Junkyard Find: 1987 Chevrolet Nova

by Murilee Martin

Published: February 22nd, 2012

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.

#1980s #1987 #1987ChevroletNova #1987ToyotaCorolla #BadgeEngineering #Chevrolet #ChevroletNova #Corolla #DownOnTheJunkyard #Junkyard #Toyota #Nummi #ToyotaCorolla #Nova #JunkyardFind #Oakland #ToyotaSprinter

Murilee Martin

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, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments

Join the conversation

3 of 46 comments

Plee on Feb 22, 2012

Bought a used 93 Prizm 5 speed for my daughter while she was in college back in 1999-2000. It was one of the worst cars I have ever owned. The interior trim pieces kept falling off, transmission linkage was very sloppy, car had no cornering capability as it used to really lean over in turns. When you turned on the AC it felt like half the power was gone. That was the last time I used Consumer Reports when deciding on a car to buy, they thought it was wonderful because of its Toyota roots.

Like Reply
- Joeaverage on Feb 28, 2012
  
  Couldn't be the previous owner used it up and sold it to you? Can't imagine why your experience would be so different than that of other folks here.
  
  Like
Acuraandy on Feb 23, 2012

I destroyed one of these in a 'rally' at my buddy's farm house/land back in 2003. That happened to be a Silver '86. Got it for $75, ran and drove. Bad thing was, it didn't have a title, so couldn't drive it on-road (otherwise, I wouldn't have wrecked it). I painted big #3's on the front doors (it was, after all only two years after St. Earnhardt had passed) and proceeded to drive it until it blew up. Except it didn't. I had to stop every so often to spray the radiator with cool hose water to prevent overheating as the fins were gone when I got the car. Despite the beating and over-revving for several hours, it kept on tickin'. I left the car there where my buddy decided a few months later to have a 'brick party' (for those who are not enlightened, a 'brick party' entails draining the oil from an engine, starting it afterwards and placing a brick on the gas pedal until the engine explodes). It took 45 minutes to blow the engine. The Nova/Corolla was then hauled away for scrap. P.S. Murilee, are you me 20 years from now who made up a pseudonym and traveled back in time? Just wondering...lol

Like Reply

Recent Comments

Ash78 Interesting take on the pricing...superficially illogical, but Honda has been able to sell the Pilot Junior (er, Passport) for more than the Pilot for several years now. I guess this is the new norm. I have 2 kids, who often have friends, and I feel like the best option here is buying the CX-90 and removing the third row completely. It won't be pretty, but it adds useful space. We've done that in our minivan several times.I've been anxiously awaiting the 70 for over a year, but the pricing makes it a non-starter for me. I like the 50, but it's tight (small, not dope/fire/legit); I like the 90s, but it's more than we need. This "Goldilocks Solution" feels like it's missing the mark a little. Mazda could have gone with more of a CX-60 (ROW model) and just refreshed it for the US, but I suspect the 90 was selling so well, the more economical choice was just to make it the same basic car. Seems lazy to me.
FreedMike If you haven't tried out the CX-90, do so - it's a great driver, particularly with the PHEV powertrain.
Ajla I don't understand why it is priced above the CX-90 (about $2500 at every trim level on the I6 and $5k on the PHEV), unless a CX-90 price increase is on the way soon. It will be interesting to see how this does against the CX-90, that one isn't packaged well for a 3-row but with a lower price, very similar exterior styling and identical exterior dimensions I'd lean towards it over the 70. The pricing on higher trims is a bit dear for a nonpremium badge and it is annoying that Mazda and the press pretend that the lower nonS trims don't even exist. Why even bother making them if you won't take it to your own media event?I would expect the engine and chassis configuration to be a killer app here but it seems like engine/transmission is only 80% baked and the interior is what sells these. Reliability is a big question mark as well. In the end outside of a specific buyer (this seems like something Corey would like), I'd recommend getting something cheaper and more established.
Dave M. I love what Mazda stands for and how hard they try. Their cars are well crafted and pretty reliable. But they must simply get their mpgs up to be competitive against the Lexus RX450h and Toyota Highlander Platinum hybrid if they're going to play in that $45-60k price range.
1995 SC In order for the UAW to gain traction in the South you would need the cost of living to rise significantly in the areas these plants are in and wages to not keep up or some significant abuses by the owners of these plants to come to light. You talk about job security but the only plants that aren't closing are non-union. The US makers can't ship production to Mexico fast enough. People aren't dumb...they see this stuff.