1963 Chevy II Nova

All cars have stories behind them and Bertha is no exception. Bertha is a 63 Chevy II purchased new by who else but, "Bertha". Bertha cared for her car like most people did before Americans entered the world of throw away. The person, “Bertha” passed away at age 94 in the late 90’s. She cared for her little Chevy since the first time she drove it off the lot until she was unable to drive. Her family is repairing and restoring the car to have as new as a reminder of their grandmother.

The restoration started while Bertha was still alive. It was driven to a so called auto restorer doing buisness in Columbia, Tennessee. The car was in the possession of the restorer (12 YEARS) until the current owner had enough of this type of business and sought us out for help. We picked the car up with our truck and trailer from the other restoration shop and brought the carcass and all part loaded in it to our facility here in Cookeville, Tennessee. It was tough unloading from trailer has all the tires dry rotted and went flat on the trip here. No surprise as the company before air them up for us to load. At the other shop there was parts scattered to every corner. After a few hours we had it loaded up. I stopped by our new customer’s place of business and he had much of the restoration parts completed. The whole interior is new and wrapped up. The chrome bumpers were re-plated. He had assembly manuals ready to go.

Once back at our shop every aspect of Bertha was checked over. For the 12 years the vehicle was at another restoration shop there was only 15 % of work completed and some of that was wrong. The motor was taken apart only to find it was full of rust, it was important to keep original motor so we preceded forward and saved the power plant and rebuilt it. After the car was painted and parts sorted out it was discovered we were given many wrong parts. There were parts from other customers car mixed in and many parts were missing. Parts for these cars are very hard to come by when you are trying to go back to original. When this sort of thing happens it adds unexpectedly to the cost. All parts were located over a few months period and now the 1963 Chevy II Nova looks and drives like new. It is a beautiful little car and has now been reunited with the family.