It’s one of the rarest cars on the road, but this Vauxhall Nova Cabriolet is both loved and loathed in equal measure in Paul Carter’s household.
Only 200 Nova saloons were converted into soft-tops by Peter Hutchinson in the 1980s, and Paul’s incredibly original example is one of only six thought to have survived.
But while he has long since fallen in love with the car he bought new in 1985, his wife J (full name withheld) refuses point blank to have anything to do with it – even though she chose it.
The couple had their sights set on a Vauxhall Nova SR when visiting dealer F C Green in Hertford, but J had other ideas.
“I was fed up with cars breaking down and going rusty,” says Paul, 63, “and I was doing all right at work, so we could finally afford our first ever new car.
“We wandered into the showroom and this car was parked right at the front. I walked past it and went to the Nova SR, but when I turned around my wife was sitting in the front seat of the cabriolet and announced ‘I want this one’.
“It looked nice sitting in the showroom, all sparkly and shiny. It was a bit out of the ordinary, and I’ve always been one for something a bit different.”
Paul shelled out the list price of £6,000 – no discounts, because this was a “special model” – and their new Nova was ready in August ‘85.
But it wasn’t long before the novelty of the convertible had worn off for J.
“Four years later she said ‘I’m fed up with driving it’,” says Paul. “The main complaints were that there was no power steering, and the wind blew her hair around.
“The steering is very heavy, I think because it’s got the big Compomotive alloy wheels compared to the standard Nova’s smaller wheels and skinny tyres.
“And with a black roof it was baking hot in the summer, with no aircon. If she had the roof down it messed her hair up on the commute to work, and with the roof up it was too hot.”
Paul was offered only £1,000 for the Nova Cabriolet as a trade-in for a new Astra Starmist, which came with power steering and decent brakes.
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“I said ‘are you serious?’ No, I’d rather keep it,” he says. “It was worth more to me than it was to them, and I didn’t actually need the money because I had a company car. So we got the Astra and put the Nova in the garage, and there it sat for many years..
“I’ve always loved taking the roof off and driving it, even though it’s terrible to drive, and I still like it now.
“It turns heads, and everywhere I go people say ‘oh, my mum used to have one of these, but not the convertible…’.”
Paul had long been a Vauxhall devotee, his first car at 17 was a Viva HB, “blue and rust”, followed by a Victor with a column gear change and bench front seat.
There were flirtations with an Austin Maxi 1750 HL, a Triumph Dolomite, and a Princess 2200 with “electric everything, an amazing car and supremely comfortable, but it was rusty at two years old”.
A pair of Cavaliers cemented Paul’s love of Vauxhalls, so it was no surprise when he alighted on the Nova when it was time to replace J’s unreliable Mini.
“It was going to be J’s car, because I was about to change my Cavalier GL for my first company car, an Opel Manta GTE,” he says.
The Cabriolet was delivered exactly as it had appeared in the showroom, in Carmine red with gold Compomotive gold alloys (since repainted), a rubber rear spoiler, and gold pinstripes along the side.
Despite these embellishments, it was the most basic model, a 1.2 with no radio and no passenger wing mirror, both of which Paul soon added.
It was only later, when Paul was looking online for an original brochure for the Cabriolet, that he realised his car may well be the first one made by Hutchinson, and used for promotional purposes.
The small sales pamphlet featured a Carmine red saloon with gold alloys, rear spoiler, gold coachlines, and no black plastic side strips.
“I really don’t know if it is the brochure car, but I’ve never seen another one in that colour with the gold alloys, and I’ve never heard of any others,” says Paul. “All the ones I’ve seen have either got standard wheels with trims or have had alloys added. And I’ve never seen the gold coachlines on anyone else’s, which makes me suspect it could be.”
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Hutchinson was inspired to convert a Vauxhall, which didn’t have a cabriolet in its range, following a Christmas Day chat with his sons Paul and Ian.
The Mk1 Astra was the intended donor but, on a visit to a dealer he saw the new Nova for the first time and switched his focus, ordering a Carmine red saloon.
Having worked on the Triumph Stag previously, he followed the T-bar design to provide rigidity, and parked his new creation near the hotel entrance where Vauxhall dealers were gathering for the announcement of the new Astra and Belmont.
It worked. Nine orders were placed on the day, and Vauxhall agreed to sell the convertible, built in Coventry, via its dealer network.
As well as the 200 saloon conversions, Hutchinson also roof-chopped 30 hatchbacks.
Having bypassed the Nova SR for the Cabriolet, J commuted in the car for two or three years, but most of its then 38,000 miles were piled on by Paul.
“I used to go fishing out of Dover or Shoreham with a friend of mine, so it did that 200-mile round trip a couple of times a month,” he says, also taking the cabriolet for golfing trips to Earls Colne on non-fishing weekends.
“Most of its miles were done sitting on a motorway at 60mph. Anything faster than 60 was horrendous because of the noise and vibration.”
It turned out the car wasn’t quite as rigid as it could have been.
“When you jacked it up you couldn’t open the doors, or if the doors were open you couldn’t shut them, because it flexed and twisted so much,” says Paul.
“Above 60mph the wheels started to shake, and it wasn’t wheel balancing, it was just the whole car rattling around.”
When the car was being recommissioned many years later, he found a strut brace (pictured) made for the Nova rally cars on eBay, and fitted it to the two front suspension mounting points.
“I couldn’t believe the difference,” he adds. “On the road, it drives in a straight line and the wheels don’t wobble – it’s a revelation.”
But back to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and the Nova was laid up in the garage for many years, following Paul from one house to another, while he drove company cars, moving from the Manta to a Vauxhall Calibra 16V.
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“I’d start it up every now and then and back it out of the garage, but it was never driven on the road,” he says. “As a kid, my son Jason and his friends used to sit in the back and play in it in the garage with the roof down.
“That’s probably where the rabbit came from, which is part of the history of the car.”
During its long incarceration, J dropped numerous hints that the Nova was taking up valuable space in the garage.
“She kept saying that we could use the garage for something better than the Nova, which is why it’s now at her sister’s place in Braintree,” he says. “Our garage at home is now full of household junk, which is what all garages should be full of, according to my wife.”
In the late ‘90s, Paul offered the Nova to the Vauxhall heritage collection in Luton, now housed at the British Motor Museum.
“They turned it down because it wasn’t an official Vauxhall model,” he remembers. “More fool them…”
Sometime around 2012, Paul’s friend Graeme, a fellow car enthusiast, suggested they get the Nova back on the road.
“He was bored, I think, but he worked for a car spares place and he said they were getting rid of all their Nova bits,” says Paul. “So we wheeled it out, jacked it up and had a look underneath. “It’s a bit like Trigger’s broom underneath now – everything is new, the springs, rear drum brakes, shocks, fuel sender.
“The floor was rust free, but the fuel tank was full of corrosion and gunk, and Graeme managed to find a brand new one in Canada of all places. It was remarkably cheap at about £80.”
Once the Nova was fighting fit, Paul and Graeme would take it to local classic car shows, with J staying well away.
“She won’t even get in it,” he laughs. “She thinks it’s a ridiculous thing and won’t go anywhere near it. I remind her it was her choice to buy it all the time!”
The car has done about 4,000 miles since its resurrection, but has been back off the road for a couple of years as Paul has baulked at the £200 cost of annual road tax.
But with its 40th birthday on the horizon, when it will become tax and MoT exempt, Paul decided to get it tested in July 2024.
Things didn’t go to plan, however.
“I set off down the main road and the car was juddering, and it wasn’t an engine judder, it was a brake binding judder,” he says. “We got into Braintree town centre, and I could smell the brakes. Graeme went and got his tools, and the front calliper pistons had completely seized.
“It was the only thing we hadn’t changed when we first got the car back on the road, so we probably should have done them at the time.”
The callipers have been sent away to be refurbished, and the Nova will resume its visits to local shows in the summer of 2025.
“I can’t ever see myself getting rid of it unless I run out of places to keep it,” says Paul. “I bought it when it was new and I’ve had it so long that it seems a shame to get rid of it now.
“It’s like one of your trusty old socks, something I’ve had for so long. Maybe if someone offered me a load of money I might say yes, take it away, but then I’d worry about where it’s gone.
“I wouldn’t want someone to stick a 2-litre Cavalier engine in it, because a couple have been done like that. I like things standard.
“I suppose I’m keeping it to protect it. I think it should be protected for posterity because it is so rare, and there certainly aren’t any that I know that are in that original condition. I’d love it to go to someone who would look after it or stick it in a barn somewhere or in an unusual car collection.”
There are other options for the car in the future…
“I’ve jokingly said I want to be buried in it, but that would need quite a big hole,” says Paul. “And I’m always threatening to leave it to Graeme, because he hates it, although he likes working on it and coming to the shows with it.
“He says ‘please don’t’. Jason rolls his eyes a bit when I talk about the Nova, but he thinks it’s quite amusing and he understands the attraction of it.”
But no-one understands the attraction quite like Paul, who revels in driving a car that may well truly be one of a kind.
