Imagine, if you will, it’s September 1966. You’ve accomplished what no one in your family had done before. Just a few short months ago, you earned your Ph.D., and with a little hard work and a lot of luck, you’ve been hired to your first professorship, at Stanford. Now it may be no Harvard or Yale, at least not yet, but for a first time position, you still consider it quite the coup. Classes begin next week. You found a tidy little cottage in Palo Alto, just a couple of miles from campus. Sure you could keep riding your bike like you did as a graduate student. It’s really not that far, and the weather is just so damn pleasant. But this is California! How are you going to get to the beach on the weekends or up to the city for a show? Besides, you’ve worked hard to get here; you deserve a reward. On down to Peninsula Chevrolet of Palo Alto.
Now that you’re there, though, what to buy? Sure, it’s a reward, but you’re still junior faculty after all. Need to look at the cheaper stuff. That eliminates the Corvette straight away. Forget the Biscayne; that’s for old, cheapskate farmers. How about the Chevelle? Well, the SS sure looks nice, but who needs so much motor? And Aunt Mabel drives a 300 to church and the grocery store. That doesn’t seem to be the right fit either. All that leaves is the Corvair and the Chevy II. Are they still making the Corvair? You’d never guess, since the dealership doesn’t have any in stock. Well, that little gold Nova looks pretty good. Just enough sparkle for the girls, but it won’t get me too much attention in the Economics department, like the Camaro behind it. Oh, look at that, it’s even two-toned.
And it has the uprated six. A little peppier without killing you on the gas!
The salesman is pretty slick. He knows you don’t need the hard sell: “Just sit right here”; “take it around the block”; “imagine looking back to get a second look every time you park it on campus.” Even the soft sell is unnecessary. Where do you sign?
Flash forward to the fall of 2019. Classes have just started on your 54th year of teaching. You’re a little grayer now, a little softer around the middle. But your mind still hums and your ticker’s still ticking (those statins probably help). Just like your little old Nova. You could retire, and you could buy a new car. But why would you? You got one of the best jobs in the world, and you got a car you love and that’s loved you back.
Sure, you could spend some money making her look better. That Palo Alto sun has taken its toll, and you could get a face lift, too. But why would you? Both seem to be getting you where you need to go every day just fine.
Sweet little Virgin Nova, may you never be defiled by anything resembling “LS” or “SS”.
Sometimes, the most dedicated car guy is not a car guy, at all.
Case in point with this one. I would guess that it is driven by someone who really doesn’t care much about cars in general, but this is his or her car, and it works, so why replace it? This is someone who restores only what needs to be replaced, who doesn’t worry if a panel has some dents or the paint has worn through. The foam showing through the torn seat cover never is felt under the pants they wear, and the car doesn’t need a weekly washing, so long as one can see through the windows.
Somebody is dedicated, dedicated to THIS car.
Good for them.
It must have been tough to be practical when there were Mustangs and Camaros in dealer lots that cost little or nothing more than one of these.
And you illustrate the kind of buyer that used to be common – When you needed a new car there was only one place to go. There were lots and lots of families who never saw any reason to consider anything besides a Chevrolet.
A very nice bit of imagination to go with a very nice car.
I imagine there would have been a sizeable cost benefit in choosing the Nova rather than a similarly specced Camaro. The kind of thing a practicality-first person would appreciate.
The ’67 Nova six coupe listed for $2330. The Camaro six coupe for $2466. And the Camaro was on a totally new platform with better handling and much better proportions/looks. The Nova was in its last year on its original platform/body.
That’s what pretty much killed compact sporty coupes, at least for some years. it wasn’t until the pony cars got bigger and more expensive around 1970 or so that opened a huge opportunity for sporty-looking compact coupes like the Maverick and Duster.
It may have been its original platform but the body had been mostly redone rather badly to make it look new. You can only tell it’s the original structure by the windshield.
It was quite obvious (beyond the windshield) in the fall of 1965 that this was a surface reskin. At least to this 12 year old.
I agree with Paul, even as a kid it was obvious to me the 62-67 Chevy II’s were the same car. I also think the ’66-67 models were the most attractive of the set, with the ’67 being my favorite.
Thank you, now I feel better about not even test-driving the ’67 Nova with 327/Powerglide my Dad found for me to look at when I was getting my first car. So, then I ended up with the ’72 Vega GT, perhaps not an improvement in terms of potential longevity, though it served me well and provided wonderful driving fun for five years. Now I wish I could go back and instead get a ’72 Rally Nova, with the 250 and floor shift and heavy-duty suspension. That one would have likely completed grad school, even at my pace. Our tastes and needs change over time.
Camaro definitely looked a lot cooler!
But those good looks and proportions weren’t free–the Chevy II had much roomier back seat and bigger trunk.
And I sense ‘base’ Camaros were hard to find..that car just begged for a V8. Also, GM tended to lather up their cars with more options.
So, some good arguments for the Chevy II.
It obviously turned out to be the right car.
The professor has saved a TON of money in car purchase costs and interest rates since 1966. And if he stayed in the same house, he is a real-estate millionaire.
Economics 101, well-done sir!
No shortage of six cylinder/PG Camaros in 67.
The Camaro equaled the full Nova line in volume for 67. The Mustang and Chevelle already had stomped the Nova hardtop into a grease spot. The only reason that a buyer might have more Nova hardtops like this to choose from than comparable Camaros is that Camaros sold and Nova hardtops didn’t.
Note that the standard Camaro included bucket seats–Nova didn’t. A Nova SS with buckets was the same price as a Camaro.
There were probably plenty of six cylinder Chevy II two door sedans on the lot, but the person who bought a gold Nova hardtop with a white roof probably didn’t want them.
So much for economics.
Just $x more per month will get you into this Camaro….
The Camaro was within $10 of a comparably equipped Nova SS, which had been very popular before the Mustang and Chevelle killed the market for hardtop sport models of volume compacts. There was plenty of demand for such a car without much upselling.
Chevy also had sold a boatload of bucket seat Corvairs before the Mustang.
My pops was basically one of those buyers, except that his pops owned a used car lot, so he didn’t even go to the Chevy dealer!
Your description of the junior faculty special made me think of this similar-era brochure for Plymouth’s equivalent, the Valiant. The picture itself was taken on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania — for some reason this image sticks in my mind as being very well typecast. Same thing would apply to this Chevy II… can definitely see it was a young professor’s car.
The 1967 Valiant/Dart was so much nicer.
Cool find!
At the time that ad came out, my dad was tenured at Penn, but on the younger side. He was an example of a different trend–he drove a ’61 Beetle.
Also, there was no vehicular traffic on the spot picture in the ad. LOL. I remember seeing an ad in the mid-80s for a Pontiac, I think (6000STE?) taken at Princeton, in a courtyard I walked through as an undergrad that, again, never normally had cars in it. Entertaining moment.
Are you thinking the picture was taken on Hamilton Walk, in between Leidy Labs / Medical School and the Quad? That’s what it looks like to me.
My familiarity with Penn’s campus is a few decades old — my father worked for the University as a construction manager, but I loved going to work with him and walking around campus. When I saw noticed this brochure cover a few years ago, I instantly recognized the white sign in the background as being from Penn’s campus (with a distinctive UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA script), and it sure looked like Hamilton Walk to me.
I think you’re right. I remember those signs too, from when I was a kid. The script matched what was on their old letterhead, as I recall it.
What a terrific survivor – 250, Powerglide, and all. Sure am glad no one has turned it into an SS ‘tribute’.
Just the other day, I was at a car show where someone had turned what seems to have been an original ’66 Nova SS 327 into a semi-custom. It was done well, but the guy might have done better to have kept it original. It would be worth a lot more, that’s for sure.
Well, maybe not so much if it had been the more common L30 (300hp, single exhaust) but if it had been one of the killer Corvette-engine L79 350hp versions, that’s a whole different story.
Chevrolet made a total of 6 L79 cars for the 1967 model year. Very rare .
Exactly! They were the 325 HP variant and they got out the door before Chevrolet management stopped the practice. They were worried that a L79 Nova would cut into sales of the brand new Camaro.
You probably know this, but the 325 hp version was identical to the 350 hp version. Its rating was lowered so as to not out-shine the 396s. And it was available again on the ’68 Chevy II/Nova.
As the 9 year old son of a UC Berkeley (Stanford’s public university rival across the Bay) professor when this car was new, I don’t remember many of my Dad’s faculty member peers who owned domestic cars even in 1966. Or perhaps, I only remember the interesting ones: Volvo’s, Beetles, a Morris Minor convertible, a fintail Mercedes 190. Maybe that was a difference between Palo Alto and Berkeley. There was one suicide door Continental locally, a convertible no less, and one Cadillac as well. Nonetheless, this kind of low end car, whether a Falcon, Dart/Valiant or Chevy II, was very common on Berkeley’s streets, in exactly this kind of color. Minus the 50 year old patina, of course.
To be clear, who knows if this was driven by Stanford faculty back in the day, but I can tell you that it’s likely driven by faculty or staff today. It was parked in a faculty/staff lot the day I took the pictures, but I see the car on campus all the time, always parked in faculty/staff parking.
A slightly fancier version of the stripper ’68 Dart my father drove to Johns Hopkins Hospital for some ten years.
I graduated from a Southern California high school in 1963. Each graduating class was judged by the faculty and administration on how many of us got into Stanford. Any class in which no one got in was judged to be a bunch of severe underachievers. To snag a job at Stanford in 1966 with a brand-new doctorate would have been called as good as it gets by most of the people I knew back then. It still impresses me!
I knew a very rich woman from the New York (Five Towns, she in Old Lawrence) branch of the Putnam family, who had one of these Chevy II Novas.
She said, it’s for my normal chores, and when I want to be inconspicuous. I take my Mercedes if i want to be noticed.
She loved her Nova, a 250 6 cylinder 3 speed manual. We shared a love of keeping our vehicles clean and in good nick. She was old but was really nice to me. I brought her her weekly flower delivery, She’d give me hot chocolate in the winter, and ice tea (not Long Island Ice Tea, even though it was on Long Island!) in the summer. Was always pleasant to see her.
Was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, clearly the best smelling.
250/PowerGlide. Pretty much a bulletproof combo.
Reminds me of my ’63 Nova from high school. 230 CID/PowerGlide.
The only thing that’ll kill that Nova is rust.
Was there anything in a Chevy showroom in 1967 that wasn’t a home run?
The Corvair?
My favorite Nova, and it’s a ’67, my favorite year for Chevrolet styling in the 60’s!
Oh no! I just found a hole in my well-crafted tale. Looking closer at the license plate frame, it appears to be from Maurice J Sopp and Sons Chevrolet in Huntington Park, CA. Looks like it was likely a SoCal car originally. Maybe it was bought on sabbatical…
Let’s just assume it was serviced there while on summer vacation and that dealer put their frames on…still happens today, quite annoying!
I like it!
By the way, Peninusla Chevrolet in Palo Alto is long gone, just like Maggini Chevrolet, the dealer in my home town of Berkeley along with Ocean Chevrolet in my current town. As near as I can tell, it moved across the town line into Menlo Park, first as Ely Chevrolet, then Anderson. I remember looking at S10 Blazers and also Isuzu Troopers there. It’s now a Tesla store; in fact, it may have been the first Tesla store. I certainly recall it showing up well before the Model S arrived, featuring only the original Roadster.
Wow, what a great find! Your story actually kind of resonates with my family history. After my dad bought his ’65 Impala, my uncle (Dad’s twin brother), wanted a car too. Living next door to a GM mechanic, he went to the Chevy dealer the neighbor worked at. My Uncle ended up buying a 1967 Chevy II Nova, with a 250 six and a Powerglide. The car was a demonstrator, so it wasn’t quite brand new, but pretty close. It also meant that it was well optioned, especially compared to my Dad’s stripper Impala. It was also considerably faster than the Impala. My Uncles Nova was yellow with dealer installed “painted on” black vinyl top.
Unfortunately, this ended up being my Uncles last car, as he had some health problems later on that prevented him from driving. To this day, he still talks lovingly of his old Chevy II Nova. The car stayed in the family though, and it became my Mom and Dad’s daily driver. It turned out to be the first car I ever rode in, as Mom and Dad drove me home from the hospital in that Chevy II. After more than a decade of service, my cousin wanted to buy the car and drop a 327 in it, but by that time the Ontario winters had pretty well finished it off.
Very cool!
Totally resonates with me. We had a 1963 teal Chevy II – with the 2 speed Powerglide, while my dad was studying for his doctorate at Stanford in the late 1960s. I think it was from Hatch Chevrolet in Menlo Park or somewhere in the Peninsula. I do remember the Peninsula Chevy license tag frames, though. Also Maggini in Berkeley. Alas, the family housing at Escondido Village we stayed got taken down in recenty, to build more denser housing on the Stanford campus.
The Escondido Village housing that has been torn down was in dire need of replacement, and Stanford and the whole area needs much, much more dense housing.
Must…have…L79…4sp.
I smile as a just-retired college teacher who never ascended to anything like Stanford. There were great satisfactions to the job, but then daily reasons why one is paid to do it.
As so many do, I got into college teaching not long before turning 30. If buying new then (1982), I suppose it would have been an Escort or Fairmont. Didn’t get my first new car until almost 40, and you’d better believe I savored every minute of the whole experience!
Today’s Nova looks like a time-warp from my early-1970s high school parking lot; that’s what a lot of salt-belt cars looked like 4-5 years from new.
Another Nova (’69), another lost dealership (Harry Mann, Los Angeles), another story (bought her new when I was discharged in May of ’69) and I still have her!!
I got a 1963 Bel Air. 4 years older than I am. I sold it love you so much I went and bought it back.
Nice find! I love the original black plates.
If the speculative story is true, perhaps the reason the Professor is still driving his 52 year old car is the price of real estate in the area. At least in the last couple decades, I imagine he wouldn’t be able to afford a new car with the cost of housing and taxes!
Property taxes aren’t that high in California, comparatively. It’s just that the underlying value is quite high. On the other hand, if this story were true, the professor also probably purchased a home in Palo Alto after getting tenure in the early 70s for peanuts, and because of Prop 13, he’s paying almost nothing each year in property taxes. Meanwhile, he’s sitting on a house worth a couple of mil.
A ‘cottage’ in Palo Alto is likely priced today at 1.4 million, but you would have to deal with $$$ in property taxes.
Better options in 1967 – a Firebird with an OHC 6, a Dart, Barracuda Coupe, or a Mercury Cougar.
Nice to see one of these in original condition. I can’t remember any friends, family members or neighbors owing one of these when I was young.
They now often turn up at various Carlisle events, but invariably as an SS model with bucket seats and a V-8, and in restored condition.