Man Wins Free Car After Finding Message in a Bottle, Second Free Car Still Waiting To Be Found
A Canadian man won a car after finding a bottle in the ocean from an American car dealer who promised to give the recipient a free vehicle.
Mark Muller, who owns a car dealership in Missouri, tossed a bottle into the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas on July 4, 2019.
Muller left his business card inside the bottle with a note promising he would give a free car to the person who found the bottle and called him.
Muller recalled his wife’s caution, saying, “Don’t do it! Someone’s gonna find it,” to which he replied that nobody would ever find the bottle.
But several months later, on Oct. 10, the bottle was discovered by Bruno Lachapelle, a firefighter from Montreal, Canada.
Lachapelle was vacationing in the Bahamas when he happened across the bottle and opened it up.
“I pick up this thing and it was the bottle. [It said] ‘Call me. Free truck or car. Mark Muller.’ And his phone number,” Lachapelle told KNXV-TV.
When Lachapelle returned to Canada, he did call Muller, who was surprised that somebody had actually found his note.
In the end, Muller ended up giving Lachapelle cash because the expense of getting a vehicle from Missouri to Montreal was too high.
“By the time we figured out what it was going to cost to get the car back across the border, and him driving it back to Quebec and all that. I just gave him a cash offer,” Muller said.
The pair recently met in person in Sun City, Arizona, where Muller lives part-time, to enjoy the weather and explore an area of the world that Lachapelle had never visited before.
The men, strangers brought together by the most unlikely of circumstances, are now friends.
“God’s honest truth: This relationship is just started,” Muller said. “We’re gonna be long long friends for a very long time.”
Muller also revealed that there is a second bottle in the Atlantic with the same prize.
This bottle contains four pennies, Muller said, and he will give a new car or truck to the person who can identify the four dates on the pennies and send him a photo for evidence.
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