NOVA L79 WAGON????

[JohnZ]

Well, while I'm on a roll, I'll share two more Chevy II stories:

1. Some GSA (General Services Administration) genius ordered about a dozen 4-cylinder Powerglide Chevy II station wagons for the government; that was long before anyone ever dreamed about balance shafts for large 4-cylinder engines, and the 153-cube L-4 just had HUGE soft rubber motormounts so the engine could shake without popping all the welds in the car, and it had a special 4"-diameter prop shaft with an oiled cardboard liner to try and absorb the driveline vibration. They were the ultimate "slugs" of all time, took forever to spin up the inertia rollers in the roll-test machines, and had so little power that they couldn't be driven up the ramps onto the haulaway trucks under their own power. We had to pull them up the ramps onto the trucks with a cable run over the front of the truck and attached to a forklift. God only knows what Federal agency got them, but I'm sure they didn't need sign-up sheets for who got to drive them for the weekend

2. Another GSA genius ordered a dozen right-hand-drive 6-cylinder Chevy II wagons with 3-on-the-tree to be shipped to some foreign aid location in Africa, with huge "Hands Across The Sea" decals on the doors. Imagine, if you will, the shift linkage required to get rod motion from the two levers on the right side of a right-side-mounted steering column across the car to the left side of the manual transmission, not to mention the special bellhousings with the clutch fork on the right-hand side. All the right-hand-drive clutch and shift linkage parts were hand-made at Engineering, passed out to me each day in car sets of rods, bellcranks, brackets, swivels, clips, bushings and fittings, and my Utilityman and I followed each one down the line trying to put them together at 65 per hour line speed, one every three hours or so. We never did get one to operate off the end of the Final Line - each one was pushed off the line onto a hoist, and took about an hour's work to get the linkages to work before they could be roll-tested. Just to top it off, when they were all done, the GSA sent an inspector into the plant to sign off on each one before we could ship them, and he picked them apart for days like they were GM Building Lobby show cars before we finally got rid of them. I don't imagine the linkages lasted very long in real-world use once they got to wherever they ended up, and they probably didn't do much for the image of the U.S. "Hands Across The Sea" program

And that's only from the first two years of 37 years in assembly plants......