The Chevy II began in 1962 as an economy car, you could not even get a factory V8 Chevy II until 1964. It became a real serious performance car, in some versions, in 1966, when the 327-350HP L-79 option was available. In 1968, the Chevy II was also known as the Nova (and it began sharing a basic platform with the Camaro), and eventually the Chevy II name was dropped. There were true performance versions all the way up to 1972. After that, there were some pseudo performance versions. The Nova died off in 1979, it was a mere shadow of what it had been.