If you weren't a car person, it might be difficult to believe that Scott McAfee wanted to push this pretty thing over the edge of a cliff, hear the nauseating crumple, kick some dirt after it, and walk away clean.
You might ask what's not to like about its arrow-straight sheetmetal, snappy, magazine-cover paint, "balanced" engine compartment, superb fit and finish throughout, and wheels that actually complement the theme. Why would he want it to look like an accordion? For the same reasons most car people (and especially Cancers) would: abject frustration or being screwed over by someone you'd trusted-they might as well have chopped off your hands.
"I bought it with the idea of revisiting my long-lost passion for cars. It was basically an old beater sitting in the back of some guy's yard collecting rust. When we finally got all the paint blasted off, I realized the body was a mess. To make matters much worse, the guy I had hired to restore it turned out to be a complete crook who ripped me off for about $5,000. He was even selling parts off the car!"
So now it was a matter of desire versus reality. Scott hadn't the solid car he thought he'd bought, and he was out at least five large. That's when he could think of nothing more satisfying than to blow the whole stinkin' mess away and be done with it. Obviously, his good sense prevailed. He began anew after a friend told him about a hot, 20-year-old car builder named Lang Paciulli (PAH-chewly) right in Scott's hometown of Upland, California.
How good could this kid be? Sometimes it just comes down to innate talent, a prodigy perhaps, like he's done this stuff in another life. But trust is a difficult thing to bestow while the wounds are still weeping. "At first I was skeptical, considering what I had just gone through. When I watched him fabricate the mini-tubs from scratch and then assemble the front and rear ends very skillfully, I knew I had found my guy."
So we've got two stories here, one about the obvious mess and the other about an emerging talent. Maybe some metaphysics, the science of being, and the science of the fundamental cause and processes in things. The good versus evil chop, a conflict nearly as ancient as the stars. Seamless crafters as young as Lang Paciulli are not exactly common currency.
At this point, Lang was recreating the Nova in his home garage. To move things along and take advantage of the latest bolt-in technology for box Novas, Lang collected the primary chassis and suspension components from Total Cost Involved, just a few miles from his workshop. The TCI stuff (or the similar rendition by Heidt's) is the easiest way to center the engine, clean out a lot of bulky crap from between the fenders that would normally interfere with headers, cut 150 pounds of ugly fat off the front end, connect the ends of the car, and make it brake and handle so well you'd think you were dreaming. Though not strictly a bolt-in, for Lang it was cake.
He played the interior on Scott's Nova just right. It straddles a thin line between phantom minimalist and a clean, straight rendition, but the original intention was not lost on Lang's execution. If anything, it is magnified, suggesting that this is the form as it should have been in the first place. At first the Nova appears to be nothing more than a scrubbed up stocker with delicious paint, but the more you study it, the more cogent it becomes. It could be one of the cleanest X-bodies on the planet, the embodiment of understated elegance.
"Lang put his heart and soul into the project," gushed Scott. "He went way beyond the call of duty, designing a custom console, smoothing out the firewall, and constructing a 3-inch exhaust system that is a work of art. His reputation is beginning to spread, and he's since opened his own successful shop called LP Racing," said Scott. "I can't say that I would ever attempt a project like this again, but when I get behind the wheel of my Nova, all the bad stuff just fades away."