Chevrolet Nova 1970 in Green Mist

Don Dames’ 1970 Chevrolet Nova wears Green Mist paint and runs a six-cylinder rather than any of the big-block options that usually headline Nova stories. It sat in storage for years and emerged roughly 80 percent original, a survival rate that eludes almost every Nova built for straight-line speed. Read on for why the six was actually the most popular engine that year, and why honest survivors like this one are getting harder to find than restored SS cars.

Why would anyone spend years hunting for a Nova fitted with the smallest, least powerful engine Chevrolet offered that year? It is a fair question, and the answer says more about how the collector market has changed than about the car itself. This particular example, finished in Green Mist paint and owned by Don Dames, runs a modest six-cylinder rather than any of the big-block combinations that normally headline Nova stories. It sat in storage for years and came out roughly eighty percent original, a preservation rate that almost no Nova built for straight-line speed has ever managed. What makes an unassuming compact worth saving as carefully as a numbers-matching SS?

Hunting for the Least Powerful Engine Offered

Start with the fact that this was never the unusual choice. Chevrolet offered two six-cylinder engines on the 1970 Nova: a 230-cubic-inch unit rated at 140 horsepower, and a larger 250-cubic-inch six producing 155 horsepower and 235 lb-ft of torque. Far from being a rare footnote, the six was the single most popular engine that model year by a wide margin, powering 173,632 of the 315,122 total Novas Chevrolet built for 1970. More than half of all 1970 Novas left the factory configured essentially the way this one is, which makes the modern scarcity of good examples genuinely strange.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

More Than Half of All 1970 Novas

That popularity makes complete sense in context. The Nova was Chevrolet’s compact economy car first and a performance platform a distant second, with a starting price of just $2,335. Most buyers wanted reliable, affordable transportation that would start in February and not cost much to insure. The six-cylinder Nova delivered exactly that while wearing the same handsome sheetmetal as its SS-badged, big-block siblings, which is a considerably better deal than most economy cars of the period offered. Nobody buying one in 1970 was thinking about collector value, because the concept barely applied to a car in this class.

Economy Car First, Performance Platform Second

The 250-cubic-inch six itself deserves a better reputation than it has. It was a direct descendant of Chevrolet’s long-running inline six family, an engine with a well-earned reputation for running badly maintained and lasting anyway. Seven main bearings, an integral cylinder head and intake manifold, and a single-barrel carburetor added up to something almost impossible to kill. It was never quick, and the torque curve was flat and unexciting, but it started reliably in cold weather, tolerated indifferent oil change intervals, and returned fuel economy that looked increasingly attractive once 1973 arrived.

The Inline Six Nobody Gives Credit To

The 1970 model received only minor visual updates from the 1969 car. New side markers and repositioned taillight lenses arrived along with a revised egg-crate style grille, which remains the easiest way to distinguish a 1970 from its two immediate predecessors at a glance. The basic shape had been introduced for 1968 and was one of the cleaner compact designs of the period, with a squared-off, upright stance that has aged considerably better than a lot of its contemporaries. Chevrolet resisted the temptation to over-style it, which is part of why it still looks right.

How to Spot a 1970 at a Glance

Underneath, the transmission options included a four-speed manual, the Turbo Hydra-Matic automatic, and the unusual Torque-Drive, a semi-automatic offered specifically with the six-cylinder engines. Torque-Drive was essentially a two-speed automatic without a torque converter clutch, requiring the driver to shift manually between ranges but with no clutch pedal. It was cheap, it was slow, and it was aimed squarely at buyers who wanted automatic convenience at a manual price. Very few survive, and it is exactly the sort of oddity that makes a base-model car more interesting than a loaded one.

Torque-Drive and Other Forgotten Options

Here is the survival problem. Six-cylinder Novas were never treated as anything special when they were new, which means the overwhelming majority were driven hard, neglected, rear-ended, or scrapped long before anyone considered preserving them. Those that survived the seventies frequently had the six pulled out and a small-block dropped in, because the Nova’s engine bay accommodates a V8 with almost no modification and the parts were cheap and everywhere. The result is that a genuinely original six-cylinder car in decent condition is now considerably harder to find than a restored SS.

Why So Few of Them Survived

Eighty percent original is a specific and meaningful claim. It suggests original paint over most of the car, original interior surfaces, and an untouched drivetrain, rather than a full restoration to better-than-factory standards. Cars in that condition can only be produced by time and neglect in roughly equal measure: driven enough to stay functional, then parked and forgotten before anyone decided to improve them. Green Mist is a period-correct Chevrolet color that has largely disappeared from the surviving population, partly because so many cars in unfashionable colors were repainted during the seventies and eighties.

What Eighty Percent Original Actually Means

That rarity is quietly reshaping how some collectors think about compact Chevrolets from this era. Rather than chasing another restored SS with a big-block under the hood, a growing number of enthusiasts specifically seek honest, original survivors as a more accurate window into what everyday Chevrolet ownership actually looked like in 1970. A restored car shows you what the factory intended. An original one shows you what actually got built and how it wore, right down to the assembly marks, the overspray, and the places the paint never quite covered properly.

The Quiet Shift Toward Honest Survivors

There is also a straightforward practical argument. A six-cylinder survivor is dramatically cheaper to buy than an SS, costs almost nothing to insure, is simple enough to maintain in a home garage, and can be driven regularly without anyone worrying about mileage. The judging community has come around too, with preservation classes at major shows now taking original cars seriously rather than treating them as unfinished projects. A car like this one, stored for years and brought back out largely as it was built, is the sort of thing that gets more interesting every year it stays that way. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter