Call this a storybook feel-good tale, involving one man and his “first love” car, a broken bond, a loving family, and a surprise centennial birthday present that beats all the others the came before it. It is also a true story.

The world can sometimes feel like a very bad place, but it’s stories like this that remind us that it’s not all gloom and doom. Eddie Hughes, a man from Lacock, UK, turned 100 recently and, on this milestone occasion, was reunited with the one car he always said he loved the best – and accordingly regretted: a Bentley S3 he drove for about a year in 1964.

Back in the day, Eddie worked as a professional chauffeur. In 1964, his boss at the time had him pick up a brand new Bentley S3 four-door luxury sedan from the Rolls-Royce factory in Crewe. He drove it for about a year, before he had to relocate for another job, but whenever he would talk cars with his son Ron, he’d always say that the S3 was “the best.”

For the past 20 years, Ron and other family members worked hard to track down that car, with very little success. It seemed as if it had slipped from the face of the earth when, by near-accident, he found it listed for sale in the United States, with the Beverly Hills Car Club in Los Angeles. Ron got it for £32,000 ($44,000 at the current exchange rate), which included the cost of having it shipped to the UK.

The S3 was still surprisingly complete, but it had seen better days, Ron tells the Gazette and Herald. He then had it sent to the auto shop of one of Eddie’s grandsons. Tracking it down, buying it and then restoring it to its former glory was a family endeavor – and it became the family’s present on Eddie’s 100th birthday.

“I was very emotional when I saw it. I never knew anything about it,” Eddie says for the publication of being reunited with his first big automotive love. “It still drives excellently. You feel safe in a car like that and when driven properly it drives very smoothly.”

The only downer in the story is that Eddie himself won’t get to enjoy it that much or, at least, not from the driver seat: he’s getting ready to turn in his driver’s license after more than 83 years. He plans to leave it to his family, so they too may know the joy such a car can bring.