Faults:

The usual wear and tear.

Mould growing in the head-lamps.

Central locking playing up.

Oil leaking and smoking.

Excessive seat wear.

General Comments:

It's a typical Nova, cheap and cheerful.

Nova's have a bad stigma attached to them. They are cheap and rattly inside, at speed it's just plain awful. The 1.4 engine is slow and they just should not have released such an outdated carburetter engine in the 90's!!!

The SR is just a standard Nova with black sprayed wheels, arguably up-rated suspension, less comfortable seats and a very bad image from boy-racers.

Cheap and nasty, burn them all!!

Faults:

One brake line replaced at 97,000 miles.

A rear wheel bearing had to be replaced at 110,000 miles.

Petrol tank had corroded through and had to be replaced at 126,000 miles.

Radiator replaced at 136,000 miles.

General Comments:

This car is sprightly and nimble to drive.

It is vulnerable to thieves.

It has been incredibly reliable and is still running on its original battery, clutch, shock absorbers, starter, alternator, etc.

I guess it is coming to the point now when many sealed for life bearings will begin to fail and repair will be uneconomical.

There has been no noticeable degradation in performance with aging.

Faults:

I've have no problems at all with my Nova at all. Runs like a dream.

General Comments:

I don`t think much of the speed/performance of my Nova Flair, but it get`s there in the end.

One best thing about this car is it is excellent on fuel.

Takes about 4-5 hours if you're considering tinting windows on any Nova (£175 - £200).

Faults:

Sunroof will tilt up but not slide back in, and because of this the car leaks in very heavy rain/snow.

3 of the 4 bulbs that illuminate the dash have blown at the same time which was odd!

General Comments:

Very comfortable inside, not a lot of room in the back I'm told, but as I'm never there I don't really care!

Handles well on the standard alloys.

Stops much better than the SR that I had before.

Highly tuneable engine. Cheap and easy to tune yourself with the Haynes Manual. A 2 litre turbo Calibra/Cavalier engine will fit under the bonnet (just)!

Front bumper is the only expensive part to replace apart from the sunroof, otherwise parts are cheap and plentiful.

Rareish as I have only seen 1 other GSi in my year and a bit of ownership.

Cheap to insure and run.

Good injection system, but would rather have one of the later models (92 on I think) with multi point rather than single point injection.

Room in the boot for 4 10" subs and 2 amps!

Faults:

Timing belt snapped.

Front brakes seized up due to lack of maintenance.

Nearside CV boot broke.

Head gasket blew.

Engine mounting bracket deteriorating.

General Comments:

This car is serious fun to drive. It may only have a 1.2 engine, but goes like a bat out of hell around town. You only notice the lack of power at high speed. The engine is quite noisy above 65-70mph.

Also, the handling becomes unstable at around 95mph.

Faults:

Rust on the arches despite regular washing, and wax spray in cavities and lips.

Headlights replaced twice.

Dodgy electrics.

Brakes are rubbish for a car which gets driven hard.

General Comments:

My old Metro Turbo died a death and I looked to a 1.4 SRi Nova in blue to replace it. Whilst slower than the Metro, obviously it uses much less fuel, is quieter and much more refined. The brakes are rubbish for a car in its class, the Metro braked much better.

Performance is good for a small car easily keeping up with 1.8 and 2.0 repmobiles. Very good cruiser. However the old 8v technology means that similar sized new cars of 1.4 easily outpace it. I'm sick of being blown away by 1.3 16v Micras!