My Uncle Steve Barbato, owner of B&B ChevyII Performance in NJ came across this car around 1980. The car rolled into his Nova shop one day and someone offered to sell it to him.

He wasn’t really interested but he saw it had Nova trim and holes where a V8 emblem should be, so he took a quick look. Looking under the hood, he noticed it was V8 and had power steering and power brakes. It also had an A/C compressor bracket but no compressor.

As he walked around the car to take a better look, he drilled his shin on a trailer hitch sticking out. After the tweety birds stopped circling his head, he realized the car was rare and made an offer to low-ball the seller. The seller declined, and away the car rolled.

Steve got an earful from his co-workers for 2 weeks straight on how he screwed up and let the Wagon go.

As fate would have it, the wagon rolls back in the shop one day and the man says “my brother will take your offer.” Before he got “offer” out of his mouth, Steve said “park it over there.” Shortly thereafter, Steve starting looking closer under the hood and found some good news. He had been thinking it was a 283 car but first found a Q-jet and after scraping the grime from the heads, found double humps!

Oh boy, this is a 327 car! What a score!

Also unusually, Steve noticed the firewall was green body color, not black. There is no date on the title transfer but the sales price is listed at $100 plus $5 in NJ sales tax. The car was registered in Steve’s name and on the road in 1981 until about 1985.

It was at this time I first saw the car in my grandparent’s driveway. I was 14 years old, and I didn’t even know what a Nova was at the time. I was all about Camaros. It was about that time, 1985 the car came off the road. Steve started collecting parts and started restoring the car. As these things go, the car was off the road almost 20 years.

Through this time I had gone through high school and college, bought and restored a ’67 Camaro. I was looking for my next project, and it was by chance around 2003 that Steve mentioned he may need to get rid of the Wagon. I was shocked since it was always a fixture at his place and I knew it was optioned to the max. I told him, “Keep it in the family, I’ll take it!”

Shortly thereafter it was on a trailer to MD. I knew the car body needed major help going into it but I didn’t care because I wanted an excuse to learn to weld. One MIG welder and 3 years later the unibody was all metal again. I hand made patches for every section of the car you can imagine. The catalog items came from Chevy2Only mostly hand carried from Carlisle shows. John Piccola in Vegas was a huge help for the rare Wagon non-repro parts. My Uncle had given me with the car piles of NOS parts that without, may have rendered this car a junkyard candidate. These NOS parts include:

• LH quarter
• LH rocker
• fenders
• all four door body trim pieces
• grill
• rear trim plate
• power gate motor
• Q-jet
• door handles

NOS parts I found:

• trailer hitch
• air shocks
• quarter trim
• headlight bezels
• 5 of the 8 roof rack pot-metal pieces.

I restored every aspect of this car myself from the rust repair and seat upholstery to hand-making the body wiring and to building the motor. I had a local guy lay the paint on. The entire restoration took 4 ½ years.

I brought the car back to original from a color and options standpoint but added a few items for looks and enjoyment like nice wheels, a modern stereo and a cowl hood. Building off the green firewall the car had, I had the entire undercarriage painted in mountain green base/clear with all suspension in black. I drive it to all shows. It has not been back on a trailer since the paint job

There is no doubt in my mind this car was ordered special as a family vacation vehicle for towing a trailer.