1970 Chevrolet Chevy Nova in Green Mist & 6 Cylinder Start Up

Lou Costabile visits the 2016 Burr Ridge Car Show to find a 1970 Chevy Nova in Green Mist paint, kept 80 percent original by owner Don Dames despite running only a six-cylinder engine. The comments fill in the rest: a driver’s ed car from 1977, a family Nova that survived a windshield-shattering explosion and ran past 280,000 miles, and viewers who owned nearly identical cars decades ago. Watch to see why an ordinary six-cylinder Nova is pulling out more personal stories than most muscle cars ever could.

Most Nova videos on this channel chase big-block numbers and quarter-mile bragging rights. This one does the opposite: a straight six, a Powerglide-adjacent simplicity, and a paint color nobody seems to be able to stop looking at. Filmed at the 9th Annual Burr Ridge Car Show on June 12, 2016, Lou Costabile’s walkaround of this 1970 Chevy Nova in Green Mist paint pulls more genuine personal memories out of its comment section than almost any high-horsepower feature could.

A Straight Six Nobody Bothered to Upgrade

Owner Don Dames explains the car has been stored for years and remains about 80 percent original, a claim that matters more than it might sound. An 80 percent original survivor means most of the sheet metal, trim, and mechanical components are exactly what left the factory in 1970, not replaced or refinished decades later. For a car this ordinary on paper, a six-cylinder economy Nova rather than an SS or big-block variant, that level of originality is unusually rare simply because nobody thought to preserve the plain ones.

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What 80 Percent Original Actually Means

That’s precisely why one commenter, a Nova owner himself, praises Don specifically for keeping it all original rather than upgrading it. In a hobby where V8 swaps and performance upgrades are the default move for nearly every survivor Nova that surfaces, choosing to leave a six-cylinder car exactly as Chevrolet built it is a genuinely uncommon decision, one this commenter clearly respects.

Choosing to Leave It Alone

The comments quickly turn into a shared history lesson on 1970s Novas more broadly. One viewer owned a nearly identical car about 25 years before this video, a cranberry red six-cylinder Powerglide, rust-free out of North Carolina, that they also kept entirely original. Another remembers a friend’s mother driving an inline-six Nova specifically because it was simple enough to change the starter without needing to get underneath the car, a practical reason plenty of families chose the six over a V8 in period.

A Nearly Identical Survivor From 25 Years Earlier

The most detailed story comes from someone whose father bought a similar Nova at auction in 1975 for 800 dollars with just 14,000 miles on it. Before it ever got driven much, the car sat in a parking lot when a nearby building exploded, busting the windshield and putting a brick through the radiator. His father restored it anyway, and the family ultimately ran that Nova past 280,000 miles, a genuine testament to how tough this era of GM’s simple, six-cylinder platform actually was underneath the entry-level branding.

Why Some Families Chose the Six Over a V8

A quieter but equally telling story involves learning to drive. One commenter’s driver’s education car was a brand new 1977 Nova, a two-door with the 250 cubic inch six, a three-on-the-tree manual, and manual steering and brakes, crammed with an instructor and four fifteen-year-olds at once. That’s about as far from a muscle car experience as this platform gets, and it’s exactly why so many people learned on cars like this one rather than anything more powerful.

280,000 Miles and a Brick Through the Radiator

Not every commenter’s story ends as well. One remembers this exact color and body style from childhood, sold in 1979 for roughly 200 Canadian dollars with somewhere around 200,000 miles already on it, a price that reflects just how disposable these plain, six-cylinder Novas were treated as at the time, long before survivor cars like this one became something worth trailering to a car show decades later.

Learning to Drive on a Three-on-the-Tree Nova

Green Mist itself draws specific praise in the comments, with one viewer calling it a pretty green in a tone that suggests genuine surprise at how well GM’s simpler factory colors have aged. That reaction gets at something bigger running through this entire comment section: a six-cylinder Nova in an original factory color, without a single performance upgrade, is pulling more nostalgia and personal storytelling out of viewers than a flashier car ever could, precisely because so many of them actually owned, learned to drive in, or grew up riding in one just like it.

Sold for 200 Dollars With 200,000 Miles Already on It

One more comment adds an unexpected layer to that same nostalgia: a viewer who surprised their future father-in-law by restoring his own grandfather’s old Nova back to running condition, working specifically toward getting it looking closer to Don’s example in this video. That kind of multi-generational project, chasing a specific reference car glimpsed on YouTube, is a fairly modern twist on a hobby that used to rely entirely on swap meets, old photographs, and word of mouth to figure out what a car should actually look like once it’s finished.

Why a Plain Green Nova Beats a Flashier Car in This Comment Section

Burr Ridge itself deserves a mention as a setting. The show has run annually since roughly the mid-2000s in this Chicago suburb, drawing a mix of muscle cars, survivors, and daily-driver classics rather than skewing entirely toward one category. That broader mix is likely part of why a plain six-cylinder Nova gets equal billing on Lou’s channel alongside the Hemis and Six Packs he covers elsewhere, since a show built around variety naturally produces walkaround subjects that reflect the full range of what people actually drove in period, not just the cars that happened to be fast.

Restoring a Grandfather’s Nova to Match This One

Watch closely and Don handles questions about the car the way most original-survivor owners do: matter-of-factly, without ever overselling what he has. That restraint fits the car perfectly. A six-cylinder Nova was never meant to be a showpiece, and the fact that it is one now says more about the passage of time than anything Chevrolet ever intended. Chevrolet built this Nova to be forgettable, and fifty years later, that is exactly why it stands out. Not every survivor needs to be rare to be worth preserving.

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