Six years ago I found this same splendid green Nova coupe in the parking lot of a mall, and its posting here generated a lot of positive response. I’m happy to announce it’s still around, looking just as have and heart; this is a rolling time capsule.
We were on our walk, and Stephanie wanted to pop into this nursery to see if the sweet pea starts were in yet. And here’s the green Nova again, and its owner is just starting it up. There was some question last time as to whether it’s a six or eight; I can assure you it’s the latter from the muted growl it gave upon exhaling the fresh spring air it had inhaled moments earlier.
I waved my iPhone and the owner waved an assent back, but as he was already starting to back up, it meant no interior shot or possibly a brief chat about it.
So I’ll show you the shot of its lovely two-tone interior from the previous photo session. I’m sure it looks just as fresh as it did then. This Nova is in loving hands, unlike so many that met a very different fate in the hands of young guys.
Wow, that’s quite the survivor. The owner must have been one of those folks who buys a car to keep… forever! OTOH, I’ve p!ssed away a lot of money on cars, this seems like a good move to retain some wealth.
I can attest to young men hammering these things to death. Every kid in my high school had a Nova that was (poorly) hot rodded to within an inch of it’s life. Or you had the opposite, like my truck driver buddy, who kept one of these at the yard so he could get home once he got back to the terminal. I think he had it for five years (in the mid 80’s) and I swear he never did any work on the car. By that I mean routine maintenance, no oil changes, no brake jobs, etc. By the time it gave out, it was fairly wrecked…
Glad to see this car is still on the road!
I have to say that this was one of the most attractive color combos to come out of GM in the 70s. There was something about that cheerful green with loads of white vinyl inside that brought a little smile to my face then and a bigger one now.
The only way that interior could be improved is if the dash and carpets were green instead of black. Was GM the only US company that deviated from the black dash/carpet that everyone else used on white vinyl interior cars?
I think that interior looks great too. Must be tough to keep it looking that clean and fresh, though!
Formula 409 and a clean cloth is the secret to keeping white interiors white. I gained experience with this in the 70s.
All of the big 3 used different colors on white vinyl interior cars, not just GM. Ford offered red, green, and blue carpets and dash/console on white interior cars including the Escort I almost bought, and Chrysler did on the Aspen/Volare, Omni/Horizon, and several others like this Cordoba. GM (particularly Chevrolet) did seem to use black steering wheels and column area trim on otherwise color-keyed interiors. My family had a ’76 Chevette with the custom interior option which was the only way to get white seats in a Chevette; ours had blue dash, carpeting, and seat belts. But the steering wheel was still black.
White interiors seemed to fall out of favor after the early ’80s, except in convertibles. Amongst new cars, Tesla is big on white interiors, the only interior color choice other than black on the Model 3.
Agreed about Formula 409. In ’91 I bought a dark red “83 Cavalier with the plastic fantastic interior in all white. It was filthy, having been someone’s go to work car, and on someone’s advice I used 409 on all of it. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. Every fake pattern and pretend torx bolt looked factory-fresh, and it really brought out the mediocrity of it.
100% with you on this color combo. And wasn’t this one year only in ’76?
In early ’78 when my youngest brother was on the way my father briefly toyed with the idea of buying used DeVille for my mother and taking the ’77 Monte Carlo she was driving. He was using the ’75 Monza 2+2 that she’d previously driven, and I think it was really beginning to cramp his style. We test drove 2 lightly used Cadillacs one weeknight, a Coupe DeVille in this green color with white leather interior and a Sedan in a non-metallic green with dark green top and brocade interior. Mom put the kibosh on the whole scheme, as the Monte Carlo was already bigger than anything she really wanted to drive. I was crushed, because I fell head over heels for that coupe. In hindsight, it really was beyond flashy. Mom was decidedly NOT a “Cadillac Person”, so it was a shot in the dark anyway, but my 10 year old self was all in.
It looks to me as though the carpets are indeed green – look at what’s on the hump. I wonder if there’s black mats because green ones aren’t really available anymore.
My ‘73 Vega was that color green, with green seats and carpet and door liners, though I think it had a black dash. I’m not sure I like the color on most cars, but on a seventies GM it’s just perfect.
That Nova looks amazing. I wonder how many miles he has on it now. This thing is obviously garaged and not driven too often.
And it has those original wheel covers. While these cars look really nice with the rally wheels that may restored ones seem to have, I really like these wheel covers and white striped tires. My parents’ Concours coupe sported these same wheel covers, although they had a color keyed “C” in the insert rather than the Chevy bow-tie.
I had a 1975 NOVA LN. I suspected the LN stood for “Luxury Nova” (??) but referred to the car as, “Lady Nova”. Gotten from a lady friend, who was a graphic artist, we did a trade for my photography services – hence only cost me very little plus my time. The power steering was leaking – she wanted me to know what the problems were as not to be anything hidden in the trade. She went to get an estimate, she was told that the power steering unit was cracked. Turned out to be just a hose, which I replaced myself. The hose was around $20.
She hadn’t liked the seat belt buzzer – hence pulled a fuse, which took out a couple other things. I wrapped the buzzer with cotton & electrical tape. That muffled the annoying buzzing, plus everything was in working order.
She thought she was buying an economical vehicle but it had a 350 in it. My father gave me his Monte Carlo – so the Nova was sold. But later on I did get a 1976 Buick Skylark S/R – Buick’s cousin to the Nova. I had the small V-8, which was enough power.
Love, love, love survivors like this! Very cool.
My first car in 1980 was a 1979 Nova Hatchback.305 V8, Dark blue, rallye wheels, white wall bias ply tires, AM Radio and A/C. I upgraded the radio to a Sanyo AM/FM Cassette and put BF Goodrich Radial T/A’s on it.
At the time, I had no idea that a Nova and the Camaro had similar underpinnings. I know that we should wax nostalgic over our first car, but I found it pretty boring. I started working for the local Toyota, GMC, Oldsmobile Dealer and soon bought a 1981 Toyota SR5 truck. THAT was fun!
What a glorious car! I dont remember seeing a lot from that generation in green back in the day though, mostly beige and browns.
One of my childhood friends’ Mom had a similar Nova but in beige with a tan bench seat interior and she had it well into the late-1980s when it was about half rusted and replaced with a Celebrity sedan. Lots of trips to Little League games and Scout meetings in that car.
Wasnt there a member here with a beautiful triple green ’77 Monte Carlo?
Bravo to the owner who can keep an automobile in such great condition from day 1. I like the Nova and the colour is so seventies.
There are two one-owner cars I’m aware of right now, a 1976 Granada repainted but otherwise in original condition and a one-owner 1990 Audi 90.The Granada was purchased by a young woman who kept all receipts and documents from day 1. She’s no younger young and recognizes its time to sell her baby.
As for the Audi 90, its in Calgary and priced to sell. Only 114,000 kms, serviced and ready to roll. According to the repair shop the original owner brought it up from California so surprise its in such good shape.
Were bucket seats in that era Nova a rarity? I sure don’t recall seeing any, and certainly none in that color combination. Of the Big 3, the Aspen/Volare bucket seat interior was much more common with a much nicer console instead of that plastic-fantastic thing in the Chevy.
Buckets could be had in the Granada/Monarch but, IIRC, you didn’t get a console but the same old automatic floor selector that had been around since the first Mustangs rolled off the line.
The Nova (and the X car family) was so prolific in the late 70s, and early 80s, that you simply took them for granted. Like many very popular and common cars through our lifetimes, they were a fixture for a now brief seeming period of time. I never really found them especially attractive for the era, and most had 6 cylinder engines, basic options, and plain hub caps. Somewhat a reminder of the how bland the 70s could be. 🙂
Wow, even that plastic filler between the bumper and the body is still intact! How did the owner manage that? Someone in my neighborhood has a Skylark from this same era that I see in their driveway sometimes. It looks like a nice survivor as well, although not quite as nice as this Nova. Even the vinyl top is still in good condition. But its one major flaw is that the plastic bumper filler is mostly gone.
I find the styling a little bland, but I like the thought that there’s some Camaro in the suspension.
The Last Generation of the “True” Nova still remained very competitive with the other American made Compacts from 1978 through 1980. The Ford Granada carried on with the same 1978 front and rear through the end. The Plymouth Volare’ on its last production year also had a redesigned front and rear ends that the extended fillers stretched the coupe’ models from 197.5″ long through 200.0″. The AMC Concord carried the same front ends from 1979 through 1980. The 1979 redesigned grille and squared headlights carried in into Iran up to their YES 1992 Pars Khodro/GM Iran Nova model but only the Four Door Sedan version..
You figure GM got a lot of mileage from this basic design. The 1975 to 1979 Novas were a redesign and restyle of the 1968 to 1974 versions. The 1970 Camaro suspension was slipped underneath beginning with the 1975s and the 1968 to 1974 body was squared off. Love the car and the color scheme. Screams mid 1970s. I also remember these being everywhere while in high school in the early 1980s. Tough cars. I had two of the earlier body style. One was a 1971 Pontiac Ventura 2-Door. This car was red with a vinyl top. It cost $400. Another was a 1971 Chevy Nova 4-Door I hoped to fix up in the early 1990s. The restoration never happened. An interesting story on the 1971 Chevy Nova. My sister told some people at work she had gotten a new car and it was a Nova. This was in the late 1980s. A friend of hers thought it was the late 80s Nova that was built in Fremont California that was new at the time. My sister said no it was a 71! Reminded me of this commercial form 1987.
This generation Nova was notorious for the rear wheels not tracking directly behind the fronts, aka “dog walking”. It was rare to see one more than a few years old not going down the road sideways.