The Bill Thomas "Novel Nova"

 

Meant II Be 

 

By John Tinberg

Photos by Gary Gerstner

 

　

We’ve all dreamed about a type of car that we’d love to own some day, usually one reminiscent of a car from our youth. Typically it’s just that, a type of car, rarely a specific vehicle. My story, however, is a little different. I had been pining over one particular very special car, Bill Thomas’s first altered wheelbase Chevy II, since the day I saw it in the March, 1966, issue of Hot Rod. “A Novel Nova,” “Instant Funny Car,” and the author’s name, Jim McFarland, have been imbedded in my brain since way back then. This car became nothing short of an obsession for me.

The car was so much of an obsession, in fact, that I opted for the next best thing. The idea of owning this actual car was so far from any reality I could fathom that I built a clone of it in 2001. Using my dog-eared issue of Hot Rod with Jim McFarland’s article and photographs as my instruction manual, I “recreated” my fatal attraction. (Tinberg’s Terrible II, May, 2002, Hot Rod).

A Bill Thomas fan since I was about 15, I have loved everything he ever did with a Chevy. His state-of-the-art cars were soundly engineered, had no frills, and possessed brute power. They were masterpieces yet were understated just like their creator, Bill Thomas.  He could turn an average family sedan into a record breaker using mostly off-the-shelf GM parts. He made racecar enthusiasts feel as if being #1 was easily attainable: just go to your Chevy dealer, buy the parts, go racing, and win!

Click Photos to Enlarge 

Bill Thomas Race Cars in Anaheim, California, built this Nova in November of 1965, during the time General Motors had officially declared a ban on racing. Bill Thomas was the “back door” man pushed by the GM people to keep performance a priority, a big marketplace in the car wars of the mid 60’s. Many enthusiasts consider the Novel Nova to be the first factory-backed Chevy funny car ever built.

Finding and building this car the second time around resulted in some interesting coincidences. Many people remember that Bill Thomas Race Cars of Anaheim and Nickey Chevrolet of Chicago joined forces at exactly the time the Novel Nova was being built the first time around. This Nova changed hands nine times after Bill Thomas created it, and the 10^th owner was none other than Nickey.

In 2008 Stefano Bimbi, owner of Nickey Chicago, considered the car a perfect acquisition for his business which is the building and selling of high performance muscle cars. This piece of history didn’t stay his for long, however. It just so happens that I work for Nickey Chicago, building and installing all the period funny car and gasser components. Our biggest seller is, you guessed it, the Nova tubular subframe that BT designed back in ’65! (We had started building these several years earlier—long before the car was found!) When Stefano called to tell me he owned the Bill Thomas Nova, that’s all he had to say. Two weeks later it was mine! This was meant II be!

The rest, as they say, is history! I was given the contact number of Bill Thomas’s son, Bill Thomas III, and was told he would be happy to share information on the car. We talked at length about his dad, racing history, and of course, the Nova. Bill III told me he started working at his dad’s race shop on weekends when he was 8 years old, sweeping floors and cleaning up the place. Before he knew it, he was turning wrenches on Corvairs and eventually the bigger, high performance cars. He was 11 years old when the Novel Nova was built and articles about the car were hitting the magazine stands. His picture had even appeared in a Popular Hot Rodding issue standing next to the Dick Harrell car that was being built in the stall next to the Novel Nova. He knows the ins and outs of all of his dad’s cars and loves to share the stories. What a help he and his father were to my project! We talked several times a week during the restoration process.

Bill III shared our discussions of the Novel Nova with his dad. He relayed that his dad remembered the car well and would add his knowledge and input where he could. At one point I even sent the Nova’s valve covers and an NOS Bill Thomas 396 Performance Handbook to California, and Bill Thomas generously autographed them for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please Turn to Part Two - The Car

Click Here