Super Nova - 1962 Chevrolet II 300 | The Online Automotive Marketplace

Give Chevrolet credit. When the all-new compact Corvair–introduced for the 1960 model lineup to beat the imports back across the Atlantic–was deemed too unconventional and didn’t live up to sales expectations, and Ford’s Falcon cleaned their clock in the sales race, it took only two years for Chevy to come back swinging with yet another all-new car.

Today, you couldn’t get a color swatch approved and added to the palette within two years’ time–but half a century ago, that was long enough to build an entirely new car from the wheels up. Such was the power of a single division within General Motors; the Chevy II–or Nova, depending on trim level–didn’t share anything with any other car across divisional lines. Only the Corvette could share in that boast.

And only Chevy could get away with an all-new small car that really wasn’t all that small: While it was tiny compared to the leviathan full-sizers of the day, it managed to be just a foot shorter than the epochal 1955 Chevy, and just five inches shorter in the wheelbase. Unit-body construction helped make it lower and lighter, and while the front suspension seemed conventional by contemporary standards (for instance, A-arms and coil springs were present), the rear suspension was of great interest.

The legendary monoleaf rear suspension, said to be a dozen years in the making, aimed to reduce unsprung weight and provide a smoother ride than possible with conventional multi-leaf spring arrangements (the rubbing of those multiple leaves causes lots of friction.)

Between the eyelets, each monoleaf spring is 62.5 inches long; the shape changes throughout the length, being thinner and wider at the ends and thicker and narrower near the axle location points. Each spring started as a rectan-gular steel bar, was subjected to a torturous amount of work to get it in a state where it was ready for the car, and was pre-set under a load that exceeds the elastic limit of the steel. The springs are rubber-bushed at the front hanger and rear shackles, and are sandwiched between rubber cushions where the springs attach to the axle. All this in the name of a smoother ride.

The engine was new too: While the new 194-cubic-inch straight-six seemed a useful update to the previous six-cylinder engine, the four-cylinder was a bit of a surprise–and was the company’s first new four-cylinder powerplant since the original engine that helped launch Chevrolet was put out to pasture in 1928. As a way to help save on development costs, the 153.3-cu.in. engine was essentially two-thirds of the larger 194-cu.in. straight-six; the OHV pushrod in-line siblings shared bore and stroke, piston and connecting-rod design and material, hydraulic tappets and cam specs.

Crank the volume past the point of comfort to hear the news over the engine noise.

There were some minor differences beyond the obvious. The four-cylinder engine featured a one-barrel Rochester carburetor with a 1.57-inch-diameter throat, for instance, and it also had smaller valves: 1.715/1.495 valves with 46-degree faces, versus the slightly larger 1.725/1.505 valves in the six-cylinder. Otherwise, it was all the same components inside.

In the context of cars like the Volkswagens, Renaults and British cars that dominated the import landscape of the day, bearing their own wheezy little four-cylinder engines, and in the name of ultimate economy, doing a four-cylinder version might have made sense at the corporate level. But Chevrolet buyers spoke loudly: The vast majority opted for the six-cylinder model, and very few four-cylinder Chevy IIs were produced.

When you get down to it, the four-cylinder simply didn’t make a whole lot of sense for the economy-minded buyer: While the four-cylinder-powered models were cheaper to purchase new and weighed a little less, which surely helped handling, they were also good for only an extra mile or two per gallon, in a time when gas was already cheap, and were considerably slower than the sixes (in an early test of a six-cylinder model, Motor Trend used its performance numbers to estimate a Beetlesque 0-60 time of 20 seconds for the four-cylinder model). The revs needed to keep a 2,500-pound car propelled by just 90hp surely made the four work harder than the six, thus erasing most of its perceived economic benefit.

Besides, it didn’t take long until the hot rodders started noticing that a 283-cu.in. V-8 could slip between the fenderwells of a Nova; soon enough, Chevrolet started assembling them this way at the factory. By the time the sun set on the Sixties, the four-cylinder Nova was history. The only surprise, in the context of Detroit’s horsepower race, was that Chevy kept it alive for as long as it did.

Rarity doesn’t always make for particularly valuable old-car fodder, although the stories behind the scarce models are generally compelling. Such might well be the case here, and particularly in these times of yo-yo’ing fuel prices, it’s well worth looking back at the Big Three’s first post-war four-cylinder cars. For owner/restorer Barry Dooley of Bellflower, California, finding a four-cylinder was a way to complete his early Nova collection: He has one of each body style (two-door hardtop, pillar coupe, four-door sedan, station wagon and convertible), and among them are four-cylinder, six-cylinder and V-8 models, both stock and modified.

Owner Barry Dooley

This particular Chevy II, a 54,000-mile, all-original 300-series sedan found in a Midwestern field complete with its original four-cylinder/three-on-the-tree combo intact, was the final piece to complete Barry’s set. The four-cylinder, four-door configuration apparently scared away plenty of potential buyers who were looking for a car to hot-rod, so Barry was able to pick it up for a relative song; it cost more to transport the car to California than it did to buy the vehicle in the first place.

Having restored a number of early Chevy IIs before, Barry knew what he needed from the start of the project and also knew where to get it. He sourced some new front fenders, then sent everything out to Anaheim Prestige Paint and Body in nearby Placentia to have the body refinished in new Silver Blue paint. New upholstery came from Eddy & Son Upholstery in Bellflower. The chassis work was all done in-house, and the toughest parts to find out on the open market were stock, correct hubcaps that weren’t all beaten and scratched. The resulting restoration took three years, but the little Chevy won a trophy its first time out on the show field.

And so we took it for a ride. In some ways, it’s not really fair to use other American cars as a reference point for the Chevy II: It was built to beat back the imports, yet not freak people out like the Corvair did. Mission accomplished: Slip inside, and you can see how Chevrolet worked very hard not to make its small car seem at all foreign. There’s plenty of shoulder and headroom, the controls are all exactly where you’d expect them to be, and the interior feel is very much that of a 7/8th-scale Biscayne. To be certain, it’s austere–thanks to the rubber floor mat–but there’s also an AM radio. Chevy advertised that six people could fit inside, and assuming they’re not linebackers for the Kansas City Chiefs, that estimate might just be right.

The engine turns over quickly, but you’ll never wonder whether you’ve forgotten to switch the key on when you’re idling or whether it’s stalled at a traffic light: The 153-cu.in. four-cylinder engine is a little agricultural mill spinning away under that flat hood. Now we know where the term “four-banger” came from; calling it agricultural is a slap in the face to farmers. That said, this was Chevy’s first four-cylinder powerplant in three and a half decades, and the myriad lessons learned here are the basis for the knowledge that spawned GM’s current world-class fours.

Slip into first gear–literally, as quick movements on the medium-heavy clutch only cause a chassis-shuddering bucking and balking–and take off. First surprise of the day: Were it not for the idle quality, and for the fact that we’d already peeked under the hood and photographed the engine before we drove it, we might have thought that this was a six-cylinder. No one is going to pretend that it’s looking to break the sound barrier, but the four delivered both power and smoothness through the revs, though speed fell off quickly as we shifted at 30 MPH and 50 MPH into second and third gears, respectively–there is no tachometer on a 300-series model. Such is the consequence of an aerodynamic profile more resembling a barn than an automobile: What speed you’re able to accumulate quickly evaporates once you lift off the gas.

The steering is as slow as you’d expect (and, thanks in part to the thin, slippery steering wheel, inviting of comically oversized corrections) but also surprisingly light, considering that there’s no power assistance.

We have come to expect nothing good from bias-ply tires; even the reproduction ones that utilize superior rubber compounds tend to roll over at speeds under 10 miles per hour, squealing and protesting. There’s nothing like the sound of your tire’s sidewalls getting mashed into the pavement to make your stomach turn.

But the Nova surprised us here. It not only managed to feel fairly taut while cornering, but the tires held their own–and without use of a front anti-roll bar, no less. You’ll never mistake it for a sports car, but its handling was remarkable. No wonder Chevy shifted nearly a third of a million units in this, its debut season. Doubtless the overall low weight of the car, combined with the less-than-usually-hefty chunk of iron situated between the front wheels powering us around, conspired to make the tires act a little happier than they might under other circ*mstances (and under other cars).

The brakes in our driveReport car had been largely untouched since before the restoration, and as such, the braking feel and the hard left-hand pull cannot be taken as endemic to the breed, but even these seemed not to fade in our stop-and-go driving.

And so Chevrolet, having learned its lesson with a slow-selling car that was radically different from what America knew, dusted itself off, marched back up to the plate, and hit one out of the park with the Chevy II and Nova. The four-cylinder engine played a significant part in its initial economy image: Was the Chevy II an economy car with a big American-car feel, or was it an all-American car with an import-sized thirst? As millions discovered back in the Sixties, the answer was simply “yes.”

Owner’s View

I bought this car because it had the four-cylinder engine in it. For me, what’s so special about this car is that I had a lot of fun restoring something to stock after so many years of building muscle cars. It was an easy car to restore; it was like it was waiting for someone to come along and restore it. It also helps to have a great source for parts, and I did. I just finished it around the time these photographs were taken, but I’ve already won some local car shows with it.

– Barry Dooley

Super Nova - 1962 Chevrolet II 300 | The Online Automotive Marketplace | Hemmings (2024)

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