Those who follow this series know that by the 1980s, I had plenty of experience owning Moparbishis: captive imports from Mitsubishi, sold by Chrysler divisions. As the 1980s advanced, I jumped into owning another Japanese/American product, but this time one built in the US: a 1985 Chevrolet Nova.
First, a little background for the Corolla/Nova: By the early 1980s, the Detroit “Big 3” had intense competition not just from Europe, but also the Pacific Rim. Ford and Mazda were in a mutually beneficial partnership that started in the 1970s and lasted about 40 years. French automaker Renault bought AMC, and then sold it in the late 1980s to Chrysler, which gradually eliminated AMC/Renault in favor of Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth/Jeep branding. In addition to its partnership with Mitsubishi, which still made the Colt for Dodge and Plymouth dealers, Chrysler also started its Eagle brand, which originally sold leftover AMC/Renault cars, plus models built by Chrysler’s joint venture with Mitsubishi, Diamond-Star Motors in Normal, Illinois, which made the Mitsubishi Eclipse and its siblings.
Some European and Japanese companies were setting up their own US plants. Volkswagen arrived in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania in 1978. Honda had been manufacturing in Marysville, Ohio since 1982. Nissan started assembling pickup trucks in Smyrna, Tennessee in 1983. And in 1987, Mazda set up its own assembly plant in Flat Rock, Michigan.
There was a lot of talk about manufacturing renaissances in the 1980s. In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman was a popular business tome at the time.
“Japan, Inc.” was thought to be overtaking the world, buying up many American companies, including iconic buildings like Rockefeller Center. The auto industry side was probably most famously documented at the time in The Reckoning by David Halberstam, published in 1986.
In 1984, the No. 1 Japanese manufacturer, Toyota, partnered with the No. 1 American manufacturer, General Motors, to create a joint venture called NUMMI. A 2020 MotorTrend feature on the Nova sums it up:
The Nova could be considered the quintessential American compact car, so the direction GM took with the Nova in 1985 was a curious one. In 1984, General Motors established a partnership with Toyota in a venture called New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., giving Toyota a U.S. manufacturing base and GM a chance to see firsthand how the Japanese could produce such high-quality cars at competitive prices. Using a discarded GM plant in Fremont, California, NUMMI’s first product was the 1985 Chevrolet Nova.
The NUMMI Nova arrived in June 1985. It was basically a US-made version of the first FWD Toyota Corolla (the E80 generation), offered in four-door sedan or five-door hatchback versions with 1.6-liter Toyota engines. This was a confusing time to be a Chevrolet shopper, since Chevrolet dealers still had the old RWD Chevette, plus two captive imports, the Isuzu-built Spectrum and the Suzuki-built Sprint. Starting in 1989, GM consolidated most of its captive import models under the Geo brand. Using the Nova name on a Toyota-designed car turned out to not be too popular with people who’d had a 1970s Nova, so the NUMMI-built version of the next Corolla generation was named Geo Prizm instead.
When we married in the fall of 1983, my bride owned a beautiful 1981 Celica Liftback with a 5-speed. The hatch was convenient to carry stuff around, but the car had no A/C and was RWD, so we had to put the snow tires on the back axle every winter. In the spring of 1985, we were trying to start a family, and we began talking about owning a four-door car.
Following those impulses, I traded my 1982 Chevrolet Celebrity for a 4-door 1986 Colt, as I told in my last chapter. Around that time, I had my last at-fault accident when I wrecked the wife’s Celica when I turned in front of an Oldsmobile Cutlass that I didn’t see coming from my left. That car was towed to the local Toyota/Chevrolet dealer, where a shipment of Chevrolet Novas from the NUMMI factory had just arrived. The Nova looked good in the metallic silver finish. A base model with manual transmission and no A/C had an MSRP of about $7195
We had found the 4-door a great convenience, and with my wife’s Celica as a trade-in, it made car payments on the Toyonova manageable.
This was the first car my son remembers, which is fitting: It’s the car we used to bring him home from the hospital at birth. The Toyonova was light and relatively roomy, but it had no A/C, not even an aftermarket kit. After 1989, it was used for business deliveries, etc. I’m 6’3″, so people would ask me how I fit, but it was easy to get in and out of and I didn’t feel claustrophobic.
A dealership employee told me that at the NUMMI plant, the vehicles started out on a common line, but at a certain point, the line split into two assembly lines, one for GM cars and one for Toyota cars. This explains why the Toyonova had some GM idiosyncrasies, like two keys (one for the ignition and the other for the doors and trunk) and a Delco radio (we did an aftermarket upgrade to install a cassette deck).
We got good service out of this vehicle, though the steering yoke needed to be replaced, and the interior plastics faded horribly — plastic that was once all the same color turned many different shades of gray. I also tried to get an aftermarket A/C kit through the dealer, but none was available. Otherwise, the Toyonova was well put together; I don’t remember rattles or buzzing of plastic parts. My most notable adventure was driving through 3 feet of standing water (halfway up the door) without leaking or stalling. With FWD, it didn’t get stuck in the snow, but if the tires were a bit worn, it needed coaxing up a slippery patch.
It was the first car we got our money’s worth out of. Trade-in value in 1994 was $800 with 85,098 miles on the odometer.
Related CC Reading
Curbside Classic: 1986 Chevrolet Nova – Bad Acne
1985 Chevrolet Cornova – Lessons Not Learned
I spent some time in the NUMMI plant back working as a quality engineer for a tier two supplier to Toyota (Delphi was the tier one) around ’98-’00 timeframe. The Corollas and Prizms were made one one line and Tacomas on the other.
My mother-in-law had one of these right around 1985 as well. If I recall, she was quite short on funds at that time and needed a new car, her Dodge Aries K-car wagon with the 5 speed (a car I sooooooo wish I had been able to intercept and rescue) having failed her for some reason or another. She wound up with one of these Novas. Her first car ever with an automatic. She wasn’t too keen on that, but was happy that she was able to avoid air conditioning and thereby still able to stick it to the man (the “man” being whoever was currently “in charge of” the economy). It seemed pretty reliable although quality didn’t seem Toyota-like as I recall quite a few pieces of duct tape applied interior and exterior by the time she parted with it. OTOH, she loves duct tape, so who knows what it was actually doing on the vehicle. I do recall having quite a few “discussions” with her at the time trying to convince her that the Nova was actually a Toyota. I made little headway in that regard.
Thanks also for the In Search of Excellence memory. I was a fresh-out-of-college kid in 1983, and within 2 years had found myself working in engineering education and thus deep deep into everything related to the amazing hype associated with Peters and Waterman and of course Peter Drucker. It simply was not possible to view or produce a PowerPoint (which of course was a new thing in 1987, although we had advance copies at the College of Engineering for a year or two in advance of 1987) presentation that did not somehow reference In Search of Excellence. Around here (in the former home of Digital Equipment and Wang Laboratories and Lotus and Data General, etc.) I still find copies at yard sales.
The repurposing of those Merrimack River mills are a wonderful sight to see. My mother’s family is from that area.
You could have gotten an aftermarket A/C if instead you visited a Toyota dealer (instead of a Chevrolet Dealer).
The Corollas and the Novas were mechanically the same. At that time all Japanese made cars had their (factory genuine) A/C installed at the Port or at the Dealer.
The selling dealer was a joint dealer with Toyota, and he claimed none were available. But I didn’t check any other sources, eventually we just went with a new car with AC, next installment coming up.
Our silver, Made in Japan manual transmission 1993 Corolla wagon was languishing on the lot well after the ‘94’s had arrived. Stick shift plus no A/C seemed to be the kiss of death. The former was fine with us, in fact what we wanted, and the latter was solved by a dealer installation of Toyota A/C. As I recall we paid about $800 for that, and paid a couple of $K below MSRP for the car so it worked out well.
Great account – I enjoyed reading this. Every time I read about the mission statement of the NUMMI plant with respect to GM being able to observe and take notes from Toyota’s manufacturing process, my mind goes into a loop wondering where those lessons went. I am by no means a GM basher (I love my GM cars), but it seems like this joint venture should have been a game-changer if the right people had been paying attention.
My family of origin had also owned a silver Toyonova. My parents had bought it used with mega miles on it, but it was such a reliable car and we got tons more use out of it. The only minor negative I had with it as a teenager was that I had to turn the a/c off on expressway entrance ramps to get it up to speed.
I think they lost their way with the Saturn project
Can we say this one and Geo Prizm are the best GM car in the last four decades? What are the sad stories for once mighty GM. Under the current GM leadership, the transformation into EV strategy loses its hype, it is again failing to deliver a meaningful product, the public sentiment and the current Trump administration are moving back to favor internal combustion engine, which is still main profit source for GM North America operations. Ironically in the last week when president Donald abolished the Biden CAFEE standards in White House, GM CEO was no shown claiming schedule conflict. What did she have that day? See a new Christ in town?
More, Chinese media have been saying in both China and other oversea markets GM increasingly relies on Chinese design source vehicles for its sales, that directly competes with Chinese own band vehicles and confuses buyers. The bold claim in China is in the near future GM may be absorbed by Shanghai based SAIC, GM longtime partner in China. Will GM be another BMC/Rover?
Lol, let’s not get carried away here!
Have you driven a 2020+ C8 Corvette? A recent ZL-1 or Z28 Camaro? A recent manual transmission LS V8 Cadillac?
These cars are a little better, a little more interesting, than a 1985 Chevy Nova!
To answer your question, I haven’t driven any Corvette in my life, let alone the C8 you mentioned. I am sure those vehicles you said are excellent especially within their inch market which we all know there are a lot of competitors from other car companies. They also will not save GM from falling. As main stream products I believe in past ten years two may be very good, they are the just discontinued Impala sedan and the Traverse SUV. But because of the current GM reputation, they had hard time to convince the public in comparison with products like Avalon and Highlander. In my view these two GM vehicles are better products, reliability is another story.
Another sign of GM and Ford declining is even these days NYC government starts walking away from them in city vehicle fleet. City fleet commonly consists of Prius, Camry, Rav 4 and lately a lot of Nissan vehicles that I doubt much more reliable than GM and Ford offerings.
I remember when these were a great used car buy because they did not hold their value as well as the name-brand Toyota. These were like the generic version of Toyota, and it was a great life hack to get a used Toyota at a used Chevrolet price.
The NUMMI experiment was fascinating in how it offered a car with Toyota quality without the dealer gouging. Unfortunately, only the cognoscenti knew about it. What’s worse was it was sold at Chevy dealerships with virtually none of the domestic ‘spiffs’ and, on top of the poor reputation anything associated with a bowtie emblem by then, the profit margin was low and the salespeople pushed potential customers to better-equipped, similarly priced domestic products they made more money on.
The smart guys knew the NUMMI Novas were still a far better deal with far less drama than cars like the bottom-feeder Cavalier. I dare say that, besides regular Toyotas, the NUMMI Nova was the first car with a Chevy badge that would last just as long. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of miles with just basic, routine maintenance. Back in the eighties, was still unheard of.
Next up was the Pontiac Vibe, the NUMMI version of the Toyota Matrix, which likewise enjoyed the enviable reputation of a solid car for much less than the price of a Toyota.
I had co-worker many years ago that liked to tinker. He was buying these Toyota/Nova’s in good shape for really cheap.
And then buying rough Toyota Corolla’s for cheap.
He would refurbish the Corolla with the Nova parts and then sell the Corolla for a much higher price.
He lived on an acreage and I recall seeing his numerous Nova’s in various stages of being stripped for parts.
Not exactly a classic car or muscle car collection!
He claimed he was making good money, likely he was just tinkering and making beer money.
TOYota + chevrOLET = Toyolet, pronounced “toilet”.
Wouldn’t matter what vehicle they produced, the product was doomed.
And another name common at the time was “Novarolla.”
I am probably late to the party on this chain, but i wanted to add a little remembrance gor my dad, 92 now and near the end.
He bought one of these in 1986 from his local Chevy dealer, and traded his 1977 Caprice Classic on it.
I remember him remarking that this was the first time in his life that he traded a car he bought new for another new car.
The Caprice was silver over black cloth with a/c, cruise, clock, 305, am/fm stereo and manual doors and windows.
He got pretty much the same equipment level on the Nova (I believe they called it Group 3) and it was a white over blue hatchback – just like his old 1966 Coronet with a 318, but not half as fast or spacious.
Mom and dad were empty nesters by 1986 and my daughter was on the way, and they were very pleased that she’d be traveling with them in that car, once she arrived.
Dad has not driven for years now, but I still have a picture of hom holding my infant daughter, now 40, in front of the Nova.
A correction is required here…
The Diamond Star assembly plant was in Normal, IL…
Oops, I should have caught that before it ran. Fixed now, thanks!
Bought an 88 Nova in 94 for $1200 , drove it 100,000 miles in 10 years with minimal repairs and sold it for $600 to buy a 96 Prizm for $2500. Drove it 10 years and 100,000 miles also. Amazing reliability
I was surprised to read that this Nova had the old GM two key system. I’ve owned a couple of older GM cars with those, and quite a few newer Toyota’s all with single keys (oh, actually one keyless). But no cars built at Fremont, the only Bay Area auto plant since Gillig and Peterbilt moved, and Ford shut down. Though Gillig is technically still in the Bay Area, in Livermore, but not near the Bay.
I absolutely recommend reading that book “The Reckoning – from David Halberstam”.
It’s from 1986. I read it in 2008 (found it in a Hotel Common area).
It’s probably a better read now than in 86. By 86 the Coming “Reckoning” was not in full effect and the “Big 3” were still in charge, so to speak. But looking back now (or 2008), it’s EASY to see (because it happened), and one wonders why they didn’t make any of the (obvious) Changes and taken foreign auto makers MUCH more seriously.
The book mainly brings you “inside” Factories of Ford and Nissan/Datsun, with history of How the Japanese did so right and how Ford did so wrong.
Great Book.
I did read “The Reckoning” but Nissan has definitely fallen in stature from 1986, possibly because of the tie-up with Renault.