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:

Thanks to this hoon son, who put the Escape in a ditch on the way to "get ice cream," cabinet ministers will have to buy their own vehicles, but still be allowed to claim mileage when using the vehicle for government purposes only. Take that, Canada! Now if only we can get Rep. Slaughter to give back her Lucerne. (h/t Acidic)[CBC]

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

Roasted testicle jokes aside, the founder, Amory Lovins — stop it — is the applied physicist behind the Colorado think tank and has some interesting things to say about the direction of cars to come. Take a couple of minutes and head over to the Nova website and listen to him talk about the challenges and opportunities for making cars better, stronger, faster, and more efficient. Okay, now you can make jokes about dangley bits. [Nova]

You can check out the Frozen Car Blog for more photos and information on how this project came to be. (Photos used with the permission of the artists).

You can also follow the action live using one of the Michigan Tech Webcams.
[Source: Frozen Car Blog]

[Pics & Info via Frozen Car Blog]

We spoke with the artists via telephone as they warmed up from a day out in the bitter cold prepping the base for the placement of the Nova. When we first saw the project we feared that perhaps it would be merely a simple visual meant to criticize the car culture we hold so near and dear. We were therefore quite pleased to find out that both artists are car fans and are taking a thoughtful approach to examining the same conflicts we explore often on this site (the Nova belonged to one of the artists).

Mary and Sue, who met at the Rhode Island School of Design, have worked together for a while and therefore have a habit of finishing the other person's thoughts and sentences. Because of this we've formatted the interview as both were talking at the same time instead of separately.

Why freeze a Nova in a block of ice?

In the past we've done some projects involving blowing up cars and working with fire. What started as a comment has turned into an inquisitive investigation and we started thinking about it more seriously and started thinking about what metaphor the car could describe.

We love cars and for a long time our work has referenced mobility. We were also very fascinated with the metaphor and the car in American culture; that it's power and that it's freedom and now we're questioning those things. We tend to question our behavior at the same time we enjoy our behavior. That's just part of our inquisitive nature. We're critiquing the culture at the same time we're enjoying it.

(SUE) For me, this is kind of personal. When I was a baby I guess I had colic really bad and the only thing that would quiet me down is that my parents would have to drive me around at night. Cars have always been a pacifier in a way, a really elemental thing. I love to travel and mary does, too.

You're taking out the motor and a lot of the interior elements, is that an aesthetic or symbolic choice?

Technically, I think it will help us position the car because it will be much lighter... environmentally it's also a little more sound that the fluids aren't going to leak. On top of that it won't cloud the ice. Any dirt that gets in will affect the clarity. I think we also like the idea of the car being a shell as a metaphor.

(The artists also pointed out that getting someone to do all the mechanical work for free is tough and the people in the Michigan Tech engineering department were more than happy to barter the work for the engine.)

How did you end up choosing Michigan Tech?

Last year we worked with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and they designed a refrigeration system and as much as we loved the work... we realized it would be very costly and we didn't want to have a fabricated solution to our problem. [Also] U of M did a study and realized that Detroit didn't get cold enough to get the ice that we needed. We wanted to do this by natural means and that meant we had to come further north.

[Mary] met an alum from Michigan Tech and he said it's really cold up there and you might want to contact the engineering department. They invited us to come up and with no skepticism said it's cold enough to do anything up there.

What's your ultimate dream for the project if you weren't hindered by supplies and funding?

What we'd really like to do is put it on a train while it's a frozen block and bring it to Detroit and watch it thaw. We think having a frozen Nova on a block of ice on the railroad car would look awesome. It would be suspended time in motion and it would be in the heart of the American auto industry. It would be ideal.

Photos provided by the Artists

Did Ford shamelessly rip off that grille design for the Fairmont or what? Hmm... those big bumpers would do well on a 24 Hours of LeMons car. Just put a 350... er, I mean a 305 (all LeMons racers with small-block Chevy engines will tell you they have 305s) in it and you're ready to understeer through turns and burn rubber out of them!


The mock-optimistic emblems and low-bidder taillight plastic tell a tale of Malaise Era diminished expectations. This car is a history lesson!


Compare this car's bulk to the Nova of just 14 years earlier. Of course, in a process familiar to Honda Civic fans, the Nova got bigger and bigger and eventually had smaller models (Vega, then Chevette and Monza) placed beneath it in the model hierarchy, so it's not really fair to judge a car by bloat.

Now, you might tend to look a gift Chevy in the mouth and assume it doesn't run at all. However, in the case of this Late Malaise Era Nova (go here if the ad disappears), your suspicions would be unfounded. It's free and it runs! It does need "a new gasket," whatever that means, but as the seller says: "its free, so dont complain." So once you've solved the paperwork hassles (what, you think a free car is going to have a title?), you can budget some nickels and dimes for a junkyard 350, some tall leaf-spring shackles, and every April Wine tape ever sold. Oh, and there might be some other repairs needed as well- hey, it's free! Add a rattle-can black primer paint job and you'll have an incredibly good Fun Per Dollar ratio.

That Nova looks promising, no doubt about it, but if you're going to take on a free car for your project, you want something with a little more style. How about a genuine 60s Chevy Impala, for the low, low price of nothing? Say, this '69 Impala 4-door (go here if the ad disappears, which has been sitting in a meadow for years? Don't let that rough exterior scare you, because it's never a good idea to judge a book by its cover (though this book looks to have had most of its pages eaten away by rats and silverfish). It's got an engine (allegedly a 283, but the possibility of a 307- or worse- looms). The buyer wants only tow-truck equipped buyers, not "lookers," and he or she wants the car gone before the mud in the meadow gets too gooey to extract this diamond-in-the-rough. Hey, a little bodywork here and some upholstery work there, and next thing you know you'll be looking sharp in a clean Impala!

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First off we have a tried-and-true formula that's helped generations of hoons hit the guardrails at countless dragstrips and telephone poles on countless back roads, at speeds double or triple anything GM's designers ever intended for the car: the big-block early Nova. This 1964 2-door hardtop Chevy II is all set up with a full tube chassis, tubs, cage, the works (and it was done "professionally," which means "someone got paid to do it"), and it even comes with a 454! Well, OK, the engine needs rebuilding (let's hope that doesn't mean rod-shaped holes in the oil pan) and it has a no-doubt-tired 4L80E transmission (which will immediately turn into a fine mist of hot steel shavings as soon as it has to deal with the kind of power this car deserves), but what do you expect for just $3200? There's no word on the rear end, but the blurry photo suggests it might be a Ford 9". Also no word on anything else. Electrical system? Rust? Paperwork? Hey, this is Hell!

At least the seller of this 1977 Corolla has a clean title for the car, so there's one thing you won't need to worry about. And with a DOHC 2T-G head on a 3TC block and all sorts of go-fast goodies, you shouldn't have to worry about power. What you will need to worry about is whether the engine was actually built correctly, because something rings kinda suspicious about the seller's statement "After I brought it home I made an adapter plate and installed a single downdraft Weber just so I could hear it run." Come on, you bring a hot-rod engine home and you don't move heaven and earth to get the car driving that very day, so you can at least hoon up and down your street a little and enjoy the sound of it bellowing through open pipes? So you might want to take that into account when negotiating around that $4500 asking price (but just imagine that engine with lots and lots of boost). There's a fair amount of suspension modification in addition to the cage, so you'd be able to have the kind of twisty-roads fun that you could never have with the Nova... and with enough boost you might be able to take the Nova in a drag race as well.

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So it was nice to see this well-preserved '70 parked on Alameda's Estuary waterfront, within a block of the 1970 Ford LTD.


You might wonder why GM slapped emblems boasting of lowly six-banger power on this car. Well, the 250 six was an optional engine; a 90-horse pushrod four-cylinder was the base powerplant. Of course, with a 375-horse 396 as an available option on the Nova, why mess around with the 250?



The styling on the '70 was strictly no-frills, but it looked good. Still, maybe the more distinctive look on the competing Mopar A-bodies was the reason we see so many more of them today... or maybe it was just the super-indestructo Slant Six.


Weighing in at about 3,000 pounds, it was easy to make a Nova quicker than its somewhat heavier (yet similar under the skin) Camaro cousin. And when your Nova rusted out or slid into a telephone pole during Grain Belt-fueled burnouts in the 7-11 parking lot, why, you just picked up another one for a few hundred bucks and transplanted the running gear for More Hoonage!

That's why it was nice to run across this daily-driver beater convertible in Alameda's West End. I spotted it right around the corner from the brown '74 Porsche 911 Targa.


I know it's a daily driver, because I talked to the owner for a minute before he hopped in the thing and drove off to his job 25 miles away. And, ugly as this car may be, it started right up and drove off without a single engine part coming out of the tailpipe.


Tall leaf-spring shackles are still with us! Just don't, you know, get too aggressive in the corners with this setup.


It's a bit down at the heels, but still has early-60s GM style. I'm pretty sure that front bumper isn't from a '63, and in fact this car may be a mishmash of several different years- 1963 seems to be the average vintage of the body parts.


Naturally, there's a bit of the typical body rust you get in old GM cars around here. Looks like none of it has reached Midwestern levels yet, though. And with a convertible, you don't have the rear window rust you usually get!


Even though we've all seen an octillion of these cars with nutso small-blocks, you couldn't get a factory-installed V8 until the 1964 model year. It's cool how GM was proud enough of the six to put a little I6 emblem on the fender.


The '63 Nova convertible listed at just $2472; the much slower and flimsier '63 Beetle convertible was priced a bit cheaper, at $2095.

Of course, the real competition for this car wasn't so much the Beetle; the $2344 Rambler American convertible and the $2470 Ford Futura were the real opponents.

In the early 1970s, GM created versions of the Chevrolet Nova for practically all of its brands, spelling out N-O-V-A in the variants' names: Nova, Omega (Oldsmobile), Ventura (Pontiac), Apollo (Buick). It was downhill from there, as that strategy (minus the name scheme) turned each of the brands' lineups into virtual clones of each others' by the 1980s. It was no different at Ford and Mercury and Dodge and Plymouth and Chrysler, all of the Big Three attempting to benefit from economies of scale during one of the most difficult periods in the companies' histories. These days, we call such sharing badge engineering, or (in extreme cases) badge prostitution. We assume it's always bad, but is that accurate? Was there ever a case of a car company creating truly unique products or boosting its brand image by way of swapping models? Discuss.

[via Bill's Nova SS page]

Related:
Question of the Day: Baby's First Mods? [internal]

Here's an exercise in free association. I moved to the East Bay in 1994, just as Rancid's "Salvation" was eking its way up the charts in the wake of the massive success of Green Day and the Offspring. Five years later, I found myself onstage belting out "Alternative Ulster" with Mike Watt, Greg Hetson, Eric Melvin and Derek O'Brien at Punk Rock Karaoke in San Francisco. An hour after that, I found myself involved in a public makeout session with one of a quartet of girls who'd belted out an adorably sloppy version of the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb."

To me, Cherry Bomb mufflers are inextricably linked to ratty-ass Novas (this association dates back to my childhood friend Robert, with whom I once camped in the back of a busted RX-4 wagon because our backyard accomodations got too cold; his grandparents had a mint 510 and a mammoth Fury III plus an unlimited supply of soda stacked on cardboard pallets. Ironically, my grandparents did, too. His sister was named Chablis and had a child named "Cherokee" well before she hit 18).

The Nova in the "Salvation" vid was eventually wrecked in an accident involving Mike LaVella. And the East Bay? It gave me sustenance; an identity. SoCal has mostly given me flash, opportunity, poverty and stunning views of the Port of Los Angeles, but it also gave us the Runaways. And well, Runways drummer Sandy West is dead. Almost any eulogy for her will talk about their influence on women in rock 'n' roll. Some of the more intelligent ones will mention Kim Fowley. But that's not the larger point. For me, the Runaways were a key jumping-off point for so many people in so many different ways. If they weren't directly influenced, they were indirectly influenced.

And in some weird way, my odd, postproduction nexus-of-personality is a Rancid video for a song about a gated community 15 minutes south of my college-and-afterward apartment featuring a clapped-out Nova and some sick-ass scooters made on a ridiculously cheapo budget that became the first in a string of hits for a bunch of unlikely lads.

So, in the words of the late, great Randy "Biscuit" Turner: Go start your own band! Or car.

R.I.P. Sandy. You did more good in the world than most people, just by rocking the hell out. – Davey G. Johnson

Runaways Drummer Dead at 47 [CNN]

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Steve Irwin's Revenge: Viper vs. Sting Ray [Internal]

Resale values of any light-colored Nova SS actually increased in the '90s, due to the success of The Oasis song "Champagne Supernova". Actually, we made that part up. But all that Nova mumbo-jumbo is made up too, says Akre:

According to the site's [snopes.com] "Urban Legends Reference Pages," the Nova actually sold well in the Spanish-speaking counties where it was sold between '72 and '78. It notes that GM was well aware of the translation and opted to retain the Nova name because the issue was deemed insignificant.

How well did the Nova sell? Well, that would involve like three phone calls, because the guy that has the Nova sales figures is out on vacation and the other guy answering his messages only deals with Chevelles, and it's just a big hassle. Seriously, GM didn't bother to say how many cars they sold in Latin America. Yes, it would involve some homework, but this a GM blog, referencing another website for information about GM. Sigh. Anyway, people who speak spanish didn't mind driving a car called "No Go", but people in French Canada don't want to drive a Lacrosse because it refers to a slang term for masturbation.

Chevy's 'No-Va' and Other Durable Urban Legends [FYI Blog]

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The Buick Lacrosse: Beauty or Beast, FYI: GM Expansive New Blog Empire [internal]