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Roy Williams purchased this 1976 Corvette coupe in Calgary back in 1980. - Photo courtesy Roy Williams
By Claudio D'Andrea
Back in the 1960s, Roy Williams and some friends would talk about cars. Mostly Chevys.
Corvettes came up in the conversation regularly, he recalls. At the time, they had never seen one.
An automotive dealer in Edmonton where Williams was living at the time had one on the floor so he went to take a look. That was in 1968 and he vividly recalls his reaction at seeing a Stingray coupe.
"Beautiful! The car was well beyond my means but some day I would have one!"
Flash forward to 1980 when Williams spotted a four-speed 1976 Corvette coupe in Calgary. On one cool, dry clear February morning, he flew from Edmonton to Calgary where he would pick up his car from Western Corvette and drive it home.
"The roads were perfect until I was about forty miles out of Edmonton," he remembers. "It started to snow heavily. On a long sweeping curve I saw a pickup truck in the middle of the field. I was wondering why when I found out."
Williams said the snow had turned to rain. "The highway had flash frozen. I was on black ice! The back end (of the Vette) started coming around to meet the front."
Fortunately, he regained control of the car and slowed it down to a crawl. "I couldn't wait to get my dream car home and into the garage where it stayed until April!"
Williams, who lives in Burlington, ended up selling the car to his brother. Since then, he's purchased nine new and used Vettes and currently owns two convertibles -- a 1993 40th anniversary Vette and 2015 Stingray.
So, that "some day" came around after all when he would have one Corvette. Make that nine.
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