[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Originally Posted by EZ Nova

I've been thinking about this for a while now. I really think GM had the Nova as THE PERFORMANCE car after the Corvette back in these years. Even to the point of not letting employees/dealers know? GM was behind there "pony" car Camaro. But for there street-raced straight line performance car, I think they we backing the Nova's.

My take on this is, other than 427 COPO's, your could get basically the same top of the line L78's. Both the Camaro and Chevelle could get the 396/325Hp motor, but Nova it wasn't available. Also BB 396 and A/C? Both Camaro and Chevelle could get 396's with A/C, yet the Nova again NOT AVAILABLE. So now add to the fact that a L78 4 sp Nova is lighter than a L78 Camaro, just seems that GM was looking to keep their compact lightweight Nova and there true street brawler? I know a number of guys that bought these new back in '69/'70. And I do believe that they were actually faster than a local COPO 427 Chevelle that was running around at the time too. I know of a couple L78 Nova's that ran well back then. Headers, curved distributor, jetted carb and 7" slick. These would run consistent mid 11's.

These guys always told me back in the day, very very few L78 Camaro's could run with them. Funny story. A good friend of mine bought and race a new '69 L78 Nova. After doing well running 11.60's he had enough money for a new paint job. See even though were Canadian, he painted it "Stars and Stripes" and was quite well know as "The Stars and Stripes" Nova. Well car is still local, but the owner is going to finish it one day, type of deal and won't sell it back. So he bought another '72. It has a 502 in it and it's getting the Stars and Stripe paint in the next 2 years. He says he doesn't recall loing to a OEM style Camaro.

Thoughts????

I disagree, IMHO. I believe the reduced amount of options was driven by cost. GM would have to invest a chunk of engineering time, production line changes, inventory, etc... for a very limited sales base. The cost/benefit simply wasn't there, so they added the BB in '68 with 1 mild and 1 wild to appeal to a limited buyer pool and then added the A/T to the L78 in '69 & '70 to increase the buyer pool and perhaps NHRA cert. The fact that the Nova is lighter than the Camaro with good geometry was not the driving force - if anything it was the limiting force which is why there's no L72 COPO Nova....