I ran across this Nickey Chevrolet sales receipt online, it’s for a ‘71 Nova with a 454/450 horsepower, 4 speed, 4.88 gear and a bunch of other upgrades. I imagine the average 350, 4 speed ‘71 Nova went out the door for around $3100 so this guy was spending some serious cash.
Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go? Apparently, that guy wanted to go pretty fast back then.
And go fast he did, I'm sure! all the right pieces topped off by an 850 double pumper. Probably looked good in the copper color with a black interior, if that's what the wording at the bottom means.
I had found this receipt on Forgotten Chicago, a long defunct forum I used to participate in and I blacked out the name and location before posting it. This morning I thought about the timeframe and considered the buyer might have wanted this car after arriving home from Viet Nam so I searched his name. Steven Bohatch of Curtisville, PA. died June 11, 2025 at the age of 76. No mention of military service in his obituary but he would have been 19 in 1968, so yes, he may have ordered this car after two years overseas. He leaves behind his wife of 53 years and one son.
Yes. A Viet Nam trophy for those who returned. In 1970 I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC. I lived in the first trailer on our off base street. You could tell exactly which soldiers and airmen had just returned because they each had a brand new Chevelle SS 396 parked out front. Thankfully, my service was U.S. based. I drove a used El Camino.
If it were in the 120’s mph with a 4.88 rear gear the rpm would be around 7500-7600 rpm or more with a 27” tall tire. Couldn’t see a stock 454 taking that much abuse for very long.
That stock 454 was under rated from the factory. Let's say it's only 475 hp with those headers. He went to the drag strip to actually run a number. With slicks. Well under 7000 rpm. High tens. Bench racing is fun!
No information of its whereabouts. I looked around online and came up empty, without a complete VIN any search is useless. There is a firm building “continuation” cars under the NicKey Performance name, they bought the rights to the name. BTW, sometime in the late ‘50’s or ‘60’s the logo was changed by the Stephani family and the name was spelled with a backwards K.
I would guess that wasn't a regular p***enger car 454 it was probably a GM performance engine. Forged internals ect. A friend had one, it had aluminum heads right from new. 4.11 and 4.88 gears were the gears most ran in those days. The big cams needed those gears to work. We build engines a lot different these days. We get more HP with a lot less RPM.
For the guys I knew that came back from across the seas, the concern would not have been how long the car would go fast, but how fast the car would go for as long as it lasted. No one expected a car they were pounding the **** out of to last forever. When the light turned green, the goal was to beat the other guy to the finish line. The cars purchased through the 'performance car dealers' seemed to go faster then the car purchased from the regular dealerships, and a 'packaged car' was intended to go the fastest. For the most part, concern over how long the car would go fast didn't produce wins for the cars. You might just as well have bought it from a regular dealership and saved some on the cost of entry. The story was 'Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?' and didn't include 'How long do you want it to last?'
Sooo many muscle cars got thrashed hard to the point of destruction, that's why the numbers matching thing is such a big deal. Gotta realize, most of the buyers of these cars were under 30 years old. I knew of a guy that had a L78 Camaro and he blew it up a couple months after purchase. Chevy covered the warranty and he talked the dealer into putting a L72 427 in as a replacement. He blew that up too!
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