The Bill Thomas "Novel Nova"
The Car
This Nova started life as a 1962 base model. Bill bought it at a used car dealership with one purpose, to promote Chevy’s newly released “Semi-Hemi” 396/427 engine. GM had the crate motors stacked against the wall in Bill’s Anaheim shop before “Porcupine Heads” was even a household term. He had a new idea in mind for these beasts. He had recently designed an ultra light sub frame kit that would replace the stock front clip of a Nova, saving 375 pounds. Besides the weight savings, the straight axle with dual leaf springs raised the center of gravity and moved the front axle forward to further help with weight transfer during acceleration.
In order for this car to compete in any of the Super Stock or F/X classes, it had to be a current model year. The ’62 was transformed into the then current year with the addition of an early Nova one piece fiberglass front end and a 1965 Nova grille, hood bar and headlight bezels. Now it was a ’65! (By the way, this is the very front end that’s still on the car today.)
Other lightweight features chosen by Bill Thomas are the fiberglass doors and trunk lid, plexiglass side and rear windows, and handmade aluminum side window frames pop riveted to the doors. No window cranks here.
In keeping with Bill’s “less is more” theme, the interior of this Nova was stripped to bare bones, literally. No headliner, no door panels, no nothin’! He used the ultra light Cheetah fiberglass bucket seats. During the restoration I noticed that the passenger seat is very small, fit for a kid, not a king. (I’m guessing his reasoning was to save a few more ounces. Why not?) Staying true to form, the austere interior was finished off in GM trunk spray.
A custom aluminum dash, custom, that is, in the simplest sense of the word, was constructed incorporating basic gauges along with a Stewart Warner cable drive tach that runs off the Vertex mag. The only other complements to the dash are a toggle switch to kill the mag by grounding it out and a starter “push” button. (I was lucky enough to be able to save the green dymo-tape “START” label that racers used back then to make the components look like, well, race cars.)
Another cool piece of history is the wrinkle-painted dash itself. When I was disassembling the car for restoring, I noticed about a dozen small spots where the paint was missing on the passenger side of the dash. I remember thinking that I would have to strip the old paint and try to match the black wrinkle texture. After studying the Jim McFarland article yet another time, I saw in one picture that the dashboard was in exactly the same condition as it had been when they installed it, spots and all! I carefully drilled out all the aluminum rivets that secured that panel and removed it from harm’s way for the remainder of the restoration process. All I needed to do then was clean it up a bit and coat it with satin clear to preserve those spots for another 44 years.
It took about 10 months to complete the restoration. During this time I got to know more about the car and the two Bills. I also corresponded with Don Edmunds who did a lot of work for B T Race cars in the 60’s, work that included building the first two Bill Thomas aluminum Cheetahs. In fact, the Novel Nova was the last car he worked on for Bill under Bill’s roof. It was then, during the construction of the first subframe that was put on the Novel Nova, that Bill told Don he needed a tube axle for his new design. But unlike many of the sprint cars and roadsters Don loved to build, this one needed the dual leaf springs for their stability and added height. Don had one of the typical axles that looked like an inverted bow, designed for a single transverse leaf spring. (These were commonly known as a suicide front ends, because of their lack of stability.) This set-up wouldn’t do for Bill, and he needed something right away. Hot Rod was planning to give Bill some coverage that could really get the ball rolling on the new “Instant Funny Car” frame. Bill didn’t want a half completed front end for the article, so the pressure was on.
Don Edmunds came up with the solution. He took that same axle and fabricated two spring pads to compensate for that awkward curve. He mounted dual leaf springs with extreme arcs in them for that extra height, the likes of which I’ve never seen since. But it worked, and it makes this car even more one of a kind! (All subsequent axles and springs set-ups—including the Dick Harrell Nova-- are typical of the straight ones you see today.)
Please Turn to Part 3 - The Restoration
