Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Junkyard Find: 1987 Chevrolet Nova

When the GM Fremont Assembly plant took on Toyota managers and became NUMMI in 1984, the same supposedly inept lineworkers who hammered together sub-par Buick Apollos suddenly started building Corollas that were at least as well-made as the ones made by their Japanese counterparts (you are free to draw your own conclusions about GM management in the 1980s). The initial round of GM-badged Corollas were given the Chevrolet Nova name, prior to becoming the Geo Prizm; you still see Prizms around, but the 80s Nova has become a rare sight on the streets and in the junkyards. Here's a Nova I spotted in an Oakland, California, self-serve yard earlier in the month.

I had a summer job in a warehouse specializing in pumps and filters in 1989, and one of my duties was a weekly run to deliver boxes of paint filters to NUMMI. The place just smelled efficient, nothing like the horror stories I'd heard about Camaro abuse at GM's Van Nuys Assembly plant, and I was impressed by the orderly ranks of new Corolla FX16s and Prizms. Every time I see a NUMMI-built car (which is frequently, given that I look under a lot of Toyota hoods during 24 Hours of LeMons inspections), I am reminded of my visits to the plant.
This Nova's final owner was, apparently, a student at Mills College, an extremely expensive private university for women, located on the edge of a hardcore donks-and-drive-by-shootings neighborhood of East Oakland. I lived in this neighborhood during the height of the early-90s crack wars, and it was disconcerting to have this beautifully landscaped college campus, with its famous Julia Morgan architecture, side-by-side with homies getting cold blasted over disputed prime cavvy-dealing turf.
This car's owner, who was either a slumming trustifarian gaining hipness points through use of a last-legs cheapo car or an honest-to-god broke student racking up vast amounts of student-loan debt, clearly moved in the same social circles as the owner of the East Bay Gig-Rig Ranchero we saw a few months back.
Then, one sad day, the reliable old Nova (which I'm guessing had an affectionate nickname, as such cars do) broke down and wasn't worth fixing. Or perhaps it racked up $10,000 in parking fines from the Suede Denim Secret Police who run parking enforcement in San Francisco and Berkeley and wasn't worth rescuing from the impound yard after getting towed.
Either way, this Corolla-by-another-name ended up in The Crusher's waiting room. Perhaps GM will revive the Nova name once again, but for now this is the final one.

29 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 01 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 02 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 03 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 04 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 05 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 06 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 07 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 08 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 09 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 10 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 11 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 12 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 13 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 14 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 15 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 16 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 17 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 18 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 19 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 20 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 21 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 22 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 23 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 24 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 26 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 27 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden 28 - 1987 Chevrolet Nova Down On The Junkyard - Pictures courtesy of Phillip 'NUMMI' Greden

from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com




ifttt puts the internet to work for you. via task 680102

No comments:

Post a Comment

Archive