park it in a good spot. All this sh*t happened to it the last time I came here."

My grandpa had one, I used to ride to church with him when I was but a wee jalop. By that time he had ridden all over the country in it(traveling salesman). I remember we would pull up to stop lights and the thing would almost die. I would rub the dash board, say a prayer and it would ROAR back to life. I didn't realize until later in life that my grandpa was the one really making it "roar"... and that the entire exhaust system was made from rust in cheese cloth form...

My parents had an electric blue '73 four-door which I loathed. It was ungainly-looking and I seem to remember it had a two-speed auto. Ugh. The nasty foam-backed headliner had become 95% detached by 1979. I shuddered every time I had to drive it. They replaced it with...a Cavalier!

Had a friend with a 2 door one of these. It likely had 250,000 miles on it when he got it from mom, the thing never died, would do 120 mph with ease. It was a great car. I finger banged some chick in the back seat while he was driving. Those were the daze.

@Tocsin: Camry? I've never owned a Camry in my life! That Japanese beater you sometimes see in the background of DOTS photos is a '92 Civic.

As for the beard, sometimes I have it, sometimes I don't. The aluminum-foil sombrero, however, is always there.

My '76 was a maroon two-door, black vinyl interior, column shift, factory buckets, 250 straight six, baby moons. The body was perfectly straight, no accidents or major dings. Vacuum hoses had a bad habit of falling off though. Handled like a sponge on slush. Fitted out with a removable underdash Craig AM/FM/cassette deck - high tech!

I still think it was one of the best looking cars GM made in the seventies.

125 on the Jalopnik scale by the way, even with that sluggish six.

I had several of the 6 cylinder 98-72 models, my mom had a 73. It was yellow with a black vinyl top, 350 with a 4 speed, it was pretty nice actually.

A friend of mine had one of these here ones in high school, jacked up with duals, 50 series on the back and a lighted JC Whitney hood ornament. Swan or angel or some damn thing. We were a weird bunch, even then.

Gotta remember this was the standard of GM at the time. The best "basic" transportation the US had to offer. From 1965 on, most cars from GM were exactly the same technology wise. There is, basically under the skin, almost no advance technically or mechanically in any GM, Ford or Chrysler product from most of the cars they produced from 1967 to 1980. Except for body styling there isn't that much difference from a '69 Nova from this one except the smog devices and less horsepower. If stagnation in design and development isn't a recipe for malaise, I don't know what is...

I think post-74 Novas are the official car of Sylmar, CA.

Nice wheels. They hint that it might not be quite as awful under the hood.

It's a like a kinda ugly girl wearing really killer stripper shoes.

@west-coaster: Hunter for the win!
It's nice to see that most people have at least semi-fond or very fond (looking at you, Beercheck) memories of Novas. Unique species. I've already ranted and raved about my orange 73 here but as for the mechanicals--always had a screwdriver (tool, not drink--mostly) on the seat because if you took the Nova out on the highway it was guaranteed that the butterfly valve would get stuck, so the next time you started it, nothing. Quick fix with a hood pop and pry/pop from the screw driver. It only got one tuneup and the idiots screwed up the timing and it died...on the way to an emergency room! Turned out ok. It only almost hurt me once once, my fault, when I'd been fooling around with something or other under the hood and forgot to put one spark plug wire back in the cap. So it was running like a popcorn popper. Like an idiot, I pulled over, left it running, popped the hood, saw the forgotten connection and stupidly stuck it back on--electrifying memory!

That was actually a fairly good-looking car, in both the 2-door and 4-door varieties. It was a lot less ungainly than some of the Fords and Dodges of the era. I think it was a Bill Mitchell design with a lot of help from Larry Shinoda.

My father had a `78 Pontiac Pheonix (still has most of it actually merrily rotting away in the field out back) that didn't look a hell of a lot different than this Nova. The basic body style is, basicaly, the same aside from the Pontiac pointy grill. The original 305 out of the old bird is still grinding away in true Pontiac fashion though. It found a new home in Dads 75 GMC short wheel base 1 ton.

What rims are on this car?

@SeanKHotay:

They were taken off a 1970s van with a mural airbrushed on the side.

@beercheck: It has the NC crest on the back, but the hood ornament seems to have gone MIA some time ago.