1977 Chevrolet Concours - Don't Call it a Nova

My high-school girlfriend's mother had a Chevrolet "Don't Call It a Nova" Concours similar to this 1977 for sale not far from the Triple Wide, with an asking price of $7,500.

Her car was all blue, with color-keyed wheel covers like this one from a 1975 brochure for the Concours' predecessor, the Nova LN. The one-year-only LN, followed by the 1976 and 1977 Concours, was Chevrolet's answer to the Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch: gussied-up compacts aimed at buyers being wooed by the wave of tony German imports then washing ashore here.

Forget the Bimmer, honey. I got us a Chevy Nova instead!

Chevrolet redesigned the Nova for 1975, its first major restyling since 1968. It remained an X-body, sharing some of its chassis and suspension architecture with GM's F-body Camaro and Firebird, although calling it a four-door Camaro would be stretching things a bit. Still, my girlfriend's mom's Concours felt positively athletic compared with my father's oafish and horrible 1972 Cadillac Sedan deVille.

That thing could move, too. Her car was powered by the 170-horsepower, 350-cubic-inch four-barrel V-8. This one has the 145-horsepower, 305 two-barrel V-8. Anytime she'd pick me up in her mom's car, I insisted on driving and having a sweet-old-time with the go-pedal. She'd also insist I chip in for gas, since the little car—which actually wasn't so little—used gasoline like a bus. Not as bad as my dad's Caddy, though, but it was hardly economical. 

Chevrolet went to considerable lengths to make the Concours look and feel like something more upscale than the ordinary Nova, even giving it its own sales brochure for 1977. That year, it received a finer-mesh grille, stand-up hood ornament, new wheel covers and wider bright wheel-opening moldings. Chevrolet's brochure even described it as "International in style, it is American in function."

In a vacuum, this is not a bad-looking car. Such as it was intended to be, though, it's no wonder it found fewer buyers than Chevrolet had hoped for. Chevy cranked out 365,264 Novas for 1977, with roughly 75,000 of them being Concours models.

If you think the four-door Concours sent out mixed metaphors or messages, check out the two-door. Sorry, even a ribald coupe lover like me can't quite get his arms around these cars, with their very odd proportions. That half-vinyl top isn't doing this one any favors, either.

Chevrolet continued the X-body Nova through 1979, although the Concours name disappeared after 1977. Chevrolet continued the upscale idea with the Nova Custom in 1978 and 1979. Must have been a bit crazy being a Chevrolet salesperson in the late '70's explaining why someone should pay more for the new for new-for-1978 intermediate Malibu that was just a scooch bigger than the "compact" Nova. Which, again, with a whopping 111-inch-long wheelbase, wasn't so little. 

The asking price on this one is $7,500, which seems out-of-this-world high to me. No doubt the seller did their research, because internet value guides peg the asking price as fairly reasonable. Those AI-powered sites do tend to be optimistic with their pricing.

There isn't a number low enough on this car that would sway me toward it at any price.

I wouldn't mind taking it for a spin, though, just to see if it's anywhere near as good as I remember it being.

1977 Little Red Corvette Rear End Rebuild - Part I - Disassembly

After I was cut off abruptly on I-480 south west of Cleveland a couple of years ago, save for oh-so-short jaunts around town, I hadn't really driven our lovely 1977 "Little Red Corvette" much. That incident frightened me pretty good because when I slammed the brakes to avoid hitting that yahoo, the whole car rotated on its tires with the passenger side rear end swinging around fixing to change places with the passenger front. I knew there was something up "back there" all along but how wrong things were was a mystery. I figured the thumping and clunking was all part of the C3 experience. Well, the moaning, groaning and creaking from the rear end kept getting worse and worse and it finally got so bad that I stopped driving it completely and even dropped insurance coverage. I know. Risky. But that's what can happen with old cars - you love them and would never think of getting rid of them, well, I mean you would but not at a complete loss, but they become too dangerous and a burden to drive. 

This past spring I finally decided to do something about it. Armed with years of research on third generation or "C3" Corvette rear suspensions, I dove into the abyss of extreme DIY automobile repair. Am I a mechanic? Nope. Do I really know what I'm doing? Technically, no. Do I have the funds to have this done professionally? Well, yeah, but I don't think it financially responsible to spend the amount of money it would take to have it done professionally. That amount, when all said and done, being more than the car was worth. Especially in the dilapidated condition the car was in. And, being honest, I enjoy working on cars. So, with these dis-parent notions I got down and dirty. 

While gorgeous, rolling works of art, second and third generation Corvette's come with a number of inherent problems. Their fiberglass bodies flex and can crack and are very expensive to repair. Their cast iron frames are rust prone, they have myriad electrical issues as well. However, it's their independent rear suspensions that are perhaps their most overlooked problem areas. They're Fred Flinstone mobile primitive, wear out easily and, being totally honest, don't really provide a degree of performance improvement above and beyond sporty domestic cars of similar vintage with "live", rigid rear axles. Worse yet, they can be frighteningly expensive to repair. Even if you do the repairs yourself. 

Diagnosing problems with cars, old and newer, is often times more challenging than the repair work itself. However, with our Corvette, it was pretty easy to determine that the issue with the rear end was that the bushings on the trailing arms were worn out. Also, the metal shims that brace the trailing arms against the body inside pockets on the frame were shot as well. Yes, metal shims that brace the arms in pockets on the frame; I said these things were primitive. I deduced from my research that "all I had to do" was pull the trailing arms, replace the bushings and shims, put everything back together, align it and very affordably rock and roll. I'd upgrade the tires too since I found, and embarrassingly so,  they're over thirty years old. 

Dismantling the car wasn't complicated but it was physically challenging and fairly dangerous; you never know what could snap a finger or hand off and I really don't like crawling under a car that has nothing more than a pair of thirty-nine dollar Autozone jack stands propping it up. As far as physically demanding, drilling out the rivets that held the brake rotors on felt like the a physical education test administered by the gym teacher from hell. Each one taking upwards of a half an hour of grueling pressing to get out. All in we're talking about five hours of drilling over the better part of a week. That and more than hundred bucks spent on cobalt drill bits. Like I said, this repair work is not cheap. 

The real scope of the project took shape once I got the rotors off. I found that the emergency brake hardware on each side was completely rusted up and useless and the cost of replacement hardware pushed my budget into the "replace the trailing arms" territory. Then I found it appeared the wheel bearing on the passenger side had significant play in it. Well, there went just replacing the bushings and shims. Might as well replace the both trailing arms. 

If drilling out the rotors was hard, cutting the bolts that held the trailing arms into the pockets in the frame amounted to torture. With the shims rusted to the outboard wall of the pockets and the bushings themselves having come out of the trailing arms, I had no way to determine where the bolts where; I had to start cutting what I could see of the rubber bushings all but completely blind. And with a very limited amount of room inside the pocket, my carbide reciprocating saw blade hit the back of the pocket constantly making it seem as though the worst dental procedure I ever had felt like I was receiving a communion host. 

Much like DIY home renovation projects, you never know what you're really getting yourself into until you're knee deep in it. This project got significantly more complicated when I found the transverse leaf spring and the differential needed to be replaced as well. Those two things not only adding significant expense and complication to the whole project but pushing the completion of it towards the end of the year if not into 2021. 

Funny, I thought I could do most of this project during a week's furlough from work due to The Pandemic. Funny indeed. Going on sixteen weeks into the project I feel as though I've only just started on it. 

Opel GT - Junior Corvette

Stumbled across this Opel GT, mistakenly labeled as an Opel "Manta", on Facebook Marketplace the other morning while I was searching for rear end and suspension parts for my 1977 Corvette. That's fitting seeing how some of the design work on these cars were done by the same team that penned C3 Corvette's and these were known as "Junior Corvette's". Asking price is a not unreasonable $10,500. Especially so when you consider it's stuffed with a "built" Chevrolet 350 V-8. I mean, I'd never pay that but I wouldn't chide you and say you over paid for this if you bought it. 

Like many sports cars used to be and some still are (looking at you, sixth gen Chevrolet Camaro), the 1969-1973 Opel GT was based on humble sedan underpinnings. In this case, Opel's 1965 B Series Kadett which was as bland looking as Euro-mobiles got back in the '60's. Well, save for stuff that rolled out of Russia and East Germany. Shoot, the Kadett even made Rambler's look cool. 

It's not that the Kadett was ugly, it was just boring and uninspired looking. It was, however, a fairly competent little handler; especially compared to the plowing, truckish oafs pushed out by the Big Three over here back then. In that regard, amazing what a set of sexy clothes will do for a dowdy but smart wall flower. I don't know about you but I find something veddy alluring about a smart, sassy, bookish librarian.  

However, I can say with all certainty that had I been of car buying age and means back then I'd pass on one of these instead opting for its big brother, the Corvette. Despite the fact that the GT could run circles around it. And for a lot less money. Hey, never confuse me with someone who's makes smart automotive purchases. 

Well, run circles around it once it got moving. These things were powered by either Kadett's 1.1 liter overhead valve or 1.9 liter cam-in head four-cylinder engines making sixty-seven and one-hundred and two horsepower respectively. The 1.9, of course, providing significantly better acceleration for the one-ton two seater than the 1.1 but still no C3 of the same vintage with even its base engine. 

Speaking of engines, aside from saying this thing is "built", there aren't any details in the ad about either what went into this or even a boast about what it can do. So, I'm left to merely speculate. And rather than get all engine geeky about it, much as I'd love to, I'll just leave it at that and just assume that this big engine would provide exhilarating acceleration. I'm not crazy about the little air cleaner sticking up out of the hood but aside from that, sure looks fast. don't it? 

Opel brought back the "GT" nameplate for a short lived sporty two-seater back in the '00's that while quite fetching, didn't quite check all the boxes on the purity of form that the original had. Even if it was a vastly superior automobile all the way around. GM also sold that car as the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice.