“Cars just seem to follow me home.” Yeah, we’ve all heard that phrase before. Your buddy with twelve projects out back, two in the garage, and one in parts, stored the family living room. “They find me, I don’t go lookin’ for them” is his decry, just to make it look like he doesn’t have a “problem”. We know the deal.
But some guys do go out searching to score the model they are looking for. Dan Hatch of Milford, New Jersey is one of those guys. But remarkably, Dan has his car addiction all under control. “I fell in love with the Chevy Nova back in high school. They are my “bad habit”. But I’m not a hoarder. I find them and then work my butt off to turn them around as fast as I can, just to get them back on the street where they belong. They deserve to be driven.”
YouTube builder Dan Hatch has a thing for Novas, and this one he rescued to build into a “family-friendly” car show cruiser. With a quick turnaround time and dependable performance, we say Dan hit his mark. Steel wheels were a low-budget add-on that work with this multi-hued ride.Photo: Scott Lachenauer
Dan remembers the moment he fell in love with the second-generation GM X-body. “Kurt Urban’s low brow, super-sleeper “Janky” Nova that was featured in Hot Rod Magazine back in 2006 was the main reason why I fell in love with these cars. From the outside it was beat up and bland, but under the skin it was all performance. I just love that formula.”
So, Dan searches out needy Novas that he can get for a ground level price point. “I’m a dad with a very patient and understanding wife and two young kids. I try to keep my budget under control and seek out the most dilapidated bargains to start my projects with. Once I get a car, I’m on it every spare moment to get it running and driving. They don’t sit for long before I get them moving on their own.”
The “Jenko” Nova came to Dan Hatch as just a shell, and the young gun mechanic put it back on the road by using cheap and available parts.
So, when Dan saw a very needy parts car for sale, he knew it would be a great starting point for a new project. “It was advertised as a $2,000 shell. No front or rear suspension and missing plenty of parts. But it came with enough sheet metal for two cars! I love the challenge of putting a Nova together from the lowest possible starting point.” This particular car was the kind of test that Dan thrives on. Game on!
Dan knew that this 1972 Nova was the perfect project car to build a family friendly ride from. It was going to be a cool ride that he could put the kids and wife in and start attending the local cruise nights with. “My ultimate goal was to get the family out of the house, and drive to the shows. I had started a You Tube channel when I was building my last Nova. That car is still metamorphosizing into a low-key street bruiser. This one would be different, for sure.”
Dan put quickly put together a drivetrain featuring a 210-horsepower 327 from a ’68 Camaro and a Saginaw four-speed. “This engine combo has given me a quality ride. It always starts up right away and drives flawlessly.”Photo: Scott Lachenauer
So, Dan checked out the car with his wife Rebecca, who, as stated before, is very understanding of Dan’s hobby. “We went to look over the Nova one day. Like the ad said, it was a shell, no glass, interior, drivetrain, etc. The floors were non-existent and there was rust in the windshield channels, passenger door, and cowl. I learned that the owner had stored the car for more than a decade after being passed down from his uncle who had acquired the car in a business deal.”
Another interesting tidbit was that the car had been stored in a basement for some time. “They removed a double sliding door at the house and crammed the car through the opening. You can still see where they had to crunch in the wheel arch to get it past the house’s door frame.” Needless to say, Dan scored the carcass and brought it back to the family garage.
Nothing but bare bones here. Dan sourced some cheap junkyard seats and then “upholstered” them in Mexican blankets he bought off of Amazon. One cool piece here is the original Hurst 442 bench shifter.Photo: Scott Lachenauer
Once back home, Dan dug right into the mess. “I started a new YouTube series on this ride right from the start. It was a budget build to say the least, so I did all the repairs to the body, building floors and cleaning up the rust.” The front clip, passenger door, and deck lid were taken from a parts car and are all in “the rough”. The engine, a base model 210-horsepower 327 small-block, was pulled from a 1968 Camaro that was undergoing an LS swap, and the Saginaw four-speed was donated to the cause from one of Dan’s friends.
The interior is built up from junkyard seats from an unknown source, and some Amazon-sourced blankets to tie it all together. The final touch is the outrageous full metal Mopar Hemi-inspired hoodscoop, complete with a full set of lighted, working gauges. The antiqued “Yenko” stripe was painted to hide body work done on filling old molding holes. That add-on gave the Nova its nickname, “Jenko”, a play on words Dan come up with by combining Yenko and “janky”.
Dan’s Nova has had a hard life over the past couple of decades. It sat out for years, obtaining this rough patina in the process. The hoodscoop is built out of steel and incorporates a set of aftermarket gauges for the old-school look he was after. As for the front bumper? “I put the bumper on and didn’t like the way it looked. I prefer it this way, and so do my kids.”Photo: Scott Lachenauer
Once he had it back on the road, Dan marveled at its quick turnaround into a safe, family cruiser. “We drive this car EVERYWHERE. I also drive it to work regularly, and it is dead reliable and even does well on gas. This car was built to prove that you don’t need a fat wallet to have a muscle car. As long as you’re willing to settle for older and less desirable parts you can in fact build and enjoy these cars on the cheap. The best part about this car is that it can always be improved and made better as we enjoy it. The car is on the road not sitting in a garage as an idle project waiting for more funds to finish the next feature.”
This “less is more” vision devised by Dan himself has now become a complete driving car. “As David Freiburger once stated, “don’t get it right, just get it running,” and I believe this car is a true testament to that statement. My seven-year-old son absolutely loves being picked up from school in this car. He proudly brags to his friends that he played a vital part in building the car and I am proud to see that I have sparked the car bug in the future generation of Hot Rodders Amen brother, AMEN!”
If you like Nova’s or wrenching on cool muscle rides in general, check out Dan’s you tube page, Hatch’s Recreational Engineering, and give him a follow.
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