Let's go back to 1991, shall we? California was getting hosed by the worst of the early 90s recession that later doomed George Bush I's reelection bid, and I was paying the bills by wheeling-and-dealing wretched beater cars and driving a forklift as a light-industrial temp worker. That meant that I was damn well free to groom and dress like Charles Manson if I felt like it (see photo, above), but it also meant that I had to seek out cheap forms of recreation. Such as, say, driving the 200 miles to Reno and stretching 50 bucks for an entire weekend of fun.

So what you do is, you grab your scurviest-looking hippie friend (in this case, the Staten Island mob attorney's son who did the Grateful Dead touring thing for a couple of years and then settled in San Francisco to work as an antiwar political canvasser) and the two of you dress like the Mission District hairballs you know yourselves to be. You search your pool of crapheap vehicles for the one that gets the best gas mileage- in this case, a 1976 Chevy Nova with a six-cylinder engine and crazy-tall highway gears, purchased for $100- you put it in gear and head east on I-80, and a few hours later you check into a recession-cheap downtown casino hotel. Then, once you're there, you go to the casino's sports book and lay down $2 bets on whatever lengthy sporting event might be happening (shooting for a baseball matchup that might result in an extra-inning pitching duel works well here)… because once you've bet, you're entitled to free drinks!

The key here is that you and your hippie friend absolutely reek of the San Francisco Bay Area, which will enable you to befriend the younger cocktail waitresses who have fled California's recession to make a buck across the line in Nevada; these women hate their lives serving drinks to ass-grabbing drunks from suburban Sacramento while slaving in a nicotine-stained Hell, so your scruffy-hipster presence will be comforting to them. That means that they'll bring you snacks and free decks of souvenir playing cards, in addition to ensuring that your drinks are mixed extra strong, and sometimes they'll want to come back to your room to listen to your Beastie Boys tapes and complain about their sucky lives. By this method you will stay entertained all weekend for the price of a tank of gas, a hotel room, and a few sports bets.

I always brought my trusty Canon AE-1 along, back when I had a little home darkroom in effect, so I could shoot gloomy black-and-white photographs for my "Faces Of Nevada Defeat" series, destined to ensure my rejection from every MFA studio-art program to which I thought to send an application. For this trip, I also brought along one of those big 80s camcorders, which I placed on the package shelf of the Nova for the drive out of the Circus Circus parking garage on Sunday afternoon. It's sort of Warholianly dull (if I may rip off a David Foster Wallace-ism), seven minutes of your life shot through the head, but it also serves as a mildly entertaining time capsule: listening to my friend's tape of Reckoning on the boombox (powered by alligator clips attached to fusebox connectors) as we drag our hungover selves away from Reno. Note the balky engine and bouncy suspension of the Nova; that's authentic Malaise Era technology there!

This car is owned by the same guy who daily-drives this '77 Olds Custom Cruiser wagon. The Olds is for hauling the family around, and the Chevy is for hoonage! It's got a wicked-sounding 383 stroker, crazy gears, and a nice paint job is the next step. Personally, I think primer looks better, but to each his own!

Model T

Ford's plan for the Model T was to offer a simple, usable, high-quality automobile that anyone could afford, and the idea caught on, to put it mildly. The T started out as what everybody's mental image of an early automobile has come to be, hand crank, wooden wheels, acetylene lights and all. Ten years after its introduction, it had an electric starter, actual front doors, a roof, and accounted for half the cars in America. Yes, sir, it's the car that made the people who wanted to git up and go actually able to do so-before the T, transportation almost couldn't BE basic.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The Jeep

We're talking the true stripped-down models here, the Willys and CJ models that are coveted by off-road types but also worked brilliantly around town. Almost unbreakable, because there was nothing to break. Impossible to be uptight around them, once you got them away from heavy traffic and, you know, the military. And pretty hard to get now, more's the pity. We're embarrassed for choice in one model to feature, but during the Chevette Era right up through the dawn of the Neon, it was possible to get a retired Postal Service Jeep or AM General delivery truck like the one here, switch the steering wheel back to the left side, and drive in relative style and comfort (relative to walking, anyway). There's something magnificent about that.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The Ford Falcon

No, not the contemporary Australian version - the one your uncle the insurance salesman had. Or great-uncle, even. You want a Dodge Dart? You're welcome to it, but that's the easy choice. The Falcon was, to put it plainly, just a comfortable car to buy and live with, and more interesting; it came in lots of body styles, including convertible and Ranchero pickup, and was is considered to be one of the great successes of Ford president Robert McNamara, unlike his other project, the Vietnam War. It sold like crazy for a while, but unfortunately, it was shoved to the side by Ford's own more desirable Mustang.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The Volkswagen Beetle

Infinite volumes have been written about this car, but perhaps the single most important Beetle fact is this: It was perhaps as bad as a car can be and still be fun to own. It rusted, it didn't heat or defrost, it was slow, it handled strangely, it was ugly, and it made annoying sounds. But it got to people, somehow, in a way that transcended its novelty value, the way rescued dogs or tiny apartments sometimes do. After all, it was light, it was relatively reliable, and it was different. it If nothing else, it's worth noting that there wasn't really anything else commonly available at the time that offered as much sheer immediacy, and a long road trip in one of these was a small personal epic. Still, the rest of the world got the original Mini, and we got this?

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The Chevy Nova

In the 1970s, an era when most cars aspired to be rolling living rooms, the cheaper Nova aspired to be a rolling basement rec room, a somewhat overstuffed, purposefully shabby place, usually with lots of browns and yellows, a place where it was perfectly okay to put your feet on the Davenport. No one really wanted one, but plenty of people would up with one and wound up having good times in it, if not with it. It was roomy enough for four people who weren't too choosy, so anyone in there with you was probably a good friend of yours to begin with. Importantly, it could be made faster easily enough, especially the small-block versions, although part of the fun of that was ignoring how slow they were to begin with. The first car a lot of people in Generation X ever worked on voluntarily. Still, though people may not have wanted one, just try finding someone who owned one and doesn't wish they still had it.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Ford F-150

Of course, the best-selling vehicle in the world can be had in any trim level you want, but the base-level truck has always been one charismatic automobile. Throw stuff at it, in it, on it, it doesn't care. Get the awesomely durable 300-inch straight six in it, change the oil often, and trundle on through eternity.Hose it off, hose it out, and take it to town, and it still has a certain... well, not class, but a capable dignity you're not going to get in most cars. Plus it's the most common way to get a pleasant and raffish two-seater in a culture that tends to frown on that sort of thing.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Honda CRX-HF

The CRX is lovable indeed, but unlike most basic beaters, this one was an obvious treasure off the showroom floor. The liter-and-a-half engine and the five-speed were zippy enough, and fuel economy numbers in the 40s were certainly impressive, but the best part was that it weighed about 70 pounds. Oh, okay, about 1,700, but even in the mid-eighties that was a treat. There are just two seats, but it was a fine little runabout for all that, fairly spacious and Honda-solid. Plus but it rotated on a point right between those two seats, which was fun, and with those EPA numbers this fun was basically free. Sadly, the word is out now and no CRX has sold for basic transportation money since the turn of the century.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Ford Festiva

Most people know this car from the SHOgun models with the Yamaha V6 from the Taurus SHO dropped in where the back seats should be. That's fine, but don't overlook the terrier nature of the Mazda-built box, as were all the first-generation Festivas, which are really all the ones worth mentioning. They're zippy enough, roomy enough, and even lighter than a CRX, making them a surprisingly involving drive. Owner anecdotes, always the most interesting of perhaps not the most scientific source of information about older model cars, reveal that the Festiva is tenacious as can be, one of those cars that refuses to give up the ghost completely even after many, many nonessential parts have broken on them. A resounding endorsement, that. Also, the interior fabric over the door panels is so thin that refrigerator magnets can be stuck on, and how do you put a price on that kind of charm?

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Dodge Neon

In the long run, it wasn't an out-of-the park four-bagger. Build quality wasn't what Chrysler promised, the look didn't age well, and the fluids didn't stay in the engine like they really should have. But when it was introduced, buyers - including a lot of first-time car owners - were delighted to have a reasonably peppy, distinctively styled car from an American automaker. That it handled genuinely well was a nice bonus, for those who noticed. They were everywhere for a while, and unlike a lot of examples of automotive ubiquity, that was generally considered to be okay; a street lightly salted with Neons was a sign that something was going right. It didn't last, of course; bits started falling off, it was notably bad in crash testing (to be fair, just look at the rest of this list!) and a first-generation Neon with a For Sale sign on it may as well have had a warning sign on it, too. But the Neon's success was a sign that happy no-frills success was possible. We wish GM, and anyone else who wants to give it a try, all the best.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Given that Alameda is separated only by a 100-yard estuary from Oakland, Donk Capitol Of The Universe, you'd think that great big wheels would be a common sight on the island. Not so, partly because Alameda's car freaks are more likely to be into old-school musclecars and/or dorifto-type Japanese stuff… and partly because the APD is well known for its heavy hand with the ol' fixit-ticket pad.

I suspect that this Nova wagon- which features plenty of paint over body rust- is sort of an ironic donk, if such a thing is possible. It lives on the same block as the mean-looking '73 Electra, and I suspect the two cars share an owner with a sense a humor.

What do you think? Pretty funny or head-clutching abomination?

We're happy to add Mr. Gray's shots to Jalopnik Car Photography Canon, which includes the work of such photographers as Dave Glass, Martin Taylor, Andrew Bush, Troy Paiva, and Paul Novak. Here's what Mr. Gray has to say about his American Cars project:

As the project grew, I realized I was approaching the parked cars in the same way a photographer would shoot a portrait. Whether gleaming and restored, or beat-up and deteriorating, each car had its own character and story. The American landscape serving as backdrop is also part of the story of these cars, which were mostly produced here in the U.S. before the decline of Detroit's big automotive companies. I photographed the cars as I found them, using mostly medium format cameras, as well as some large format and digital cameras.

[Kevin Gray Photography, Order prints from Etsy]

We'll start off with an octet from Discontinuuity, who has a knack for finding some great machinery down on the streets of the home of Coors: Golden, Colorado. Discontinuuity brought us these eight Golden vehicles plus this dignified Golden Mercedes-Benz Ponton a while back, and now we've got another round for you:

Nova Station Wagon: I've got a couple of good DOTS cars here for you. First up is a 1962 (or maybe '63) Chevrolet Nova station wagon gasser. I talked to the owner, Mike, who also owns a 1946 Austin hot rod and takes both cars out to the local Bandimere Speedway for Wednesday night drag races. The Chevy sports a 327 small block, not the stock I6, and has a killer stance in my opinion. More photos of an IH Scout coming soon.
International Harvester Scout: About a block away from the Chevy was this International Harvester Scout in fairly good condition. All I know is that it's driven by a School of Mines student and that it was probably built between 1965 and 1970.
Subaru Leone: I finally got around to photographing this Subaru today. From what I can tell, it was made between 1975 and 1978 and has every Malaise-tastic tape stripe and chrome option checked off (along with "5 speeds" and "Front Wheel Drive"). It looks like a pretty competent little daily driver though. Now I just need pictures of the much rustier BRAT last spotted at Taco Bell.
Volkwsagen Beetle: I saw the Beetle you posted for DOTS a few days ago with the engine cover propped open, and it reminded me that I needed to photograph this flat-black Beetle. I'm not sure of the year; it's probably from the mid 70s. Whatever the vintage, I think it captures the spirit of a college car pretty well: the Libertarian party bumper stickers, subtle yet somewhat half-assed mods, and the pile of crap where the back seat used to be. You also might note that it's parked on Illinois St, right in front of the MG from the original DOTS Golden post.
Toyota Starlet: I saw this Starlet parked on the street while on my way to a friend's house, and knowing the love that many Jalops have for the little Toyota I had to snap a few pictures. From what Wikipedia tells me this is an 81-84 model, and from what the bumper sticker and rust can tell me this little car has been driven hard through Alaska and Colorado since the Reagan years.
Ford Model A: I hope I'm not sending you too many photos from Golden, but I couldn't pass up this great vintage-styled hot rod I saw in a parking lot today. It's a 1931 Ford Model A (although the owner wasn't sure exactly what year it is, the title is for '31) with a chopped top, a 302 Ford V8, and some sweet pinstriping, all sitting on a '32 Ford frame and bias plys. I love all of the little details like the structural wood and fabric in the roof, flat green paint, dropped axle with hairpins, and the lakes-style pipes. Probably one of the oldest cars I've seen around Golden this year, and definitely one of the coolest.
Ford Thunderbird: I've got a couple more DOTSBE cars here for ya. The first is a beat to hell old Thunderbird I caught being transported on a flatbed, parked in front of this creepy industrial building. Whether its destiny is a full restoration or The Crusher, we can only guess.
Volkswagen Transporter: The second car is a newer VW Bus with a wikkid flame paint job, photographed near where I found the MG previously. The paint and aftermarket exhaust give it cool points in my book; however it also looses a few points because of the PRNDL between the seats. From the stickers on the back window, I infer that the owner (or previous owner) is a Christian, works on power lines, and has been a student at the Colorado School of Mines for the last three years or so.

That means it's time for another example of The General's early-60s Falcon fighter. The Corvair was supposed to take on that role, but sales were nowhere near Falcon levels. You conspiracy theorists might take note that not only was the Corvair the victim of a Nader/hippie/Trilateral Commission cabal (out to undermine innovation and style in the American Way Of Life, and those of you who claim the Trilats didn't even get their start until 1973... well, that's exactly what they want you to believe!), but the Falcon was the product of a Robert MacNamara/liberal/Federal Reserve conspiracy to destroy the Edsel. That means the Nova is the car in the eye of the Automotive Conspiracy hurricane!


This Chevy lives on the same block as the '71 Valiant and just around the corner from the '71 VW Squareback. I'm on the road and don't have my reference library handy (yes, actual books) at the moment, so I'm going to go with my gut feeling and say this car is a '62 model, the first year of the Nova. Yes, I'm leaving myself open to the scorn of Chevy II fanatics the world over if I'm off by a year or two, but I can take it.

So let's get this out of the way: 572 cubic inch Procharged crate motor, 4L80E transmission, a 3.50 rear gear with a Detroit Locker, MSD ignition, 3" Flowmaster exhaust, Baer 14" brakes, and a RacePac Data Logger dash. This car will chew you up and not even bother spitting you out. It will do drag pulls so hard you children will feel it. Opec rejoices when this car visits a drag strip. All other Nova's feel inferior in the presence of Notorious. It's black, it's badass, and it makes us weak in the knees. Screw environmental stewardship, we'd rather be Notorious.

Some of these may be familiar to you, thanks to our Top Car Commercials Of The 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s series a while back, but we've got plenty of lost classics as well. We had to be careful not to give you too much of a Camaro Overdose (the Camaro seems to be the most heavily advertised product ever hawked by The General), but we don't want anyone missing out on the heartbeat! Enjoy.

1980 Monte Carlo Turbo	1985 Corvette	1985 Camaro	1985 Celebrity Eurosport
1967 Camaro	1984 Sprint	1969 Impala	1955 Chevrolet Cars
1970 Nova	1970 Chevelle SS 396	1984 Camaro	1984 Cavalier
1982 Chevette	1977 Camaro Z/28	1985 Camaro IROC Z	1970 Caprice
1986 Camaro	1971 Vega Kammback	1969 Chevelle SS 396	1955 Chevrolet Engines

I'm not 100% convinced this isn't a 1969 model; the front side marker lights and grille surround look like '68 units, but the license plate appears to sport a 1969 number. Junkyard part transplants were incredibly common with these cars, so it could have '68 fenders, a '69 trunk lid, etc. The distinction is pretty much meaningless to all but the most obsessed Nova zealots, because the 1968 and 1969 models are nearly identical vehicles.


Speaking of junkyard parts swappage, the Rambler side mirror is a nice touch. Since these things were pretty much the same thing as first-gen Camaros under the skin, small-block hoonage sent vast numbers of them to early graves. This car keeps on earning its keep as a daily driver, though;

You could get your little Chevy wagon with a 153-cubic-inch four-cylinder- whoa, a four-cylinder in a 60s Detroit wagon? Call the HUAC! You could also get a 194-cube six-cylinder; sorry, V8 fans, you had to wait until '64 for an optional 283 in your Chevy II.


Even though this wagon's owner is clearly a salt-flat-crazed hot rod hoodlum, the single exhaust suggests that he or she has kept the four or six under the hood. Parts runnner? Daily driver?

Yes, when you have a car that takes the engine with the best power-to-money ratio in the world as a bolt-in, you figure there won't be many left in a hoon-friendly area like the East Bay after a few decades. Still, this refrigerator-white '74 (which lives just around the corner from the '69 Volvo P1800) has beaten the odds, looking like it just rolled off the showroom floor. Cars from 1975 and earlier are exempt from California's strict emissions test, which means there's very little likelihood that the 350 in this Nova is actually putting out the original 145 horsepower.


This car parks outdoors on one of the busiest streets in town (though sometimes it's in the driveway), letting all the commuters in their Explorers and Altimas take an envious look at those sharp rally wheels as they pass by. The '74 Nova with 350 sold for $2,919, $110 bucks less than the 318-powered '74 Dart. However, it cost $284 more than the '74 AMC Gremlin with 304 V8, which gave you 5 more horses than the Nova's 350, in a car weighing 194 pounds less. So there you have it- the Gremlin was a much better performance deal than the Nova in 1974!

Hi all, Here are some pics of my past works all done without garage, on my drive. I started on a bike licence back in 1980 so I built my tree wheeler ODYSSEY, a well known car around the custom scene, winning many trophies and most radical at Blackpool indoor show. It had a roof chop to the front roof gullwing doors and a 1600 type 3 VW variant engine and transaxle .

Next was my standard 8, it was a 4 door but i chopped the roof and made a 2 door coupe, it ran a 3.1 V6 with a Jag rear axle narrowed. I then built a one off V12 creation based on a hand built chassis and a bond bug body which sat in front of the steering wheels. All the running gear was out of a Jaguar.

After a long spell away from cars I got Calibra once again, so i built myself a body kit for this car. It featured in Max Power Top 100 at the NEC and got featured in Total Vauxhall. I then acquired the Nova, I intended to do a Ferrari Enzo lookalike but got somewhat side tracked. The car is still not finished, but I did enough bodywork to get the MOT to enable me to get to shows. I can't say when it will be finished as I am to reluctant to take it off the road since I am having too much fun driving it about. The car has just won Discovery Channel's Chop Shop London Garage, UK's Wildest Ride, they plan to do a write up on my work to coincide with a new series out soon.

Hope this is of some interest to you. Once again thanks for the attention, I understand people's mixed feeling about the car but it is what it is, my bit of fun, and surely that's all that counts.

Thanks, Steve

Steve McHugh is a man with a passion for Nova kit cars, and the white beast we all witnessed is his creation. Obviously it didn't start out that way: Steve has gone through three different major iterations of the car over the course of ten years. Each time he reworks the car, it gets a little bit wilder. The original version was essentially just a lightly modified version of the kit, with some lower body modifications and grafted-on Cougar headlights. We see it preserved for posterity below.

The second version of the car started to get a bit wackier, with manga-inspired wings sprouting all over the car, aggressive ducting to the rear and slots chopped out of the hood. The interior also got a major upgrade with all kinds of interestingly detailed billet knobs and buttons. It also got a snazzy teal paint job

The third and current iteration went off the deep end, obviously, with all the fiberglass and bondo work going into completely restyled sides, the obvious elimination of the rear body work in favor of a crazy looking under-engine aero tray, and a much-upgraded engine. Considering this work was essentially done in a driveway in Tamworth, UK, it's damned impressive, even if you can't get behind the styling.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

[Thanks to PriceOfHisToys and Cycoholic]

Continental: Found this convertible MKIII Continental appeared yesterday around the corner from my house (Boston, MA). You can see a tarp in the back seat, so I am guessing the top isn't working at the moment. You can also see some wires bleeding from the driver door. You can't really see much from the pictures, but the car is beat-up from head to toe. It has a Key West "Mile 0" marker sticker, so I am wondering if or when it made that 27+/- hour trip. Im not sure who the "Quinn 74" sticker is for. Trying to find a specific Quinn in Boston is like trying to find a needle in a needle-stack. It has Mass plates, so I am surprised the body panels are not eaten-up. There is also a forth-gen Continental that lives on my street, I was going to send pictures with my better camera with that one.

Nova: I was riding around on my lunch time and found this early 70's Nova. It was sitting in the middle of a loading dock around an industrial/warehouse area in South Boston. I think it is a straight-six from the look of the oil pan.

Spitfire: Funny, after all that British Leyland talk, I rode past this Triumph yesterday after work. Seems to be in good condition, even the top looked good. I didn't spot any rust on it, besides on the muffler. I thought it was funny to see the Mass plate that says "Spirit of America" just over the Triumph badge. Spotted in an industrial area in South Boston.

The Nova Custom was the mid-level trim package; you could get get the '75 Custom sedan for $3,415, and for another 75 bucks you'd have one with that lo-po 350 I mentioned earlier.


Of course, since 1975 and older cars are smog-exempt in California, there's nothing stopping the owner of this car from adding, say, 300 additional horsepower using cheap off-the-shelf performance parts. I'm often tempted to go the Nova + small-block route for my next project car, though I'd probably use one of the Buick/Olds/Pontiac Nova clones.


The Chevy dog-dishes look great on this car, which has been serving as basic transportation since Gerald Ford was in the White House. The four-door mid-70s Nova doesn't have enough collector value to survive on "classic" status, so this one is still with us thanks to its usefulness as a motor vehicle.

We've just discovered that our server hamsters now refuse to run on their wheels when a gallery has more than 50 images, so here's the complete set of photos in the old format:

it seems that DMX likes people to know which yellow Chevy Nova II is his, so he had "DMX" put on his front windshield in big yellow letters. Or maybe it was because he'd always go into parking lots, and forget which yellow Nova II was his. No word on who the female in the car is, but we're presuming she was a bit disappointed that DMX didn't show up in a Lamborghini. [AP via Fox News, TMZ]

Imagine my excitement, driving to Lee Johnson Chevrolet's 75th Anniversary Car Show, coming around the bend and laying eyes upon a confusing yet rousing and mystical sight. They lined the cars up on the front row by the street?? That's more then I expected! 30's to late 60's Chevys braving the elements (rain in Seattle? NEVER!) and showing off their wax jobs. Not by the usual standard of bling and shine, but here it's a measure of your water beads! There were about 32 cars in all, members of the three North Western chapters of the VCCA (Vintage Chevrolet Club of America).

Most were unhappy about the rain but as a conversation went:
Me: "I'm amazed and excited that the cars are still out! In SoCal, it clouds up and everyone scatters like cockroaches!!"
VCCA member: "Well if we did that, there wouldn't be any cars shows!"

Thanks for the bravery!

Car notes:
Nova 400 Conv. sadly no 400 in it... BOO!! flat 6 with 180HP I believe
75 Caprice had a real 400 with a Malaise 150HP.... HOW was that all the power it had? Sad, but the car looked so cruisable!
53 Vette is number 125 of only 300 made