Oprah Winfrey’s $8M car giveaway producer reveals the major surprise winners faced after the cameras went off

When Oprah Winfrey hosted an $8 million car giveaway on her show, it made TV history – but the biggest surprise was yet to come for her audience.

We’ve seen all the memes, we all know the famous ‘You get a car’ episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

However, what happened when the cameras stopped rolling was anything but a cause for celebration.

A producer on the show has opened up about the unexpected fallout from the Pontiac G6 giveaway.

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This $8m car giveaway on Oprah Winfrey was an iconic moment in TV history

Oprah Winfrey is a pop culture icon, there’s no disputing that.

In her 25 years on the air as the host of her own show, she had everything from celebrity exclusives to heart-wrenching human interest stories.

But let’s face it – we all remember the ‘You get a car’ moment best, right?

It all went down back in 2004 and was an unforgettable moment in TV history.

The concept for the giveaway was started by Oprah Winfrey’s best friend, Gayle King.

This was revealed in a podcast titled Making Oprah: The inside story of a TV revolution.

King met an executive from Pontiac on a flight, and the company then offered 25 cars for the show as a giveaway.

But the producers pushed the company to give a new Pontiac G6 to every member of the studio audience.

That’s 276 cars, worth about $7.7 million in total at the time of the show.

And when the audience was told they were getting a new car, they reacted as you’d expect.

Lots of screaming, tons of hugging, and total chaos.

Audience members undoubtedly left the studio with a spring in their step.

Unfortunately, there was one big drawback to this giveaway that came back to bite everyone.

How this Pontiac G6 giveaway ended up backfiring

Because the Pontiacs were gifts, they were taxed as ordinary income.

The gift tax is paid by the person giving the gift, and in 2004, the rate was 48 percent.

The show’s producers, to their credit, paid for the sales tax and registration of the car.

When audience members were hit with this surprise, they were none too pleased.

Speaking on the podcast looking back on the show, producer Lisa Erspamer reflected on the backlash.

“It was devastating after, because ‘gift tax’ is a thing, and it’s always a complicated thing when you’re giving stuff away,” she said.

“But we paid for the sales tax and the registration for each car, and we told the audience after, if they didn’t want to have to pay a gift tax, they could actually take cash for the car,” she explains.

“And because we didn’t pay the gift tax, people complained to the press, and that was devastating.

“We put our whole soul into this moment of television and with real intention to do something good, and so when people had a negative reaction, it like literally hurt our feelings.”

It didn’t put the producers off attempting a similar stunt in 2010, though, when they gave audience members a Volkswagen Beetle.

And Oprah even gave the winners some sage words along with their new set of wheels.

In the years since, the TV moment has lived on in infamy – with Cynthia Erivo even referencing it earlier this year whilst hosting the Tony Awards.

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