From Texas comes the beautiful story of love and appreciation between a son and a father—a father who gave up his dream car in order to be a good dad.
It was Earl Guynes’s 65th birthday, and he unexpectedly found himself on a car lot being spoken to by a magician. Suddenly, his son held up a pair of keys, and told him they fit inside the ignition of a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro that was sitting just over his shoulder.
It was a car Earl knew very well.
It was a car he sold 40 years ago so he could pay for diapers.
An automotive industry worker, Earl was working in parts as a 22-year-old in Mesquite, and an employee came in one day with a ’67 Camaro that made Earl’s eyes light up.
It was loud, he told NBC 5, the kind of car that had everyone looking out of the corner of their eyes as it passed down the block. He had a few good years with the Camaro, but after marrying his wife Mona and having their son Jared, he did what any responsible dad would do and trade in the dream of youth for the sake of the future.
“I used to tease Jared quite a bit. ‘I used to have a car like that one over there.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I let it go for diaper money,'” Earl told NBC. “‘You needed diapers and so that’s what happened to that car.’”
Jared joked that he never believed his father, but gradually the fixation on the Camaro he left behind rubbed off on his son, who came to know it better than his father did.
“It’s a 1967 Marina blue Camaro SS with a 350 small-block V8, an automatic 3-speed transmission. Crager chrome 15-inch mag wheels with white letters on the tire, small 1969 style cowl hood on the front, a small little whale tail on the back, and a black interior,” said Jared.
He always imagined what a great thing it would be to get that car back in the family, and then in 2021, he had a great business year. Instead of paying down debt or doing something “responsible” he did “what any Guyness man would do” and started looking at a cool car.
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Finding a ’67 Camaro exactly like his father once owned, Jared bought it and began secretly restoring it—like any old muscle car there was ample need for TLC.
“Wanting dad to really understand how much I love him and how important he is to me and how good of a job he did being a dad, I wanted to find the biggest, most symbolic most outrageous, way to help him understand how much. And I’m like, what is the greatest thing possible? And it was the Camaro. It was always the Camaro,” he said.
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Shared with NBC, the video of the surprise, when Jared showed his dad what he had done, warms the heart, and the news outlet said that Jared replaced many of the old systems for new, safer, more refined ones.
WATCH that video below…
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