The customer loyalty of a Colorado man was rewarded when he was selected by the Meineke car repair chain to receive a vintage Corvette as part of their 50th-anniversary giveaway. Little did the chain know, the Vette was the same color and almost the same model and year that the man had once been promised by his car-enthusiast father, but which was subsequently sold to a museum.
“I hardly ever win anything, but I figured perhaps karma will come around!” said John Coppin, a native Floridian—now safety/security director at New Summit Charter Academy in Colorado Springs where he lives with his wife of 25 years, Tina, and 19-year-old son, Colin.
In a press release, John said he grew up bonding with his dad, John Sr., over classic cars. As a teen, John Jr.’s first car was a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible.
When John Sr. purchased his mint-condition Corvette in the late ’80s—a 1971 blue Stingray with a white interior, with its original top and just 9,000 miles on the odometer—John Jr. was smitten. His father made a promise: one day, the car would be his.
The ’71 Stingray was lovingly maintained by John Sr. and won trophies at car shows all across the country. John Jr. had no reason to believe his father would renege on his promise until having a conversation in a T-shirt shop while visiting his parents in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in 2016.
“I saw an airbrushed T-shirt hanging on the wall with a blue Corvette Stingray with white convertible top airbrushed on it,” John Jr. said. “I looked at my father and said, ‘Hey Dad, it looks just like our Vette!’ My dad did not respond.”
His wife then asked John Sr. if he had sold the car. “Confused, I asked her why she thought that,” John Jr. said. “She proceeded to tell me that, as I had walked away, my mother had said to my father, ‘You haven’t told him yet, have you?’”
Hesitantly, John Sr. explained that he had sold the Stingray to a car museum in Orlando, hoping to use the money to buy back his first classic car: an original 1959 Corvette. Sadly, that never materialized.
John Jr. was heartbroken, but he understood his dad’s reasons. So when Meineke’s 50th anniversary rolled around in the summer of 2022, it was a no-brainer for him to enter and potentially win ownership of the classic Corvette Stingray of his dreams.
Weeks later, however, John Jr. suffered a mini-stroke and experienced temporary loss of about 60 percent of the vision in his left eye. Expecting a callback from his physician, he instead stumbled across a voicemail from Chris Streahle, Meineke’s vice president of marketing, and was floored by what he heard. He had won the car.
“I called Chris ... this was for real!” John Jr. said. “It was kind of tough holding my emotions back while on the phone. ... When I spoke with my parents, my father in particular, I could hear the excitement in his voice as if he had won the Corvette himself!
“It’s so nice to be able to ’talk Corvettes’ with my dad again, almost as if the promise of a classic Corvette, between father and son, never went away.”
Ahead of the ceremony, John Jr. began buying “all things Corvette” for his new ride, including the original 1972 Corvette owner’s manual and sales brochure. He and Tina, who plan to retire in Florida in the coming years, were delighted by the prospect of a weekend road trip in his dream car.
But there’s something extra special about John Jr’s prize: he plans to pass it on.
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