Kitchener man surprises his mom with her dream car

Joanie Wadden smiles as she heads to the driver's side of her 1973 Saab 99 EMS. (YouTube / Corey Wadden)

Corey Wadden surprised his mom Joanie with her dream car, a 1973 Saab. It took a lot of time and planning; saving money, finding the car, even sneaking into his mother’s purse to get a picture of her driver’s licence to change the ownership on the car.

“It was, to say the least, a lot of work to get it, but the moment that I saw her reaction it was all worth it,” Wadden said.

Wadden’s mother Joanie’s last car died a year ago. That was when the plan started to come together. “She’d been talking about this old Saab since I was a kid… and I’d never seen it, so I didn’t know what it looked like.”

Joanie Wadden used to clean the house of a family that owned a Saab. The wife didn’t know how to drive a standard, so sometimes the husband would ask Joanie to move the car.

“He’d let me take the car, go around the street, because I fell in love with that car. I thought visually, I thought it was the sexiest car I’d ever seen,” explained Joanie.

Corey asked his mother to show him a picture of her dream car, and started searching. He finally found one in Ottawa. The 1973 Saab 99 only has 80 thousand kilometers on it.

Corey got a friend to tape the surprise, and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Within two hours, it started to go viral, with over 3.5 million views to date. Corey never expected the video to be so popular.

“It really comes down to the video, and obviously it was touching for people. It really took no effort on my end… people were really moved by it.”

No one was more moved than Joanie.

“I couldn’t be any more of a prouder mom right now,” she said.

“I’ve known both of my boys have been extraordinary, but the best part about this is you all get a glimpse into seeing how extraordinary they are.”

You can see the YouTube video of Corey surprising his mother here: http://youtu.be/nDHpvTDJMrc