LOUISVILLE, Ky. – After a nationwide search, Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has been reunited with the muscle car he sold to help launch his pizza business three decades ago. Schnatter said he found the 1971 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 in his own back yard – or at least, his state.
Schnatter paid $1,600 for the car when he was 15 years old and sold it for $2,800 in 1983, when he was 21. It changed hands one more time before Jeff Robinson purchased it for $4,500 in 2004.
Schnatter sold the car to help save his father’s bar in Jeffersonville, Ind.
“We sold the car to save the bar, dad was in bankruptcy. I didn’t sell the car to start Papa John’s. I wasn’t that smart,” reminisced Schnatter. “But I had to sell the car otherwise we wouldn’t have fixed the bar, of course the bar is where we started selling pizzas.”
“A couple of weeks ago, I was at Ravens and Redskins game. They had me in the broadcast booth and Joe Thiesmann and Mike Patrick were kind enough to let me talk about the car for about three of four minutes and an acquaintance of Jeff in Flatwoods, Ky., heard that interview and got a hold of Jeff and that’s how we got our car back,” said Schnatter.
Robinson, a resident of Flatwoods, Ky., agreed to return it to Schnatter in Louisville.
Tuesday, Papa John’s Headquarters Schnatter presented Robinson a check for $250,000 in exchange for his long, lost Camaro. Robinson brought Schnatter several of the car’s original parts.
“I’m going to sit back and kind of survey everything and then see. You know, I’ll try to spend it wisely, but you know I may not spend all of it wisely,” said Robinson.
“Now there’s a big old smile on my face, I like the car, I like the way it drives, it’s fast,” Schnatter told the automotive blog Jalopnik. “My wife’s a redneck and she loves a muscle car. On one hand I want to put it back the way it was, and on the other hand I like the way he put it back together.”
Schnatter said he knows his father would be delighted to know how selling his car years ago paid off.
“I sold the car, fixed the bar, started the pizza place, now I got my car back. It’s come full circle. It just shows that if you work hard and you do the right thing, you take care of your people, you take care of your product, good things happen to good people,” said Schnatter.
The pizza chain is offering a free large, one-topping pizza to Camaro owners on Wednesday
