Son surprises dad with dream car he had to sell 40 years earlier to afford diapers

A Texas father was moved to tears after his son surprised him with the car of his dreams — a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro almost identical to the one he had to sell over 40 years ago to pay for his kids’ diapers.

Earl Guynes was only 22 years old when he was working in automotive parts and had the opportunity to purchase the iconic car from one of his employees, he told NBC 10 Boston.

“It was blue with white stripes down across the hood and down the back, two doors of course,” he said of the ’67 model “with a wing window on the side.”

“The car was loud and people would kind of always be looking at you and you’d always see somebody side eyeing like see that car come down the street. It was just a cool thing, a fun thing to do, you know?”

Life took a turn for Earl, and by 1982 he married his sweetheart, Mona, and they had two children, Jennifer and Jared. By the time their son arrived, Earl decided it was time to give up the expensive-to-maintain car.

The father would tease Jared, now 40, about letting go of his dream car, telling him, “I used to have a car like that one over there. I let it go for diaper money. You needed diapers and that’s what happened to that car,” the older Guynes recalled.

While his son often thought while growing up that his father’s stories were works of fiction, the vivid blue car became stuck in his mind.

“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,” Jared said.

After having a good year in business in 2021, Jared set off in search of his father’s car. Since his dad sold the beloved Camaro for cash, he had to find one that looked like it.

In 2022 Jared found a perfect Marina blue Camaro just 70 miles away. He then spent the next two years repairing the car in secret before gifting it to his dad this year at his 65th birthday party.

Heartwarming video of the surprise shows Earl being moved to tears after a magician shows him the car and his son tells him: “Thanks for the diaper money, dad.”

The attention-grabbing car isn’t exactly like the car Earl gave up — it’s safer, quieter and more polished, he said.

Meanwhile, his son is just happy to have pulled off a surprise 41 years in the making.

“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,” Jared said.

“And I’m like, what is the greatest thing possible? And it was the Camaro. It was always the Camaro.”