Jared Guynes from Texas spent two years secretly restoring his dad’s dream car: a 1967 marina blue Chevrolet Camaro. His dad, Earl Guynes, had given up his beloved Camaro over 41 years ago to raise his young family.
Earl was overjoyed when his son revealed the “humongous surprise” on his 65th birthday.
The Childhood Dream
Ever since learning about his dad’s Camaro as a teenager and the sacrifice he made selling it, Jared fantasized about getting the car back for him. Up until he was around 13 years old, Jared told The Epoch Times, he’d never thought of his dad owning a cool muscle car.“But when I was old enough to understand, he told me stories about the old cars he used to have,” Jared said.
The 1967 automatic dual-exhaust Camaro in a particular shade of blue with two white stripes and a 350 V8 engine, was the one Earl talked about the most. In 1983, when Earl learned his young wife was pregnant with their first son, he decided the car had to go.
“The story he told me when I was a kid is that he sold the car for diaper money,” Jared said. “That was a joke because he didn’t literally need diapers. But what he was trying to tell me was that he really sold the car to start the family and to make sure that he was prioritizing what he needed to prioritize.”
Starting 30 years ago with the seed of an idea, Jared began storing away information about his dad’s prized possession: the wheels, the color, and all the specific details. What was once just a wish became reality in October 2022 when after a year of searching, the perfect Camaro popped up.
“I had an extremely good business year in 2021,” Jared said. “And I decided that I wanted to finally begin the project to hopefully give my dad his car back.”
Finding a Marina Blue Camaro
Jared knew finding the original would be impossible—his father’s Camaro had been cobbled together from parts of other Camaros, and he had no receipt, VIN, or any other documentation. Determined, he scoured every public listing he could think of in search of the perfect replica.“There wasn’t one [anywhere] in the United States,” he said.
But finally, after about 10 months, an alert went off on his computer: A 1967 Camaro complete with white stripes was for sale on the Texas border, just 70 miles north of his home. Jared was filled with excitement, but the price was way too high. However, after going up to take a look and negotiate with the owner, he was able to strike a “terrific deal.”
It was his reason for wanting the car, says Jared, that made the difference.
“They were moved by the story and what I wanted to do,“ he said. ”... Since I was very honest with them about why I wanted the car, they were very honest with me that this car actually had a lot of problems.
“The lights didn’t work, and the brakes didn’t work, and sometimes it would just die, and liquids and fluids would just come out of the bottom of it, and it was actually very, very, very dangerous. They had tried and tried to fix things and to get it to run right, and they just could not, so they were giving up.”
To be 100 percent certain the car would be completely roadworthy for his dad, Jared spent the next two years “constantly fixing, fixing, repairing, changing, or upgrading.”
The Secret
Jared says keeping the project a secret was a massive challenge. No one, not his mom, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, or friends of his dad, could know what he was planning. The only persons Jared told were his wife and daughter, now aged 9.“She thought it was the coolest thing,” he said.
His 5-year-old son was too young to understand, but Jared was still careful to never use the word “Camaro” around him, just in case.
When the car wasn’t being worked on in various repair shops, it was hidden away in a storage unit. Jared even went as far as only driving the Camaro at night to avoid being spotted. Sorting out the vehicle’s many issues, including extensive electrical problems, often meant driving long distances to specialists. The car died on the road on more than one occasion.
“We had to get tow trucks and wreckers,” Jared said, “and I just spent so much money towing the car and moving the car and trying to test the car. ... It would break, and I'd be stuck or something, and I couldn’t call my dad for help, and I couldn’t call anyone for help because I needed to preserve the secret at all costs.”
When asked if he ever considered throwing in the towel, the dad-of-two didn’t miss a beat.
“No. Never. My dad’s worth it. My dad’s totally worth it,” he said.
Surprising Dad
Finally, on Earl’s 65th birthday on Oct. 20 this year, the family gathered for dinner at a restaurant in their hometown of Rockwall. During the meal, Jared snuck outside to take the Camaro from its hiding place to the front of the building.What happened next was unforgettable.
“When my dad saw it, he immediately said, ‘That’s just like my car, that car is just like mine.’ But he didn’t think it was his—he just thought it was just like his,” Jared said.
“My whole life, every time we’ve seen a 1960s Camaro that was any of those three shades of blue, he would say, ‘Oh, that’s my car, just like that, my car was almost like that.’ He was always looking for those and pointing them out because it makes him very excited to see these old Camaros.”
The magician then continued the trick.
Jared said: “So he saw the car, but he didn’t think anything of it, and then he got right back to focusing on the magician, and the magician says, ‘Okay, you picked two cards: You picked a six and a seven, that’s 67.’
“He said, ‘Then you picked six words, and you picked any six words you wanted, but you also picked the number four.’ He’s like, ‘Now let’s circle the fourth letter of each of those six words, and when you circle each of those letters it was c-a-m-a-r-o—Camaro.’ So he says, ‘Okay, you picked 67, you picked Camaro, and here there is a 67 Camaro.’
“And my dad’s thinking, ‘Wow! This is a great magic trick, he made the car appear!’”
Seeing that his dad still didn’t get it, Jared said, “That’s your Camaro, Dad! Thank you for the diaper money!”
Realizing what his son had done for him, Earl immediately began to cry.
“That was emotional for me because I’d only seen my dad cry two times before that,” Jared said, “... He would do anything for his family, and that’s the example that he set even just before I was born. When I kind of replay my memories with Dad over the last 40 years, I just remember him always being willing to do whatever he could to help us and whatever he could to take care of us.
“My dad never said, ‘Oh, someday I’m going to find my old Camaro, someday I want to build a Camaro just like mine, or my ultimate dream is to have my Camaro back.’ He just said that he loved it, and it was the coolest car he ever owned—his favorite car ever.”
At the end of the day, Jared says, his gesture was about more than the car: “It was symbolic. It was important that it would be the Camaro because I wanted him to understand that the whole time he was talking to me, my whole life, I was listening. And when he was telling me these stories, I was actually taking notes, when he was talking about something that meant so much to him.”
For his part, Earl is looking forward to having some fresh adventures in his prized Camaro—including taking Jared’s mom out on a special date.
“He told me he wants to take her out for hamburgers in the car. They have a place that they used to go get hamburgers at, like an old drive-in that’s actually still open, so he wants to take her back there,” Jared said.
