Canadian Tire Petroleum Celebrates 45th Anniversary

One lucky Canadian Tire customer will be able to relive the first days of gassing up at the Canadian icon, with the contest giveaway of a 1958 Corvette in recognition of the 45th anniversary of Canadian Tire Petroleum.
This fall, Canadian Tire’s 220 gas bars will mark its 45th anniversary in the petroleum business. A 1958 Corvette is the grand prize in a retro promotion that will see 400,000 “peel & reveal” game cards distributed at gas bar convenience stores between now and November 2nd. Ten Schwinn “Super 3 Cruiser” bikes, 1,000 Canadian Tire collectible trucks and thousands of instant win prizes will also be given away during the ’58 Flashback Contest.
“We opened our first gas bar in 1958 at 837 Yonge Street in Toronto, so we want our customers to help us relive the moment with the ultimate ’50s car a Corvette,” says Peter Kilty, vice president, Canadian Tire Petroleum. “The contest is a fun way of celebrating that heritage and thanking customers for 45 years of business, recognizing that today we are the country’s largest independent retailer of gasoline, pumping twice the industry average in volume of gasoline per site.”
The original Canadian Tire gas stations, called “Mor Power” stations, were revolutionary at the time due to their unique drive-through gas pumps.
In the 1960s, Canadian Tire gas bar customers were issued “Gas War” coupons that protected them from higher prices. When the price rose above a certain level, customers could redeem their coupons and fill up at the lower price.
Canadian Tire gas bars were also the birthplace of the original concept for Canadian Tire ‘Money’. In response to the major oil companies’ promotional giveaways of toasters and dishes, Muriel Billes, wife of Canadian Tire co-founder A.J. Billes, suggested that customers who paid cash for their gas should be rewarded with a “Cash Bonus Coupon” redeemable in store. These coupons were eventually rolled out to the entire enterprise as Canadian Tire ‘Money’. Since its debut in 1958, Canadian Tire ‘Money’ has become one of the country’s most recognized and best loved customer loyalty rewards programs with 90 percent redemption levels.