Chevrolet Nova Wagon – 7 Second Street Car Wheelie

A 1967 Nova wagon isn’t supposed to be a threat at the drag strip, let alone rip 7-second passes with the rear bumper dragging the pavement. Powered by a twin-turbo 540ci big block and built to survive a brutal week of back-to-back racing and street driving, this wagon flipped every expectation about what a family hauler can do. Here’s the story behind one of the most unlikely wheelie machines in muscle car history.

This 540ci, Twin Turbo Nova put on a show for everybody at Drag Week 2015, putting the back bumper on the pavement and cracking 7 second passes! Not only this, but this bad b*tch has air conditioning for the drive! WINNING!

Station wagons don’t usually get invited to the wheelie contest. In the muscle car world they’re the family hauler, the car dad drove to the hardware store while the Camaro sat in the garage waiting for the weekend. So when a turquoise 1967 wagon showed up at one of the most brutal automotive events in the country and started putting its back bumper on the pavement, it broke every assumption about what a grocery-getter is supposed to do. Underneath that unassuming sheet metal sat a powerplant that had no business being there, built by someone who clearly didn’t get the memo about wagons staying in their lane. By the time it crossed the beams, it had done something almost no street-driven wagon in history had managed. Here’s what it took to get a family hauler into the 7s.

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540 Cubic Inches and Twin Turbos Under a Wagon Roof

Builder Frank Saponaro didn’t hold back on this Nova wagon, stuffing a 540ci big block Chevy under the hood built around a Callies crank, Oliver rods, and Manley pistons, topped with a custom solid roller cam and a set of AFR 377cc heads. Instead of the usual big carb setup you’d expect on a build this size, he ran an Edelbrock Pro-Flo XT EFI intake feeding a pair of BorgWarner 82mm turbochargers — the kind of hardware that turns a shopping cart into a rocket sled and makes traditional carbureted big blocks look almost quaint by comparison.

Drag Week: The Event That Breaks Cars for Fun

This particular Nova was competing in HOT ROD Drag Week, an event that doesn’t just ask cars to run fast once — it demands they run fast, then drive hundreds of miles on the street to the next track, and do it again for five straight days. Saponaro’s wagon made a stop at the Byron, Illinois checkpoint before pointing itself toward Cordova, proving the twin-turbo 540 wasn’t some trailer queen built for a single pass; it was a legitimately street-driven machine that happened to also run 7-second quarter miles with the back bumper scraping pavement off the line.

Air Conditioning, Because Comfort Still Matters

For all its drag strip violence, this wagon never gave up its creature comforts — it rolled with a functioning air conditioning system, which might be the most enthusiast detail of all. Anyone who’s sweated through a long stint behind the wheel of a full race car knows exactly why that matters on a build meant to survive both a quarter-mile blast and a highway cruise to the next checkpoint; it’s proof this Nova was built to be lived with, not just trailered to the strip and back.

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