What gearhead hasn’t had a vision of finding that gem—that one barn find—the abandoned rare diamond in the rough? To stumble across a lost piece of history just waiting on that one person to replenish the relic back to its former glory and splendor. Sounds kind of like a fairytale doesn’t it? Most likely, it’s safe to say, that it is a tale that every single car enthusiast has dreamed of a least once. While many will dream, few will be fortunate enough to experience the reality of this find. Greenbrier, Tennessee native, Nathan Stinson, is one of those select few as that’s just how his incredibly nasty 1974 Nova got a second lease on life.
This silver Nova’s tale of rescue and refurbish begins back in the middle ’80s. Stinson recalled, “My dad got this car in 1986. He and a buddy he worked with found it behind a body shop in Nashville where it had been pretty much abandoned. It had a tree growing up thru the engine compartment.”
From desertion to a forever home, the Chevy was dragged out and cleaned up. “It was in pretty rough shape but it was a project for the two of them, with the help of my brother and me.”
Now, almost 30 years later, this seductive Nova is out turning heads in the extremely popular X275 class. The car rolled out in its current condition in 2014 at South Georgia Motorsports Park and since then has been making steady gains in the world of small-tire big horsepower drag racing. Between the way it was found and the way the car is today though, a lot of sand slipped through the hourglass, and during those three decades the ol’ gal saw a complete makeover from abandoned and neglected to found and built to the nines.
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