I love the idea of a luxurious version of a car or truck that was never meant to be luxurious – this 1977 Chevrolet Nova Concours is one of those vehicles. This stunning time capsule can be found posted here on craigslist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the seller has dropped the price to $13,000. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Anthony M. for sending in this tip!
My favorite “luxury” car that most folks wouldn’t take too seriously as a luxury car would be the Cadillac Cimarron which is basically a Chevrolet Cavalier with chrome and puffy leather seats. I need to find a nice example of that car, stat. Another example would be the Lincoln Blackwood pickup and I saw one of those just this morning which was a treat. This Nova Concours appears to be an absolute jewel as you can see by the very limited photos that the seller has adding to the listing.
Here is the only other exterior photo and sadly, we don’t see the driver’s side at all but I’m assuming that it hasn’t been raked down the side of a building or is falling off or green or covered in moss or who knows what. I will never understand why sellers don’t at the very least show all sides of a vehicle when they’re trying to sell them online, especially at this price point.
The Nova Concours was available in the classic era of white shoes and padded brougham vinyl half-tops and they came in both four-door and two-door versions and also a two-door hatchback version. This is a fourth-generation Nova and they were made from 1975 to 1979. In 1975, Nova added a luxury version called the LN, for Luxury Nova. The following year, 1976, was the beginning of the Concours edition. The seats are vinyl so there is no leather or nice soft velour fabric here but they look like new as does pretty much the whole car, or at least what we see if it in the (VERY) (sorry for shouting) limited photos.
The engine looks suspiciously like a perfect back seat but that’s because the owner didn’t pop the hood and take a quick photo for the listing. This one has the smallest engine, Chevrolet’s 250 cubic-inch inline-six with 110 horsepower, and the seller says that this car only has 22,000 miles on it. It sure looks perfect. Have any of you heard of the Nova Concours? What’s your favorite luxury version of a normally non-luxury vehicle?
Nice looking car,but I don’t think that these got
very good gas mileage (with a 350).
My dad had a 1977 4 Dr. Nova Concours…….no air, only AM radio, red exterior with red velour interior. It came with the V8 305. Though it was an upgraded version of the 1977 Nova, the options were unremarkable……reliable engine and transmission but Canada’s cold weather and salt ate the body away…..the usual North American made cars of the day.
Cars like this are always interesting to me. I started driving in 80-81 so this car as a lightly used car would’ve been an option. I wouldn’t have liked it at all though. Older me knows now that it would’ve been better than the then already beat up on muscle cars I did spend my money on. Less money for parts, less money for tickets, more time driving, and less time under the hood.
I have no idea what I would do with it today. A true old land barge like a Caddy would be cool but this just falls into the “WOW, haven’t seen one of those in a long time” category. It is in great shape.
I’d never known before that there was even a vinyl interior option for the Concours, the brochure pictures all show the cloth version. I wonder what the relative take rates were, vinyl in base Novas was common enough but those were also much more popular than the Concours which now that I think about it was much rarer than the other high-series late RWD X-bodies – I guess people who spent that much on a GM compact still wanted a Pontiac, Buick or Olds badge to show for it.
Come on $13k? No air, no pw, no v8. How about $5k.
I remember a TV ad for these..” The Concours, of course”..these weren’t that rare back in the day either. Auto makers were trying anything to sell cars, so why not faux luxury versions of their best-sellers? I remember AMC coming out with the Concorde, basically an overstuffed Hornet with a different grille. And there was the last year of the Plymouth Valiant, offering a “Brougham “edition that had fake wood trim inside and “puffy” seats. My dad owned one.
The AMC Concord was an interesting case since it was never offered alongside the Hornet except at model-year-clearance in late 1977.
Same platform and sheet metal mostly. They stuffed the Hornet then changed its name
The wheel trims made it Down Under, standard on HZ Holden Kingswoods. I’ve never seen a Nova of this generation here.
I have a lot of respect for this car’s originality. But my only use for a Nova of this generation would be to restomod it with Trans Am spec suspension and brakes and a nice crate motor, and this example is too nice for that treatment. So I’ll pass.
This is really cool. These cars are gone. Not only is it in great shape, but the burgundy exterior and interior are really nice! Only 22k? How rare is that? This wasn’t a car that was meant to be preserved like this.
Looks in the pictures like a nice car personally I think $13k is steep but if it’s as the seller claims I think they would get their asking price if the seller coughed up more the the $5 dollar Craig’s list and posted it on a auction site or even here
Nice car, but GM really played us for fools. Looks way much like the Caddy. LOL
cheville
Really liked these, this one hits every note except lack of a V8 and F41 suspension and the A/C. Comfortable, nimble and no excess with the problematic electric windows. Lube the regulators and those windows are as smooth as power units!
Even with only 22,000 miles, I bet it still rolls down the road crab-style, like every 70s X-body I’ve ever followed.
You are wrong,it rides nice and smooth,on the street and better on the highway!
Chevrolet dolling up the aging Nova to juice sales for it’s last few model years since 1979 would bring the front wheel drive X-bodies.
My buddy had a blue and white two door back in 81. White top/interior with a medium blue body, it was a really nice road trip car. It met it’s end when he dropped a joint and tried to pick it up. Went off the right side of the road into a tree at about 35mph throwing another buddy in the back seat through the windshield into said tree face first. This was his senior year in high school (I was a sophomore) and he was out for several months, when he came back his face was noticably flat. Thankfully he was the only one seriously injured.
I like the red color, practical size and boxiness of this generation of the Nova and the great condition as best I can discern from the limited photos. But I totally agree with Doone that this car lacks all of the options that would make it worth considering. No air conditioning with hot vinyl seats. What were they thinking? No V8 not even the 305? Cuts the value and enjoyment of the car right there. Definitely not a luxury car even when new.
I don’t agree with most of you and it does have power steering manual windows it has a very smooth ride I can ride across the train tracks and not feel a bump very good on gas I drive it everyday I would drive one of my other cars and only drive it on Sundays and tell the weather changes i will keep driving it I get compliments wherever I go or how clean the car is with my AM radio and I just had it detailed so the color is really popping now I did have to put a master cylinder on and I just got the headliner replaced and the engine has been washed down so it’s even beautiful when I open the hood I love this car I am thinking about buying another nova
I guess people buying this trim level could pretend they had the very similar-looking Seville of this vintage.
I never had the space to do it, but I always wanted to buy an ’85 Cavalier convertible and an ’85 Cimarron and make a Franken-Car Cimarron convertible. I even found both cars for sale one time and had to talk myself out of it.
Lastly, my Uncle George bought a tricked-out Impala in 1968 that had fender skirts and every luxury feature you could imagine on a Chevy. I still see one like it in the city where I live. He traded it in for a 98 Olds in the same color a year or so later because it just didn’t live up to the hype.
Very hard to find a used Nova even back in the day as most Nova owners bought them and kept them then passed them down do their children as their first cars. I find it interesting this one did not have a matching vinyl top as most of these models had.
The seller has lowered the asking price to $12,000. Any takers?
This car makes me think of that scene in the movie BIG (1988) when Josh (Tom Hanks) famously says “I don’t get it. It turns from a building into a robot, right? Well, what’s fun about that?”
I have great affection for 1970s GM X-Body cars. My father had a fairly basic 1973 Nova coupe with a 350 4 barrel carburetor and automatic transmission when I was learning to drive and it could really scoot. At the same time, my grandmother had an abolutely stripped 1973 Nova coupe (rubber flooring, black perforated vinyl taxi cab upholstery, manual everything) with the same 250 cubic-inch inline-six and automatic transmission this car has and, while underpowered as hell, that engine was smooth as butter. And when we got married, my wife and I got her mother’s lightly used 1976 Buick Skylark S/R sedan as a wedding present. It was “loaded” for the time and it’s 231 cubic-inch V6 wasn’t as smooth as the inline-six, but it had more oomph.
A loaded Chevy Concours with the velour interior and all the options was a very nice car — not as nice as a Seville, but certainly as nice as the equivalent Buick Skylark or Olds Omega. But this one? With the vinyl seats, manual windows, and no AC? It’s just odd.