Guess the year, make and model!

This Chevy Nova wagon predates the car’s reputation as one of the era’s sneakiest muscle cars, wagon bodies disappeared from the lineup right as the Nova SS was becoming a serious performer. Here’s how a compact family hauler and a legendary muscle car ended up sharing the same nameplate, and why genuine Nova wagons are rarer today than the SS models everyone remembers.

A drag racing car performing a wheelie on the track.

A Chevy Nova wagon isn’t exactly the answer most muscle car fans would guess first, which is exactly what makes it a good stumper. Long before Nova became shorthand for cheap, tire-shredding small-block power, it wore Chevy II wagon sheet metal aimed at practical families, not the strip. That body style vanished from Chevrolet’s lineup well before the Nova name became linked to genuine muscle, which makes finding one today rarer than spotting the SS coupes everyone remembers. So which years actually got a wagon body, and how did a car built for grocery runs end up sharing a name with some of the rarest muscle cars Chevrolet ever built?

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A Family Hauler, Not a Muscle Car, At First

When the Chevy II debuted in 1962 as Chevrolet’s answer to the Ford Falcon, it was offered in four body styles, including a station wagon, alongside the two-door coupe, four-door sedan, and convertible. That wagon body stuck around only through the first generation, and by 1968, right as the Nova name and SS badge were starting to mean something to muscle car buyers, Chevrolet dropped the wagon entirely, following an industry-wide move away from compact wagons.

How the Nova Name Became Muscle Car Royalty

The timing means Nova wagons and genuine Nova muscle cars never really overlapped; by the time the Nova SS arrived in 1968 with a 295-horsepower 350 and heavy-duty F41 suspension, the wagon was already gone. The nameplate went on to produce some of the rarest muscle cars of the era, including the dealer-built Yenko Nova with a 427-cubic-inch V8 (fewer than 40 built) and the factory COPO Nova SS 396, with only about a dozen documented survivors, a far cry from the practical wagon that once wore the same badge.

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