My Corvette : Kevin Wiens

Rear of the 1977 Corvette shows the inscription Kevin had put on the car as a tribute to his father. Photo courtesy Kevin Wiens.

'77 Vette- a loving tribute to father

By Claudio D'Andrea

For Kevin Wiens, it was Corvette love at first sight. He was five-years-old and living in Edmonton when his father went shopping for a car on a lot on 82nd Avenue. Young Kevin spotted a 1968 silver Vette and was smitten.

"I told my dad that's the car we need," he recalls. His father said a Corvette wasn't practical and bought a four-door Plymouth Fury instead.

Last November, he was sitting next this dying father who was taking his last breaths. Kevin noticed a posting at the time for a 1977 Corvette for sale in Calgary from a friend he hadn't seen since 1979. Later, he asked his wife about purchasing the car with his inheritance money as a tribute to his father. "She said, 'I wouldn't stop you.'"

The year 1977 "was a good year" for cars, Kevin says. Although he never owned a Corvette, he says his brother had a '77 Nova and years later Kevin bought a '77 Monte Carlo with rally wheels that he loved. He let go of the car in 1997 and it remained the last Chevrolet he owned -- until this year.

In January, Kevin looked at his friend's car and went back to Calgary in the spring to take it for a test drive.

Kevin ended up buying the Corvette and, in tribute to his father, inscribed on the back: "IN LOVING MEMORY OF OL' HENRY, Nov. 9, 1926 - Nov. 28, 2023." The car is in the same green colour as the Edmonton Elks, the Canadian Football League team they both followed until the club changed its team name from Eskimos.

"I miss not being able to tell my dad about my car. But I was able to show it to my two older siblings, and visited the final resting place of my dad (beside my mom)," Kevin says.

He showed his sister the car and went with his brother in his new car to the cemetery in June.

Kevin admits he's not a "Corvette buff" and is still learning things about his car. When he bought it, the '77 Vette was leaking power steering fluid and he purchased a power steering control valve part from corvettedepot.ca as well as a power steering control arm.

"My wife spent five minutes on the internet and she found it," he recalls. Kevin doesn't drive his car often or very far but it is a constant reminder of his father and that moment years ago when he first saw a Corvette.

It may also become a family heirloom. Kevin said his son Marek rode the Corvette in the summer.

"It's going to be his one day."

Click the button above to send us your story!