Regular Car Reviews built a whole episode around a technicality: strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a factory Nova SS, just an option package bolted onto an ordinary Chevy compact. What starts as a joke about badge integrity turns into a real argument for why this particular 1970 Nova, and its unswapped 350 small-block, deserves more credit than its “fake” SS badge suggests. Viewers from as far as Argentina showed up with their own Nova stories. So is the SS badge a lie, or just a loophole?
Somewhere out there is a car enthusiast who still believes their Nova SS is the real thing, and Regular Car Reviews is not here to let them keep believing it. The channel that built its name reviewing the unglamorous and the overlooked has turned its attention to a 1970 Chevy Nova wearing badges it was never supposed to earn — badges that, according to the man behind the wheel, no factory Nova legitimately carries. What starts as a joke about a fake trim level turns into something closer to a thesis on what actually makes a muscle car matter, and by the end, the punchline isn’t the one you expect. By the time the credits roll, viewers who came for a joke about a fake badge leave with a genuine appreciation for a car most price guides still rank below its flashier GM cousins.
The Loophole in the Badge
Chevrolet never built a factory “Nova SS” in the way most buyers assume. What the factory actually offered was the Nova SS equipment package — heavier suspension, dual exhaust, styled wheels, black-out trim, and, depending on the year, a big-block option — bolted onto a car that could just as easily have left the plant as a plain Nova with a six-cylinder and bench seat. Regular Car Reviews’ host built the video’s entire premise around that technicality: because “SS” was an option package rather than a distinct model designation, any 1970 Nova wearing the badge is, strictly speaking, wearing a build-sheet checkbox rather than a pedigree. It’s a distinction most owners gloss over and one the review refuses to let go, right down to the video’s own title.
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A 350 That Doesn’t Need an LS
Under the hood of this particular Nova sits a Chevy 350 small-block, and the review spends real time on why it wasn’t swapped for the LS-series V8 that’s become the default upgrade path for just about every GM classic on the market. The comments overwhelmingly back that decision up: “I’m so glad that the owner didn’t go with an LS swap,” one viewer wrote, while another argued the 350 is simply “the LS before there was an LS.” The point the video keeps circling back to is that a numbers-era small-block still has a character an LS crate engine doesn’t replicate, even if it can’t match the modern engine’s power-per-dollar.
Mr. Regular’s Signature Style
Regular Car Reviews built its reputation on treating ordinary and unglamorous cars with the same theatrical, essay-style narration usually reserved for exotic supercars, and this Nova gets the full treatment — literary references, deadpan asides, and a review structure that’s more character study than spec sheet. The video even works in a nod to Dune, of all things, layering science-fiction imagery over a story about a Chevy compact — a tonal whiplash that’s become the channel’s trademark. One recurring line from the video, “he who controls the Novas, controls the boomers,” has already become a fan-favorite quote in the comments, a sign the channel’s comedic framing landed exactly as intended, right down to viewers quoting it back verbatim days after the upload.
A Channel Built on Cars Other Reviewers Skip
Regular Car Reviews has spent over a decade reviewing cars that traditional automotive journalism ignores — rental-fleet sedans, minivans, and compacts like the Nova that never got glamorous magazine covers when new. That editorial choice is why a 1970 Nova wearing a technically-incorrect SS badge becomes worth a full video in the first place: the channel’s entire premise is that any car, regardless of its badge or price point, has a story worth telling if someone bothers to actually drive it and talk to the owner.
A Family Car With a Six Under the Hood, Once
The comments reveal just how far the Nova’s reach extended beyond American driveways. One viewer from Argentina explained that Chevrolet sold the same platform there under the name “Chevy” rather than “Nova,” because in Spanish, “no va” translates roughly to “doesn’t go” — hardly a name a car company wants attached to its product. That Argentine-market Nova came with a 250-cubic-inch inline-six making around 175 horsepower, a world away from the small-block-powered SS package under discussion here, but a reminder of how widely the platform was shared, built and rebadged across multiple export markets throughout Chevrolet’s international operations during the same era.
The Brown Nova Still in the Family
Not every Nova story in the comments involves a restomod or a big-block swap. One commenter mentioned a stock 1970 Nova still owned by their family, running its original 250 inline-six, and painted brown — about as far from muscle-car glamour as the platform gets. That contrast is exactly why Regular Car Reviews chose this car: the Nova nameplate covered everything from that plain brown six-cylinder sedan to the SS-badged, 350-powered car in this review, and both are equally “real” Novas even if only one gets to wear the performance badge.
Why the Ending Surprises People
Several commenters admitted they expected a standard “why not LS-swap it” teardown and got something more layered instead. “I was worried that this would be a ‘why not LS swap’ episode, and it partially was, but I feel like you wrapped it up very nicely by making the Nova act as a bridge between generations,” one viewer wrote, describing how the review pivots from mocking the fake SS badge to making a genuine case for why the small-block-powered car still matters on its own terms. That pivot — from punchline to thesis — is what separates Regular Car Reviews from a typical car-channel takedown.
What “Fake” Really Means for a Classic
By the time the review ends, “fake Nova SS” has stopped sounding like an insult and started sounding like a technicality that doesn’t actually diminish the car. The Nova’s SS package was always more about attitude and options than about a distinct assembly line, and Regular Car Reviews uses that history to make a broader point about badge obsession in the collector market — that the driving experience, the small-block rumble, and fifty years of ownership stories matter more than whether a build sheet technically qualifies for a specific three-letter suffix.
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