A daughter's passion for vintage muscle
"Dream big and go for what you want," gearhead Joe Petrucci would lovingly tell his wide-eyed daughter, Shana. "Make sure you always reach for the stars."
She did just that, following a path and "out of this world" passion that would lead her to one super 1972 Chevy Nova.
The pair, who live in Prairie View, an unincorporated neighborhood near Buffalo Grove, have spent a lot of time together in the family garage. Joe's favorite pastime is tinkering with vintage cars and from an early age, Shana grew to love them. too.
Together they would spend hours tuning up Joe's 1965 Chevy Nova race car or taking trips to area drag strips to see what it would do in the quarter mile.
"I remember running all the way down to the finish line and breathlessly waiting for my dad to cross," Shana said. "I've had that adrenaline rush ever since."
Once Shana got a license and her own set of wheels, it wasn't long before the teen was taking her modified daily driver to the racetrack and competing on a regular basis.
"My dad wasn't too fond of it but he understood; he did the exact same thing when he was my age," Shana said with a wide smile.
Ready for a bigger challenge, the enthusiast set out in 2014 to purchase a classic muscle car for herself. Together, Shana and Joe looked at nearly a dozen different candidates before eventually settling on her Sunburst Yellow Nova.
The seller was the second owner and lived in Indiana. "Right as we pulled up, I knew this was the one," Shana said.
The car had been sold new in Harriman, Tennessee, to a female buyer for $3,500 and came equipped with a 307-cubic-inch V-8. After getting it home, Shana set out to do one thing: make it faster.
Luckily for her, the previous owner had done a big chunk of the heavy lifting several years earlier, swapping in a high-performance, heavily worked-over, 406 c.i. V-8.
Shana wasted no time in getting her '72 Chevy to the track and for her inaugural match, who else would pull up to race her other than Joe in his '55 Chevrolet Bel Air.
"We had a little father-daughter race," Shana said. "He broke his transmission but still managed to beat me. That just drove me to want to make my car even faster."
A rematch might be a bit more even because this past winter the pair pulled the Nova's engine and replaced a whole slew of bad bearings and a blown head gasket.
However, it's not just throttle-mashed driving that Shana enjoys. She and Joe have participated in longer trips, such as the Hot Rod Power Tour. Last year, she took the Nova along for a couple days, cruising from Madison, Wisconsin, to downstate Champaign.
"There's such a bond between me and my dad because of our love of cars," she said. "He's my biggest supporter and I think it's pretty special that I've followed in his footsteps."
• Share your car's story with Matt at auto@dailyherald.com.