This stark, black stripper Nova posted by Ralf K caught my eye, particularly so since I don’t remember those dog dishes as being the ones that came with these cars as stock. And taking a closer look, it’s also missing the vent on the C-Pillar, which I assume was part of the interior ventilation and came with all of these ’75-’79 Nova. All the ones in the brochures have it. Hmmm.
Here’s a police car Nova, showing off its shiny and slightly pointed hub caps, as well as that rear vent.
In my quickie tour of the various year Nova brochures, I just had to save this one for, 1975, as it’s such a period piece.
Ok; someone clue us in on the origin of the hubcaps the featured Nova is wearing, as well as the lack of that C-Pillar vent. Surely it’s not just ornamental?
For some reason I thought the 4 door Nova’s looked better with the 1975-79 style than the 1968-74 style, I always found the 1968-74 Nova 4 door’s to be awkward looking probably because I rarely see them around.
Much like GM’s A-body midsize sedans of the same era, they didn’t wear the hippy look on the rear quarters all that well.
Meanwhile, those dog dishes look like Chevy Pickup caps to me, and as for the vent, I always thought that was more decorative than functional, to save filling and smoothing the weld between the roof and rear quarter panel – not unlike the little chrome v-shaped piece Volvos used at the top of the 140/240/160/260 C-Pillar. If you look at the picture here, you can see a definite line especially at the front end of the C-pillar.
I agree. The late cars look like the ’77 B-body scaled down, which ain’t bad; the ’68–74 cars just look lumpy and awkward.
80’s Chevy S10 hubcaps.
Yup
Maybe they were the Mexican and Latin American versions of the same 4th Generation Novas. The Novas in those countries were unusual because some have a Buick Skylark nose while others have a Malibu Rallye name.
In Mexico ca. 1989-90, I saw Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras badged as Chevy Eurosports . . . .
That’s right because Buick and Oldsmobile in those countries were marketed as Chevrolets just for the sake of GM Trademark simplicity just like Mercury were to Fords. There were no Pontiac brands on those countries though. Cadillac?, I am not sure?
In Argentina, they assigned the Malibu name to a top-trim Nova model and they still made the 1968-72 body until 1978. http://autosargentina.autothalom.com/comprar-auto/th2/chevrolet-malibu-argentina
YES apparently they used that as a top trim Chevrolet Chevy Sedan since the Malibu name is not stigmatic as the Nova name over there. The body style Chevrolet still used was from the 1968-72 vintage and another YES that at around the same time, they also used the 1962-65 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova body style until 1974 and I believed that they call it the Chevrolet 100. The South American countries especially in these regions did not used our slightly updated 1973-74 bodies nor the modern 1975-79 bodies. Any 1975-79 modern bodies there probably came from Mexico and used the Nova name ironically.
Why wouldn’t the vent be ornamental? There wasn’t one on the two-door.
2 doors had it on the b pillar like Monza did.
I have seen those hub caps on Astro vans.
This is a strange one . . . . all of these “X” cars had the vent. Bondo’d over? The dog dishes look like base covers off of an ’80’s S-10 or Astro . . .
That’s what I’m thinking as well – somebody thought they were ugly (not to mention, they didn’t realize what their function was) and ‘shaved’ them off.
EDIT: I see that they appear to be ornamental from reading below, but my now-wife’s 1975 sedan had them, and my memory says that they appeared to have slots in them.
By the way – I didn’t notice until now how much the 1975-79 Nova looked like the contemporary e12 BMW 5er with longer front and rear overhangs – the greenhouse especially… even the Hofmeister kink is right here on the C-pillar.
The Nova actually looks like it has a shorter front overhang than the E12 does
I do remember…and also recall that I thought the Nova better proportioned than the BMW, whose tail end looks droopy.
I checked some photos of the 1990-93 Honda Accord 4-door sedan and when I check the rooflines and door frame designs, in some angles it reminded me of the 1975-79 GM A-body in an updated form. http://www.netcarshow.com/honda/1990-accord_sedan/
Aha! Mystery solved: the BMW E12 had vents in the same place, but they were undoubtedly functional. The Nova came along two years later, looking very much like the E12, right down to the vents. It all makes sense….sort of.
I think the c pillar vents are actually fake
Here is what a wikicar site states
“A completely redesigned Nova was introduced in 1975. Bodystyles were still the 2-door coupe, 3-door hatchback and 4-door sedans. Base coupes, including the hatchback, had fixed side windows (or optional flip-out windows) and simulated vertical vents on the B-pillar (sedans would have simulated horizontal vents at the bottom of the C-pillar).”
http://wikicars.org/en/Chevrolet_Nova
Here is an ebay auction for one of these “vents”
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1975-76-Chevy-Nova-RH-Exterior-Pillar-Cover-77-78-79-/161745032866?hash=item25a8c156a2&vxp=mtr
As you can see there is no holes
Learn something new everyday. Never knew those were fake. I had a ’78 Skylark . . . .
Not all X-body sedans even had those vents; B-O-P versions with factrory vinyl tops didn’t. I wonder if it’s hiding a weld that was too expensive to smooth out in factory volumes.
Aha! That explains it. But not why it was put on in the first place; looks better without. Oh; I see the BMW E12 had it one too, undauntedly functional. That explains it, all too well!
I always found the C pillar vents ugly(I know, I’m a philistine). This might be my favorite 75+ X body ever in this configuration
When our local PD switched from Satellites to these Novas, they seemed small and sporty by contrast. In particular, their wheels and tires looked aggressively wide – though they were probably just 205/70-14’s on 6″ rims.. 50 years later it still looks fine to me. And those S10/Astro hubcaps look right too.
The Nova 9C1 was a thing of legend in the taxi business, by far the hottest thing on the road at the time. Heck, it could give a Camaro a run for its money, since it basically was a Camaro anyway. Every one we put on as a cab got wrecked in short order.
The problem for them in police use was the back was too small when the cage was installed.
Removing the fake vents and adding the black S-10 hubcaps to a black car actually makes it a decent, mild custom job. If you could find some that fit, chrome trim rings for the wheels would be a nice touch.
I bet those wheels are 15 inchers from a later Chevy Astro/S-10 truck—Novas had 14’s from the factory if memory serves…and those wheel arches appear well filled.
–I like the look of this Nova…it has the whole fleet/stripper thing goin on…no pretentions. I bet the interior has evaporated as 70’s GM interiors are wont to do….
The wheels would have to be from an S10 truck. The S10 uses GM’s standard 4 3/4″ passenger car lug pattern, while the Astro uses the 5″ lug pattern of the half ton 2wd trucks of the era.
I agree on the S-10 or Astrovan identification of the hubcaps.
My question would be, is it bad news for GM that the newest car in this apparent Chevy enthusiast’s driveway looks to be a Ford Expedition?
Around LA. The Big 3, especially GM and Jeep, are doing very well with SUVs. But newer GM and FCA sedans are strongly outnumbered by Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, Ford, Audi, Mini, you name it. If Chevy people are buying Ford SUVs, too, what’s left for GM to sell?
The front subframe is VERY visible behind the front wheels (directly beneath the A-Pillars) on these series of GM midsizers….I always felt this was a very cheesy compromise to cheapness. To my eye, nothing should hang below the rockers.
Exposed underwear seems to have started with the American car industry until the fashion industry caught up later.
These were marketed as “compacts” R_henry. The Malibus were midsize. Crazy times.
Perhaps…..then how were the Vega and Chevette classified?
Subcompacts.
I disagree, the rails are only really visible from a low angled side view and it’s a purely functional aspect to the X and F bodies with the front subframe construction.
Then again I love the look of Fassers with low hanging longtube headers, the automotive equivalent of an upskirt.
Our ’77 was missing the vents, too, but it had been repainted some years prior to the pic, so it might have been removed.
In my opinion, the two single things that make these Nova’s, and the Seville which this was based on this, such hits were very good styling and the wheelbase proportions. That thick front fender in front of the front door nails the proportions of these cars. It has shadows of early 1930’s luxury cars.
Mid-seventies Novas were used in Edmonton, Alberta as marked and unmarked cars. Don’t recall what they used under the hood but I assume 350 V8 engines.
I do remember they were very quick and handled extremely well. They were put into service after a fleet of 73 Chevelles which were not nearly as good for patrol work.
Looking at Ed Stembridge’s Nova picture above, with the ends of the picture cut off, this Nova looks a lot like like a long wheelbase Plymouth Horizon.
A Plymouth Horizon with a trunk.
Same hubcaps that were on the beloved ’99 Astro I drove back in my telecom days.
Our neighbor had a base Nova coupe with bucket seats, rallyes, sport mirrors and the six taillights that I thought was pretty cool so when I found out Dad was getting a new upscale Chevy Concours to use from his employer I was excited. Imagine the disappointment when he brought it home and it was even ‘baser’ than our neighbor’s Nova. It was tarted up with a chrome grill, rectangular headlights and a fancy calligraphy ‘C’ in place of the bow tie in the center of the Nova wheel covers but no sport mirrors, not even LH remote control, no six taillights, no gauges. Just dull silver paint and a cheesy flame red velour interior. The car in my visions was more like this one.
The General’s flow-through body ventilation in this era used an outflow vent inside the frame of the rearmost side door. As others have noted, these sail panel vents were fake. The car looks better without them.
I checked out Old Car Brochures and the 1976 Olds Omega version of this does not use the fake vents as a style element.
The ’76 Omega.
Does anyone remenber the (plastic) panels under the doors to hide the underside on the Cadillac Seville, based on the Nova?
On YouTube there’s several videos of some guy in Sweden or Austria who took one of these Novas and stuffed a GM 6.5 liter turbodiesel into it. I’m not at home and writing this from my phone, so maybe someone can find the video and post it.
I think you mean this one, several videos of this Nova on YouTube. It’s in the Netherlands.
Under the hood:
For a couple of days we had a black on black 1975 Nova 2-door with the small V8 as a loaner. I thought it handled surprisingly well. I saw the car fairly often in our area – this was in the era when WA was still allowing us to keep our old license plates so I knew it was the same car, and it always seemed to be well-kept.
The every 7 year plate law was recently removed in Washington state. It was irritating to have to pay to replace plates that were in perfect condition. You could get the same number, but of course that was an extra charge.
When you remove the sail panel from the B pillar you would see that there are holes in between the louvers and behind them them B pillar body has large holes there. So fake ….don’t think so. I am pretty sure it’s part of the ventilation system.