1966 Chevrolet Nova Super Sport

 

 

Lots of interesting things to say about this one.
* Chevy did a great job of making its smallest, cheapest car upgradable in ways that made it a classic muscle car. You could get a Ford Falcon with a V-8, but few people think of those as collectable cars (although the Mustang is a re-bodied Falcon).
* "Super Sport" was just an appearance package - you got some neat badges and the nicest wheel covers; that's it. Although this owner has replaced the spinner wheel covers with the dog dish hubcaps.
* Novas were available with 4, 6 and 8 cylinder engines. On this car, the 327 V-8 was the biggest you could get. But the next generation Nova went bigger.
* Note it's a "Chevy II". For some reason Chevy thought that was a clever way of distinguishing the Nova from the full-size Chevy. 1968 was the last year for "Chevy II".

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1963 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova

For decades, market forces tried to get General Motors to build a simple, inexpensive compact car. Nope, nothing doing. In the mid-20th century, the General could sell all the full-size cars (with full-size profit margins) it could build, thank you very much.

After World War II, GM invested millions in a compact Chevy, then abandoned the project. Not profitable enough. In 1960 Chevy introduced the compact Corvair, but that was merely a niche vehicle designed to blunt the invasion of Volkswagen Beetles. But when Ford introduced the compact Falcon and Mercury Comet, then GM had to act. Whatever Ford did, Chevy had to do it too, and vice versa. And Ford sold 660,000 Falcons and Comets in 1961 alone, the year before the introduction of the Chevy II.

I can't tell what engine this car has, as some of the trim is missing. But the Nova is interesting in that it was available with Chevy's six and eight cylinder engines, and also the first Chevy four cylinder since the 1920s. GM dropped the 153 c.i. engine in 1970. I've heard it remarked that it's unfortunate that Chevy didn't keep that rock-simple motor and put it in the Vega. It might have kept the Vega, with its disastrous aluminum-block engine, from getting the reputation as the worst car Detroit ever built.

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1974 Chevrolet Nova SS 350

The third-generation Nova introduced in 1968 was something of an odd choice, as Chevy's "compact" grew in size so that it was almost the same size as the Chevelle. The design remained in production virtually unchanged for seven years, and only became more popular at is sold nearly nearly 400,000 copies in 1974, and that was in spite of the fact that Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick had begun selling thinly-disguised copies of the Nova.

Observations:
* I can tell that this is a '74, as that was the only year for the big "Nova SS" decals. Who today can explain why anything became popular in the 70s?
* This Nova came to Seattle all the way from Tama County, Iowa. That's just an hour east of where I grew up, and the entire county has a population of only 17,000. There are a lot of Iowans here; at the Hawkeye bar in Queen Anne, you can't get in the door when a football game is on.

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