SerpApi.Org
It’s 1975. The party is over. Government-approved engines with government-approved emissions equipment strangling the life out of them are fitted into cars with government-approved bumpers that allow you to drive through an Opel or a Plymouth Cricket without stopping and with minimal damage. It’s a dreary landscape, with few positive options. Do you embrace the last ember of performance and buy yourself a Pontiac with a huge decal on the hood? Do you buy a pickup truck and dive head-first into the fun world of C.B. radio culture? Or maybe it’s about time you took a cargo van and converted it into a rolling bordello. The smart answer would’ve been to go down to your local Chevy dealership and custom-order yourself a plain-Jane Nova like this one that is currently for sale on Hemmings, but not one off of the lot.
Not picking up what we’re putting down?
One of the biggest lamentations we hear about buying new cars today is the lack of choices available compared to the 1960s. The idea of ordering your car a’la carte by checking off the boxes on the order form is something of a dream anymore (especially now, with “packages” limiting you to whatever the manufacturer wants you to have). But ordering your car with what you wanted, as you wanted it was still an option in the 1970s and the individual who ordered this 1975 Chevrolet Nova Custom worked the order form over like a champ.
A reminder before we dive into the options: the X-body (Nova, plus Buick Apollo/Skylark, Pontiac Ventura/Phoenix and 1974 GTO, Oldsmobile Omega and to a degree, the K-body Cadillac Seville) ran parallel to the F-body (Camaro/Firebird) in development. The 1968-’74 X-bodies share the same front subframe, steering and suspension as the first-generation F-bodies, while 1975-’79 X-cars share the 1970-’81 F-body subframe. So look closely, as you will see more shared parts from the Camaro bin than you might expect.
Let’s get the first bit of good news out of the way quickly: this Nova came from the factory with a four-barrel equipped 350-cu.in. V8 and a four-speed manual transmission. That already puts this Nova head and shoulders over most 1970s X-cars. On top of that, add in the power steering, the disc brakes, the floor console with the rally gauges that look like they were lifted from a 1969 Camaro, a bucket seat interior, and the in-dash tachometer that precious few cars ever got.
The “special suspension package” (we can hope for something similar to the 9C1 Nova police package that raised a lot of eyebrows) and heavy-duty radiator smack of the kind of “Super Nova” builds that magazines like Motor Trend and Hot Rod were encouraging readers to investigate.
By muscle car era standards, what you are looking at is a junior supercar recipe hidden within the ordering forms. You have a (relatively) hot small-block in an insurance-friendly compact package that offers a benefit (handling) without being heavy on the gimmickry. If you walked by it and didn’t look inside, it’s just a 1975 Nova that hasn’t been hot-rodded to death. Don’t look for the shifter or the steering wheel raided from the Camaro. Ignore those surpsingly thick radial tires. And we doubt you’ll spot the thick swaybars or the fun-sized tachometer. That was the point of a Nova like this: all of the fun in a car Big Brother approved of.
The post Super, Indeed: 350/4-speed 1975 Nova With The Good Suspension appeared first on The Online Automotive Marketplace.
