Junkyard Find: 1986 Chevrolet Nova Sedan, Wisconsin Rust Edition
Published: August 24th, 2015
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Every summer, I go to Wisconsin to stay in a cabin on Lake Michigan owned by my wife’s family. Mostly I’m rendered too immobile by excessive cheese curd and cured-meat consumption to do much junkyard exploring, but this trip I managed to hit Green Bay to check out a self-service yard full of very rusty and/or late-model Detroit inventory. Among all the 9-year-old Malibus and endless stretches of Buicks in the GM section, I spotted this NUMMI-built Nova.
I grew up in the East Bay where NUMMI was (and Teslas are built today), and I visited the plant numerous times when it was producing Novas and Corollas, so I always get a little nostalgic moment when I see this sticker under a junkyard car’s hood.
This one doesn’t have many miles, by Corolla standards (the 1985-88 Nova was an AE82 Toyota Corolla/Sprinter behind its Chevy badges), but it has the kind of rust you expect on old Japanese cars in the rusty Upper Midwest.
I think I would not feel comfortable trusting the integrity of the suspension mounting points in this car.
The good old 4A engine, one of the all-time Toyota legends.
In this series so far, we’ve seen a fair number of NUMMI-built cars, including this ’87 Nova hatchback, this ’87 Nova sedan, this ’92 Prizm, this ’87 Corolla FX16, and this ’88 Nova sedan (not to mention this hyper-rare ’90 Prizm GSi), which reminds me that it’s about time I started shooting some junked NUMMI-made Pontiac Vibes now that those cars are getting so easy to find in the self-service yards.
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Reading the list of standard features on a new Chevy Nova can get pretty boring.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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"...but this trip I managed to hit Green Bay to check out a self-service yard full of very rusty and/or late-model Detroit inventory." OK, be honest, this was you, wasn't it? Don't worry, your secret is safe with us. http://wbay.com/2015/08/12/firefighters-fight-fire-on-green-bays-east-side/
Looks perfectly fine to me. In fact, somewhat tasty.