Stumbled across this 1972 Chevrolet Nova recently and it brought me back. Way back. Not sure when exactly as some memories don't line up chronologically for me anymore. Funny how that happens as you get older. Details once so crystal clear to you suddenly begin to fade.
Anyway, I was dating a girl named Regina through my senior year of high school and freshman and sophomore years of college and sometime during that time her older sister Sandy and her husband Wayne offered to sell me their Nova for, are you sitting down? $75.
Even in 1982 or 1983 that was the deal of a lifetime. And, of course, I didn't take them up on it. It looked just like this '72 here save for that super-rare and strange optional "Sky Roof". Fun facts, the Skyroof was an odd, quasi-convertible top meets a massive sunroof and was only offered on 1972 and 1973 Chevy Nova's. Just over 10,000 or so were ever sold making this one here quite rare. Anyhoo, back to Sandy's Nova.
They wanted to get rid of it because it was a hassle to park it where they lived. Parking then as now was a premium in the overcrowded commune like community of Long Beach, New York on Long Island. Many times they'd have to park one of their two vehicles upwards of a mile from their apartment. Better to have just one car to worry about. Only having one car would save on insurance, shoes and sneakers too.
No surprise, it was far from perfect. Rear quarter panels were rusted through exposing the trunk, the finish was all but gone (like on this one) and the interior was torn up. Dash had cracks in it too. I don't remember how many miles were on it, but it had a lot of wear for a car that at the time was just ten or eleven years old. Then again, years ago cars didn't age nearly as well as they do today. Says the guy who uses a twenty-year old car with almost a quarter-million miles on it as a daily driver.
What I really liked about it was how it rode and handled. Although it had Chevrolet's 307 cubic-inch V-8 like this car and not a "350", it had far more "go" than my Comet had. Way smoother too. Despite it having a funky, "when-is-this-thing-going-to-shift" two-speed Powerglide. The muffler was shot so it seemed as though it had a lot more power than it actually did. Sounded great too. Why didn't I pull the trigger?
Frankly, I've never been the biggest fan of these cars. Anything "Chevy Nova" to be honest. Too small while at the same time being too big, in my humblest of opinions, they have little of the design magic that many Bill Mitchell era designs have. And the safety-bumper era Nova's (1973-1979) look as clumsy as my Comet did. I also didn't think it that much of an upgrade from my shit-box Comet. Perhaps if it was in better shape but as it was, the move would have been lateral.
In the end, Sandy and Wayne couldn't even give it away. After I rebuffed their offer, they said they'd let me have it for nothing. Save for the $1 they had to charge me for it to make the sale official. I politely declined. Again. They offered the same deal to others, and no one took them up on it either. The poor little Nova sat unloved. They eventually junked it. Seems almost criminal in retrospect.
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