This 1963 Chevy II Nova SS Got A Supercharged LSA Swap, And It’s Now Up For Auction On Bring A Trailer
A 1963 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova SS Sport Coupe is live on Bring a Trailer, and the engine bay has nothing to do with what Chevrolet actually built that year. Under the hood sits a Wegner-built supercharged 376ci LSA V8 that put down 809 horsepower and 748 lb-ft of torque on the dyno, backed by a Level 5 4L80E automatic and a fabricated 9-inch rear end with a Wavetrac differential.
The car shows roughly 1,600 miles since its 2025 completion, finished in Sebring Orange Metallic over black leather. It’s a useful snapshot of where restomod culture is right now: a platform Chevrolet never gave a V8 is getting nearly 10 times the output of its original six-cylinder, built by a shop with real credentials in the LS world.
A Badge That Never Came With An Engine To Match
The SS badge on a 1963 Chevy II meant almost nothing mechanically. Chevrolet introduced the Super Sport as a roughly $161 option package on the top-line Nova 400 Sport Coupe, and it bought buyers bucket seats, a deluxe steering wheel, upgraded gauges, wider bodyside moldings, and badging. It did not buy a V8. The only engines available that year were a 153-cubic-inch four making 90 horsepower and a 194-cubic-inch six making 120. The small-block 283 didn’t show up in a Chevy II until 1964, the same year the SS became its own model rather than an add-on package.
That context matters here because it frames exactly what this build represents. A stock, numbers-matching 1963 Nova SS with its original Powerglide and six-cylinder is a slow, narrow-interest collector car. This one swapped that six out entirely, which means there was no rare factory drivetrain to preserve in the first place. The engine the badge always implied, but Chevrolet never offered, finally showed up 60 years later.
The Wegner-Built LSA Is The Centerpiece
The supercharged 376ci LSA was assembled by Wegner Automotive of Markesan, Wisconsin, a shop with genuine standing in LS-swap and pro-touring circles. The build uses billet steel main caps, a forged eight-bolt crankshaft, Wegner I-beam connecting rods, Mahle supercharger-spec pistons, CNC-ported LS3 heads, ARP head studs, and a Holley Terminator X engine management system. Dyno sheets included with the listing show 809 horsepower and 748 lb-ft of torque, numbers that dwarf anything Chevrolet’s 1963 Chevy II lineup could have produced, factory V8 or not.
Behind it sits a Level 5 4L80E automatic with a PTC 10-inch torque converter, feeding a fabricated 9-inch rear end built around a Moser center section, 3.50 gears, a Wavetrac 35-spline torque-biasing differential, and Strange Engineering axles. None of that is flashy on paper, but it’s durable, truck-derived hardware specified by someone who understood what 748 lb-ft actually demands of a driveline.
Early Chevy IIs are unibody compacts with a well-documented rust problem at the cowl, floors, and rear frame rails, and the parts of this build that don’t show up in glamour shots are arguably the most expensive. The body was media-blasted, epoxy-primed, and fitted with a replacement trunk floor, firewall, fenders, rear quarter panels, and floor pans before being finished in PPG Sebring Orange Metallic Tintcoat. In-process photos in the listing document the stripped shell and the new sheet metal going in, which is the kind of structural work that determines whether a restomod stays sound or turns into a slow-motion problem.
The suspension swap backs that up. A Heidts front subframe and four-link rear ride on Viking adjustable coilovers, with Detroit Speed mini-tubs clearing the 275-section rear tires on 17-inch Billet Specialties wheels. Hydroboosted Wilwood four-piston brakes with 11-inch drilled and slotted rotors handle stopping duty. Running 17s on all-season BFGoodrich g-Force Comp-2 rubber, instead of the 19s and 20s a show-focused build would wear, suggests this car was built to be driven, not trailered.
Details That Separate A Driver From A Trailer Queen
The small stuff adds up. Ceramic-coated Trick Performance headers feed a custom exhaust system with an X-pipe and MagnaFlow mufflers. Vintage Air handles climate control, a Lokar shifter runs the console, and Dakota Digital instrumentation, including a 160-mph speedometer, sits behind a leather-wrapped Billet Specialties wheel. Lizard Skin and X-Mat sound deadening quiet the cabin, and TMI Cruiser Collection bucket seats in black leather round out an interior built for actual road trips rather than parking-lot display.
The seller includes a build sheet with the car, along with the dyno results. What’s notably absent from the listing is the name of the shop that handled the body and chassis work, even though Wegner’s role on the engine is spelled out in detail. In a market where modified cars can’t lean on factory provenance, a known builder’s name is often the closest thing to a resale premium, so that’s a detail worth asking about before bidding seriously.
This Nova spent six decades as an SS in name only, wearing badges for an engine Chevrolet never built. It has that engine now, just 376 cubic inches and a supercharger removed from what the factory ever imagined for a 1963 compact. For restomod buyers who want a usable, documented, genuinely quick early Chevy II, the build checks the boxes that matter: real driveline engineering, structural metalwork done properly, and a dyno sheet to back up the horsepower claim.
Source: Bring a Trailer
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