Hot Rods Why CHEVY II???

Why are some a Nova and some a Chevy II? Why did Chevy call it the Chevy II???

 

"There was a lot of debate within the Chevrolet organization over just what to call this new car, and the decision to go with "Chevy II" was a very late one. Among the finalists was Nova. It lost out because it didn't start with a "C," but was selected as the name for the top-of-the-line series." Wiki

 

The Chevy II was the car model, and there were different trim levels, they had numbers, but the top trim level was called the Nova. So, they were all Chevy IIs, but only some of them were Novas. This changed in the late 60s, when the model name was changed from Chevy II to Nova. Then, and thereafter, they were all Novas.

 

And as we know...in Latin America countries, Nova translates into "No Go", which didn't help the sales.

 

Because Chevy 3 sounds weird. HRP

 

The body style changed in '67 but they were still called Chevy II until '68 which is when the 307 came out. My theory is that the engineers did everything they could too it and said "Man this thing just won't go!" so GM gave it a creative name like NOVA which also means "No Go" in Spanish.

 

My 62 was a custom 100.. cheapest model started with a 153” 4 cylinder. No radio. Bought from the Carson water district. Ended up with a Rochester FI 283, Muncie 4-speed, L79, and 4.56’s on Saturday and Sunday. AHRA Formula 4 B Hot Rod at Lions. Killer light to light on Hawthorne Blvd. Metallic light green and white top. Total sleeper.

 

Actually - the 1968 - still carried the Chevy II name.......see they/GM weren't still sure of themselves - like in 1967 with that new entry.

 

The Nova-Spanish "no go" is urban legend, a made up story.
From Hemmings:
Fact Check: The Nova did not sell poorly in Latin America due to its name
By Daniel Strohl on Apr 7th, 2017 at 8:00 am


So the next time you feel like illustrating your point that even big-shot bigwig executives get things wrong by trotting out that story you heard about the Nova bombing in Spanish-speaking countries in the Seventies because its name translated as "won't go," don't - the story's made up.

Apparently, the story has become a staple in undergrad and master's-level business courses, used to illustrate the pitfalls of either a) insufficient research when entering foreign markets or b) insufficient workplace diversity. The business department was on the other side of campus all our four years, but we still heard the story at some point, so it's a good bet that the tale is not exclusive to the ears of MBAs.

(Some perusing of our library reveals the story repeated in Steve Statham's book, "Nova SS Muscle Car Color History." Good bet it's repeated in other reference books as well.)

Whoever tells the story, it's a good bet they have no more than a mere understanding of Spanish or of automobile history. Or of how modern multinational businesses work, for that matter.

To address the linguistic failures of the legend, we turned to Associate Editor Terry Shea, whose family is bilingual. Beyond the essential misunderstanding that the word "nova" is fundamentally different from the phrase "no va" (the space is there for a reason, just as the presence or lack of a space between words matters in English), Terry points out that "no va" is rather stilted to a Spanish speaker, sort of like caveman-speak in Spanish. He writes:

Google Translate delivers "no va" as "not going," but that’s wrong. "Not going" = "no yendo."

More importantly, the word "nova," meaning the celestial happening, is the same in both languages. They are true cognates, if you will.Indeed, the word "nova," as referring to a "new star," comes from the Latin word "novus," which means "new." The roots for the word "nova" and the Spanish verb "ir" (which means "to go") don't even come from the same place.

So you'd really have to mangle the Spanish language to get to a point where the Chevrolet Nova advertised its fecklessness in its own name.

Let's say for argument's sake that "nova" really does mean "won't go" and thus GM really tripped over its own hubris in keeping the name for Spanish-language markets. Except that side of the tale doesn't hold up either. As the ad above, which Terry happened to have on his desk, shows, GM not only already had a presence in Mexico - fully fleshed out with sales and marketing departments - well before the supposed Nova bombing, but it also had a good grasp on the Spanish language.

Some versions of the tale note that, once GM realized its mistake, it changed the name of the Nova in Spanish-speaking markets to Caribe and, as a result, sales took off. However, the only Caribe that Chevrolet built was a one-off show car based on the Camaro.

 

I'm a Ford guy...I don't even want Chevy ONE

 

In order -

1963 to 1967
Chevy II Nova (or Chevy II for short !)

1968
Chevy II

1969 on
Nova

Mike

 

Chevy II makes a lot more sense than the names in the 40's.

Why is Fleetline the fancy model and Stylemaster the cheap stripped down base model? Seems like they should be reversed.

 

I just bought this 67 survivor Nova today. It say's Chevy 2 in the grille, and Nova on the rear quarter

 

Actually they were Chevy II 100's, 200's., 300's, Novas, Nova Super Sports ;-) 1962- 1967

 

That's a beaut

 

It's the same in Italian.....

 

There are past and future tenses in Spanish. I'm fluent. No yendo, is past tense...and nobody would ever say those words together...doesn't make sense. No va can be current or future tense. It does mean "Doesn't Go". Was "Nova" intended to mean that? Doubt it. Probably was named after a star as that was kind of an in thing in the early to mid 60s. That and it's one word, not two. The above dissertation using Google translations is pretty funny. I don't think GM gave a shit what Nova meant in Spanish, and as noted didn't impact sales anyway.

Before the Chevy II came out....saying you had a 1961 Chevy meant full size most likely. They probably wanted to differentiate the Chevy II line from the Corvair...im thinking Chevy II was meant to imply Chevy Junior, as they were compact cars.

 

Somebody spent a lot of energy making erroneous assertions about the translation.

In Spanish, the verb ir means "to go."

The present tense 3rd person singular conjugation of ir is va.

Just as in English, the 3rd person singular represents the subject pronouns he, she, one (the gender neutral pronoun, not the number), and... it. Note: in Spanish, personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, and so on) are often omitted because the conjugated verb already carries that information (eg, "yo voy" translates to "I go." However, voy can ONLY apply to the first person "I," so including yo is redundant, and therefore simply saying "voy" is sufficient.) This is not simply a colloquialism, it is ingrained in formal Spanish grammar. One exception to omitting personal pronouns is with the 3rd person singular, where the speaker wishes to communicate precision as to whether it is he, a she, or an it (remember, one is intentionally ambiguous). In the topic example, omitting the pronoun does create ambiguity, but since cars aren't people, "it" is successfully implied.

In Spanish, negation adverbs (and adjectives) precede the verb being negated.

So... "no va" does indeed mean "it no go," or simply "no go." In English, there are two distinct aspects of the "present" tense-- present simple and present progressive. In English, we typically would use the latter, which would read "it does not go" (a valid example of present progressive would be "it goes," but adding negation in English throws a wrench into present simple. We switch from simple to progressive-- English is complex). Spanish does not have the same set of rules for distinctions between present simple and progressive (though both exist).

Feel free to run this by your local Spanish professor or professional translator for confirmation. Just know that you may not get accurate advice from your abuelita or friendly neighborhood grocery clerk since, just as with the English speaking population, grammar isn't always a strong suit.

And that is my wall of words.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

 

that’s a damn ugly car.
I’ll give you a hundred dollars for it.


ha!

 

I've often thought Chevy II as a new brad of vehicle for Chevrolet that prior offered a truck and a car of same body type and named the Chevy II as the next generation model. But the Corvair came into play first. Guess it's "what came first. the chicken or the egg?" kind of thing.

 

In 1967, I had a new job and a new wife. I also had enough money to buy a new car. I desperately wanted an L79 NOVA. She made me buy an L79 Corvette. God, I miss that woman!

 

Chevy Also didn't work any better.

 

Very true. "NOVA" in latin, means "New Star". A Nova is basically an exploding star giving off a bright light.
4th grade science...

 

N ova
O mega
V entura
A pollo

Coincidence???

 

Nope.

I have a 1962 Chevy II 300, it is NOT a Nova. The 400 was the Nova. The 100 and 300 were only called Chevy II.

The original Chevrolet literature will set you straight, if you bother to look at it.

 

Yeah! They were all the same body/chassis setup... We used to stuff 455 cube motors in those things and blow out the rear axle doing burnouts....

Thank you Car Craft!!.....

 

Chevy started putting the Nova name on the upper end Chevy IIs in late 1961, long before the Omega, Ventura, and Apollo were even thought of. Could GM have required the other divisions to chose their model names for the X platform on an acronym based on a Chevy car model name? Who knows....but it makes a great fable....

 

Damn, and I thought it was for the Canadian market - Nova Scotia. "No go Scottie" meaning the Enterprise will not go.
But then, they had the Acadian.

 

Why is the sky blue?

 

67 and down we called them Chevy Two, 68 and up Nova... The 68 to 72 Nova was the best of the bunch in my opinion..