Livermore man’s ’57 Chevy Nomad a dream come true
EDITOR’S NOTE >>
Automobile companies spend a lot of time and money in deciding names for new models. It’s pretty important to pick a name that fits the car and adds to its desirability, but they don’t always get it right. Chevrolet learned that the hard way when it named a new model the Nova. GM later learned that “no va” in Spanish means “it doesn’t go,” so Latin Americans wouldn’t buy it. GM had to discontinue that model in Latin America.
They did better with the Nomad name. It’s kind of a cool name — one could envision being a wanderer, a drifter, a rover or a vagabond while cruising in Chevrolet’s most alluring station wagon. In model years 1955-1957, it also was Chevrolet’s most expensive model, excluding the Corvette, selling for about $2,600 ($22,865 in 2015 dollars) to $2,650 ($23,300 in 2015) more than a Bel Air convertible, normally Chevrolet’s most expensive car.
Owning a classic 1955-to1957 Chevrolet Nomad had been a longtime dream of Livermore resident Bob Rohatch. He’s very partial to 1957 Chevys, this being his sixth. He had been looking for a Nomad for some time before he discovered this one.
“I found the car on eBay,” he said. “There were a lot of pictures and it looked good, but you don’t really know until you see it. The former owner had it for 18 years, but it hadn’t run in 12 years. I bought it for $30,000 in 2008 and had it shipped out from Illinois.”
Naturally, there were some surprises. A big one was that his new 1957 Nomad had been hit in the front and back but the seller failed to mention that detail before the sale. The good news, though, was that Rohatch’s son’s brother-in-law has a shop near Santa Rosa and could do — and did — virtually all the restoration. The bad news was that it took 8½ years to get it done, about six years longer than Rohatch expected. But he’s excited now, as he just got the car last month.
The restoration included new red paint, brighter than the original factory red. In fact, it’s so red that it makes fire trucks look dull. The red-and-black interior was redone according to factory specifications. All new glass was installed; the chrome is new, as are the tires and wheels. A new exhaust system gives the 350-cubic-inch V8 engine a perfect sound. The car has a Chevy automatic transmission with the shift level on the floor, giving it a manual transmission look but the convenience of an automatic. This car is loaded with chrome, even under the hood.
To the untrained eye, the exterior of the car looks as it did when new, but it has been lowered just a little. The front wheels are an inch smaller than the 18-inch rear wheels. The heavy tailgate with seven bold chrome perpendicular strips slants forward and folds down for cargo. The rear window opens upward.
Not only was the restoration well done, the car was extremely well styled from the beginning. According to HowStuffWorks.com, Harley Earl, GM’s head of styling, often is given credit for the Nomad, but it was really the work of Clare MacKichan and Carl Renner. It was kind of an accidental late entry into the 1955 Chevy lineup. The original prototype Nomad was a Corvette Nomad, prepared for GM’s 1954 Motorama show. But it was the unusual combination of hardtop styling with a station wagon that made it unique.
One styling feature that made the Nomad a headturner was the glass. The driver and front passenger windows are like those on hardtop coupes — no railing on the doors to support the window. The car had a curved-glass windshield, as did all GM cars in those three years, but the rear side windows also were curved, giving the car a very sleek and sporty appearance. Another unique feature was the “fluted roof,” which had nine transverse groves. The original plan was to make the roof retractable, but management wisely put the kibosh on that plan.
As good-looking as the Nomad wagons were when built and the rave reviews they received, one might think they were a huge sales success. But no. In 1957, Chevrolet sold 1,515,177 cars, but only 6,103 were Nomads. It wasn’t the styling or performance that restricted the sales, it was the price (as a side note, 1957 was the first year since 1936 that Ford outsold Chevrolet, but only by 7,229 cars). Rohatch estimates he has invested an additional $40,000 to $45,000 in the restoration and believes the current market value to be between $75,000 and $100,000.
“It’s a lot of money,” he said, “but this is a onetime thing for me.”