Car of the day-Chevrolet Nova (1985-1988)

I figured since I was on a roll with ranting about the "Daewoo" LeMans, I'll share another GM car that "hampered" a legendary nameplate.

In 1979, General Motors discontinued the legendary Nova nameplate after a mostly successful 17 year run.  The Nova is usually remembered as a mid-sized sedan or coupe that occasionally came equipped with a V8 engine.  By the early 80s, GM was in a  dilemma, imported Japanese cars were becoming more and more successful, and GM cars such as the Cavalier, and Citation weren't doing enough to lure consumers away from Hondas and Toyotas (rather they were doing the complete opposite).  Rather than continuing to fight the imports by making competing models, they decided to fight them by THINKING (or rather acting) like them.

What ended up happening was GM formed a partnership with Toyota to build a vehicle that can be sold by both auto makers.  GM would lend it's Fremont, California assembly plant (which the two would call "NUMMI") to build the car.  In  1984, Toyota released it's newest Corolla sedan.  Chevrolet took this opportunity to revive the legendary Nova nameplate to put on their version of the Corolla.

Now, it's here where you would assume I would go on and on about how lousy the car was and how it "tarnished" the Nova name forever.  The thing is...it WASN'T a bad car.  It's a Chevy with Toyota blood.  Dependability, good gas milage, and a reasonable starting price were huge selling points for the Nova.  The only issue I can recall with these Novas was the typical Toyota rust.

This itineration of the Nova lasted through 1988, when GM decided to take a different approach to marketing their captive imports, which by then, included the Nova, Chevy Spectrum (Isuzu Gemini) and Chevy Sprint (Suzuki Cultus).  Rather than selling these cars as Chevys, GM created a sub-brand called Geo, which would handle all of GM's captive imports.  The Nova nameplate was retired again, yet the car itself was "re-born" as the Geo Prizm, which lasted until 2002.

I actually came across an episode of "This American Life," where Ira Glass discussed the Toyota/GM partnership that spawned the Nova.  The topic of the episode itself was regarding the closure of NUMMI plant in 2010, (due to the economic recession that hit automakers hard) although a large portion of the program is dedicated to it's heyday of building Novas and Corollas.  A link to the article can be found here.

I don't have any personal stories with the NUMMI Nova (although I think my preschool teacher had a rusted brown one)  There is a particular Nova that I personally would like to own.  During it's last year of production (before becoming a Geo) Chevy decided to give the Nova a proper send-off into history by adding 4-wheel disc brakes, a stiffer suspension, upgraded shocks and suspension, and to top it off, a 1.6L twin-cam engine, the same (or similar) engine found in the Corolla GT-S (or AE-86 to you Initial D fanboys).   The car was noted by several car magazines as being able to go from 0-60 MPH in under 10 seconds (if done properly, according to Hemmings News)

Photo credit:GM Media Archives

To top off all those performance upgrades, Chevy painted all Nova Twin-Cam's a sleek black/red trim combo.  To me, that is what I call an excellent 80s sleeper car!