[9C1Beater]

Yenko Deuce...thanks for the positive input. I'm actually not trying to put my Nova down, just curious why it doesn't attract more interest, and why Kurt is questioning its Z28 heritage (and parts). He is a Camaro and Yenko expert, and yet he doesn't think this car used Z28 parts?!!! When this car was at the Nova Nats this past June, it barely attracted any attention from the Nova bigwigs, but it drove the guys at the Super Car Workshop building crazy...they immediately recognized it for what it was.

I will take some good photos of the springs, get their dimensions, and take closeups of the welds. I didn't even think about the spring brackets welded to the bottoms of the axle, but they are probably deeper than a standard 5-leaf rear due to the extra leaf, so I will take that measurement as well. The leaves are definitely very beefy...there is no give in them whatsoever, which makes this car handle with barely any lean.

The guys at the Tech Center freely borrowed from each other's programs to create cars like the '67 Z28. Vince Piggins didn't go and design entirely new engine parts when he created the first 302...he mated an existing 327 block with a Corvette 283 forged crank, used the biggest valve heads from the Corvette, and controlled the valves with a Duntov 30-30 cam...all from the GM parts bin. Don Yenko figured out a way to use the COPO ordering process to get Novas with LT1s and M22 transmissions, and Fred Gibb used the COPO process to get '69 Camaros built with aluminum ZL1 engines.

This Nova was no different. Harry Hammond and Jim Ingle had only 5 weeks to build the basic Nova police car prototype to meet the LASD's imposed Feb 28, 1974 deadline to have the basic car constructed (Harry and Jim still had 2 months to "dial it in", which they needed!). The man in charge of the Camaro program at the Tech Center was Vince Piggins, and he loaned his newest engineer, Jim Ingle to the police car project (Jim was working in the "F-Body Program" office at that time, and he went on to run the program sometime later). Both Harry and Jim were relatively fresh hires at the Tech Center, and both had mechanical engineering degrees. They already knew that a Nova 4-door with standard front disk brakes, standard F41 suspension, and bias-ply tires on 14x6 inch wheels wasn't going to satisfy the LASD, because Rick Mahoney (along with Motor Trend editor John Christy) had tried to get a '73 Nova 4-door with the aforementioned equipment to pass the LASD's strict, measured standards to no avail (Harry said it wasn't up to par in braking and handling). The '74 prototype project went all-out and GM used every trick it could think of...including the 6-leaf rear springs, a cooling fan from a pickup truck, and many Z28 parts to make the car beat the competition. Harry said the finished car could out-handle and out-brake a Z28. John Christy was the first to say in print that the Nova police car was a "4-door Z28", and Hot Rod magazine did the same when they tested a '76 Nova 9C1, which they titled as "Super Nova!" in one article, and "The 4-door Z28" in another article in 1978.

I welcome any input on here, as I know you guys are far more knowledgeable on Novas and Chevrolets in general than I am. That's why I posted the car on here.

Best regards, Alex