(slow guitar music)
(laughs)
- You feel like such a bad boy in this thing.
(slow guitar music)
Perfect.
You might be wondering why I'm standing here
in the middle of Ohio when it's 32 degrees
and we had snow flurries.
You might be wondering why I'm wearing gloves
and a puffy coat.
Well the reason is this.
Well actually the reason is that.
And well I guess the reason is both of 'em.
About three years ago, I saw that car on the internet,
and it blew my mind.
And I did a little research and I found the owner,
who's the guy in that garage.
After speaking with him, he told me about that car.
That car reminded me of when I was a kid.
So when I decided to come here, I wasn't sure which one
I was going to film.
As it turned out, this is the huckleberry for this episode.
But that one is something we're going to do later on.
So welcome to another episode of The House of Muscle.
And I'm leaving you now because I'm really cold.
(slow bass notes) (engine roaring)
This is a cruiser, this car was made
to do what we're doing now.
Which is to like roll around and show off,
and like you go up to somebody and they're like
hey how you doin'?
Right and they look at you and they're like,
should I talk to him?
(slow bass notes)
May I present to you, this piece of beauty.
This wonderful rig of whiteness and laced paint,
and a hood scoop, a hood scoop.
- The thing that got me into cars, one of the most vivid
memories I have, I'll never forget.
I was a paper boy, about 12, 13 years old.
You know, rode your bike,
had the canvas bag over your shoulder.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a car
coming across the street, heard it first.
(engine roaring)
It happened to be about a, probably a 1970 Nova.
Was black, it was a sunny day.
I remember the sun hitting the spokes of the Cragar SS'.
Very similar to the 69 I've got.
I was scared but excited at the same time.
That was over 40 years ago.
That image was burned into my mind.
And that, not only cars, but Novas in particular,
have always been a part of me, and probably always will be.
(engine roaring)
- The cool part about this is that is makes you feel
like a kid, it makes Mike feel like a kid.
And as he puts it, when he gets in this car,
he's dude I'm 16, I am 16 years old.
- Just to clear the side pipe.
So I wanted to build a car that reminded me
of the cars that were on the road when I was a kid.
The slapper bars were something that you saw.
The Cragar SS', that was the wheel,
I think there were like two wheel
options in the '60s and '70s.
It was probably a steel GM wheel if you had a GM car,
a rally wheel maybe, and then Cragar SS.
Side pipes, I mean if that doesn't scream 1960s,
I don't know what does.
(engine humming)
- This particular car, is a 1969 Nova,
that Mike bought off eBay.
And when he bought it, he was like
dude it was a complete hash.
He's like it had like a 283 in it.
He's like the tranny was jacked.
The body was in decent shape but there was so much of it
that just needed to be redone.
As Mike's first car was a Nova that his Dad gave him,
which he still has by the way,
Mike decided to build something that not only paid tribute
to his Pop, but his kids as well.
And he's like you know what, I'm going to build
the type of car that I grew up with,
that I saw on the streets and that sparked
my imagination when I was a kid.
(engine humming)
- With most car guys, the inspiration that we receive
comes from a lot of places.
To pay homage to my father,
who is probably my um sorry,
my biggest inspiration.
I went with my family's name on the car,
my father's name's on the car, my son's name on the car.
- His Dad passed away two weeks after,
after the car was finished.
He said he got to see it before he passed away.
(engine roaring) (upbeat jazz music)
Now when I think of a Chevy Nova, this is what I think of.
As a kid growing up in the late '70s and the early '80s,
in New York, these things were all over the place.
But back in 1968 when Chevy decided to change
the body style of the Nova,
they went from kind of these square, rectangular
blocks of automobile to this.
Which is more of a, kind of organic, kind of jelly beanish
type of shape.
But the ones produced between '68 and '72,
are actually my favorite.
One, I love, love, the small tail lights.
I love the rigged front grill.
I love the line, they're very kind of ruggedly handsome
if that makes any sense right.
Even if you got one with a plain Jane straight six,
it was still kind of cool.
I mean hell, you could even, when they were first released,
you could've even gotten this car with a four cylinder.
Although I have never actually seen one,
they're really really rare.
You have to think about what I'm driving right.
Cragars on the front, with skinny tires on 'em.
I've got these big meats on the back.
And the rig is like this.
I've got these crazy traction bars.
So when you hit the throttle on the car,
(laughs) (engine roars)
the whole car just kind of lurches forward.
It's kind of cool, I mean you know cars today
are meant to just be planted.
They're not meant to twist,
they're not meant to do any of that funky stuff.
This car, if you're sitting here,
and you stomp it,
(engine roars) (laughs)
it's hilariously fast.
When you do it, the whole car kind of comes up on an angle,
it feel like that front wheel wants to come up
off the ground and it kind of twists itself.
And that was such a characteristic for these old school cars
and that's what makes it wonderful.
How is the car to drive?
When you look at this car, you immediately get an image.
You go, that's probably going to be terrible.
And you know what, it kind of is.
But not in the way that you would think.
Like I don't want to get in this car
and I don't want to drive to California in this thing, right.
I mean under the hood we've got a 406 small block.
Out back, we got 373 gears and it's a turbo 350 tranny.
So right at like 65, 70 miles an hour,
you're spinning three grand, you don't want to do that,
like all the way to California, you'd be running like
4500 RPMs, the motor would blow sky high.
(slow jazz music) (engine roaring)
When you look around the inside of this car,
what do you see?
I have a massive tach, old school tach,
that's column mounted.
I have obviously my gages down here,
because every muscle car from the '70s and '60s
has a gage pod down there.
There's a fire extinguisher because when you have
a 50 year old car, you have a fire extinguisher.
I've had cars that caught on fire,
it's not pretty if it's not present.
I don't have a radio, I do have climate control switches.
They do nothing.
It's an old car, it's awesome.
I love character.
(engine roaring) (laughs)
It's a fun car to drive and you don't have to be going
110 miles an hour.
And regards to flat out speed, my ass dyno says
probably a mid 13 second car, high 12 car,
something like that, if you get it to hook up.
But on this particular one, once you get a look at it,
you can tell that owner Mike Cosculluela
did a lot of things to it.
(upbeat jazz music)
OK so if you guys haven't figured out what this guy means,
do I look like I give a F?
I don't, and I definitely know Mike doesn't.
- I take this car everywhere.
I take it to the grocery store, to my kids' school
when I drop 'em off at school.
The question I'm often asked if I'm at a gas station
getting gas in it, or in a parking lot of a grocery store,
is where's the car show at?
Is there a car show today?
And I'm like no I got to get milk and eggs.
Too many guys will take these cars and preserve them
and baby them.
All the stickers, we made a couple
look like they fell off.
- Sure of course.
- We broke 'em off, sanded on 'em.
I subscribe to the theory of, drive the crap out of 'em,
it's a car.
(engine humming)
- Is that a drive through store?
- [Cameraman] Yeah.
- Look at that, that's bitchin'.
We're going through there.
Alright now we're going to go have a little fun.
What're we going to buy?
- [Cameraman] Snickers and some batteries.
- [Host] Snickers and batteries.
If a drive through mini mart doesn't say 1970s,
I don't know what does.
Hey how you doing?
Do you have Snicker bars?
Do you have AA batteries?
Oh do you have Twix?
- Twix? - Yeah.
- Yes. - I'll take a Twix too.
Hey dude.
- What's happening?
- [Host] Nothin'.
What do you think of this thing?
- Pretty great.
- [Host] It's slick isn't it?
- [Cashier] Anything else?
- [Host] Just the batteries and then we'll be good to go.
- [Man] What time you got on it?
- Like the ass dyno probably says high 12, low 13s.
I told you people can't ignore this Nova.
There is no reason whatsoever,
you couldn't drive this every day, none.
None at all.
Everybody thinks that they have to spend
a whole bunch of coin, to have a great car.
And you don't.
All you have to do, in reality,
is have a really good imagination, right.
You have to have a good imagination,
you have to have a great set of friends
that are going to help you through the journey
of building a car.
And then, and this is the most important thing,
you have to drive them.
You have to get on the gas.
You got to like roll through it and like you've got to
steer yourself a little bit.
I mean shit we don't even have seat belts.
I mean, we have lap belts but like they don't do anything.
(engine humming)
(laughs)
- I knew I would never buy anything but a Nova.
I know there's some guys that own Mopars
and they own Pontiacs and foreign cars, not me.
Because it was my first car, it was my first car
that my father gave me.
Every time I drive it, I think about my Dad.
And that's the biggest joy,
I have with this car and all these cars.
- The person or the people that you built it for,
they get it, they get exactly why you did it.
They understand your process behind it.
And they know in here, and more importantly in here,
what this means to you.
You can't buy that.
I don't care what you do,
I don't care how much money you spend.
The reason we do this stuff is because of this.
Really nothing else.
(engine roaring)
When I saw this car, I was blown away.
Because a lot of people do cars like this,
and they get really close to getting it right.
But they generally always do it wrong.
He nailed this thing in my opinion.
Look at the stance, look at the rig in the back.
Look at how true he stayed to the street free cars
of the 1970s.
Look at the side pipes, look at the tow tabs in the front.
Look at the lace paint job and the distressed paint.
Look at the two inches of caked rubber
on the back quarter panel.
Look underneath the rear end at that glorious
rear gold globe of a diff cover.
- Love it, I love it.
If you asked any guy that built a car,
that didn't want some sense of acknowledgement,
that dude, that is fricken bad ass, he's lying.
Cause you, subliminally, you want acknowledgement.
- Not a big money build.
But an outstanding build.
A car that's fun, a car that's exciting,
a car that has imagination.
And these cars are about adventure
and they're about making you understand,
what life was like a little while ago.
They act as therapy and they act as kind of like
your escape from the every day.
- And you know the guy that I'll see
coming out of a grocery store that's getting into
that mini van, that part of his soul has got to be crushed,
when I fill the trunk of my Nova with groceries.
And on the way home, I know a little part of him
has to die when he thinks about that little Barracuda
that he had in high school.
(engine roaring)
That he traded in for a station wagon,
and now he's got a mini van and he's got to die a little bit.
But I hope that when a guy that gets into that Camry,
sees me get into this car, and I'm not at a car show,
and I'm not going to a drag strip, I'm just driving it,
that he says, you know what, I'm going to go buy me this car
that I used to have when I was a kid.
And I want the smile on that dude's face.
You know, that's what I want.
When we drive these cars, we're giving those guys hope.
He did it, look at his face, look at the smiles.
- I'm giving you a hug because that was
the greatest line I have ever heard.
That was so good (laughs).
- Yeah well.
I should have said, I'm doing it for the kids.
Is what I should have said. - [Host] No dude no.
That is brilliant.
so just a reminder that episodes of The
House Of Muscle go live on Motor Trend
On Demand. Com about a month before they
go live on YouTube so head on over there
and check them out
We've never featured stuff like this on The House Of Muscle
long gone and I mean long gone
is the original Colombo V12 that came in this thing and in its place
ready a 383 Chevy
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