Junkyard Find: 1978 Chevrolet Nova Sedan

From the 1962 through 1979 model years, General Motors moved close to five million units of the Chevy II/Nova compact car in North America. This was the Chevy II/Nova, and I’ve found a late-production example in a Denver car graveyard.

If you count the versions of the 1962-1979 X-Body sold by other GM divisions ( Pontiac Ventura/ Phoenix, Oldsmobile Omega, Buick Apollo/ Skylark, Cadillac Seville*) and those built in other countries ( Canada, Mexico, Iran), this is one of the best-selling cars The General ever created.

*Feel feel to be enraged that I am including the 1976-1979 Seville in the X-Body family. Hitting the chassis with extra welds and using nicer suspension bushings does not de-Nova-ize a Nova.

This car is a fourth-generation (1975-1979) Nova for sure, but the cowl tag crudely attached with self-tapping screws suggests that it may not have been born as a ’78 model.

The bare-bones instrument cluster is from a 1977-1979 car. The build tag on the driver’s door is long gone, though GM used very affordable printing on those and nearly all are unreadable now, anyway.

The original buyer of this car wasn’t willing to pay $20 for a clock or $106 for real gauges instead of idiot lights (those figures would be around $101 and $534 in 2024 dollars), but they did spring for the $307 automatic transmission and the $508 air conditioning ($1,546 and $2,559 after inflation).

The sticker price for a base 1978 Nova four-door started at $3,777, or about $19,024 in today’s money. During the early 1990s, I had a 1976 Nova coupe that cost 50 bucks in 1991 dollars ($117 now) that turned out to be one of the better cheap hoopties I’ve owned over the decades.

These cars were always good value for the price, though their platform had become quite antiquated by the end of the 1970s. Their front-wheel-drive replacement, the Citation and its relatives, boasted far better interior space and fuel economy on a similar footprint but proved to have brand-tarnishing quality problems.

The Nova name started out as a trim level designation for the Chevy II, itself a design hurried into production in order to offer Chevrolet shoppers a compact that wasn’t as radical as the Corvair.

GM dropped the Chevy II name for the 1969 model year, at which point the erstwhile trim level name became the full-fledged model name. The same process happened a bit later when the Chevelle name got shoved aside by the Malibu name.

The engine in this car had been removed by the time I arrived. If the cowl tag really is the original one, then this car was born at Willow Run with a 305-cubic-inch small-block under its hood. The base engine would have been a 250-cube straight-six; a 350ci small-block was available as well.

It began life with red paint, later getting a backyard application of black primer.

There’s rust around the trunk floor, thanks to GM’s not-so-effective weatherstripping. 1962-1974 Novas generally get spared a junkyardy fate, provided they don’t have four doors. A Malaise Nova sedan generally isn’t worth rescuing.

The Nova name was revived for the 1985 model year, when production of a Chevy-ized AE82 Toyota Corolla Sprinter began at the NUMMI plant.

Production of that Nova ended in 1988. Starting with the 1990 model year, NUMMI began cranking out E90 Toyota Sprinters with Geo Prizm badges.

Room for six (people who really like each other).

The Jacksonsville Sheriff’s Department (and law-enforcement organizations in 47 other states) chose the ’78 Nova.

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard

1978 Chevrolet Nova in Denver wrecking yard.

[Images: The Author.]

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Source: The Truth About Cars