Tales of Unintended Acceleration, Feat. One Chevrolet Nova

Hemmings

I don’t know why I’ve yet to think of this, but I once suffered from a case of unintended acceleration – in my old 1971 Chevrolet Nova.

I bought the Nova in college with my dad, partly because it was such a good deal – $1,900 and not rusted out like every other pre-1990 vehicle in Ohio – partly as a fun car for the both of us. The body was straight, it had a mint interior, and its 250-cu.in. six-cylinder ran strong. It also had a three-on-the-tree, which I thought was rather unusual, but I’ve seen mention of three-on-the-tree transmissions lasting in the X-bodies through 1974. (The fuzzy dice were my attempt at being ironic; blackwalls with bowtie-stamped baby moons on 15-inch steelies didn’t require irony to be cool.)

When my daily driver started to become unreliable sometime during junior year, Dad let me use the Nova as a daily. After college, I then took it with me to Oregon, where I worked for a small-town newspaper. Oregon was the perfect place for that car: mild winters, no salt on the roads and a laid-back pace of life. So I drove it all over as I explored that new state on the weekends. Continue reading at Hemmings

Tales of Unintended Acceleration, Feat. One Chevrolet Nova

Permalink:

Posted at 10:47 am in Chevrolet, Chevy, Hemmings, Nova

Comments

GTwildfire
Mar 13, 2010 at 11:52 am

retroman, you are so right about needless complexity. Automakers gotta see making cars complicated as job security or something. I think that’s part of the reason why electric cars have always been outright disregarded by the mainstream auto industry… by nature they are simple.
-
Still, I bet if/when all automakers start pushing EVs into their showrooms they will be ridiculously complicated with no good reason at all.

retroman
Mar 12, 2010 at 3:18 pm

I never had any problem with unintended acceleration, but my older brother has. He used to own an ’87 Taurus. It was his first car. Ohio winters had not been kind to it, but at least it was somewhat reliable. Anyway he was coming home one night from visiting his g/f who lived about 45 minutes away down in Amish country. The roads were all dark back roads that winded all over the place, and there was a fresh coat of snow and ice on the ground. I remember he was pretty shook up when he got home because somehow the cruise control decided to engage itself and the car accelerated to 85 before he got it under control. It was a scary ride from what he told us. He ended up having the cruise removed so it wouldn’t interfere anymore. I don’t like electronic throttles much either, but engineers keep adding complexity to our vehicles without any regard to Murphy’s Law so I expect to see alot more screw ups with all the added systems and electronics. I wonder how many of today’s cars will still be around in 30-40 years. And if they are around, how many will be serviceable. It’s likely to be alot fewer than those made prior to 1985.

GTwildfire
Mar 12, 2010 at 12:10 pm

I experienced a stuck throttle at about 95 mph in my white Firebird once, but it was a maintenance issue. After replacing the cable, throttle spring and oiling it a bit the problem was very unlikely to return and never did for me.
-
I don’t trust electronic throttles and probably never will. Electronic stuff can become flaky, operating normally then a connector gets wet or something else happens then poof it don’t work or worse yet you get an intermittent problem.
-
There’s no justification to make throttles electronic unless it’s an electric car.