Oprah famously gave everyone in her audience a Pontiac - but it backfired massively

Oprah Winfrey once famously gave everyone in her audience a Pontiac – but her generosity came at a price.

On her famous talk show, the host was renowned for giving away gifts to her studio audience.

But she truly outdid herself with free Pontiac G6s for every single person before her.

While it was met with rapturous applause at the time, it ended up backfiring massively.

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Oprah had good intentions giving away free Pontiacs – but it became a big mess

Celebrities are known for their generosity, and as it any wonder with the amount of money they have?

You may recall that Dwayne Johnson gave his dad a $60,000 truck as a show of appreciation.

Taylor Swift is constantly making headlines for her bountiful spending, whether it be bonuses for truck drivers or hotel rooms at the Four Seasons.

Oprah Winfrey is no different.

The 71-year-old has been a titan in the industry for nearly 40 years.

In addition to her talk show, which ran between 1986 and 2011, she’s also headed a magazine and a television network.

Not to mention her movie career, which includes films like The Color Purple, Selma, and The Butler.

With a net worth of $3 billion, Oprah can afford to be generous.

But when she gave away free cars to her studio audience back in 2004, it didn’t go the way she hoped.

How did things go so badly wrong?

It all began when Oprah’s best friend, Gayle King – who recently went into outer space – sat next to an executive from Pontiac on a flight.

The two struck up a conversation, and this led to Pontiac offering to give 25 free cars to people attending the taping of Oprah’s show.

However, Oprah’s producers kept pushing for more.

Eventually, they got the manufacturer to agree to give a free G6 to every person in the audience.

Just to be clear – that’s 276 cars worth around $7.7 million overall.

Oprah was very anxious about the stunt.

Reflecting on it years later, she made a confession.

“I remember the night before the show, I could not sleep.

“First of all, I didn’t leave the building until 10.30/11pm because I remember walking through seeing [the producers] putting the bows on the cars and the bows were too small in my opinion.

“So I said, ‘The bows are too small,’ and they said, ‘But we’ve already done most of the bows,’ and I go, ‘You gotta redo the bows, because the bows should cover the whole hood of the car.'”

This was going to be the first episode of her 19th season, and she wanted to start things off with a bang.

And that’s exactly what happened.

You can imagine what it was like when over 200 people opened up boxes to find the keys to their new car sitting inside.

Yup, it was chaos – audience members were screaming, crying, and hugging each other.

The gift that became a meme

As the surprise was revealed, even the host got caught up.

“And you get a car!” Oprah kept yelling.

It made for great television, and everybody was happy in the moment.

But things came crashing down shortly afterwards.

For a start, audience members for future shows would expect free cars.

And then there came the matter of gift tax.

Lisa Erspamer, who worked as a producer on the show explained.

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

“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.

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

With some of the audience members receiving gift tax bills of up to $7,000, it’s understandable why some of them were peeved.

The negative reaction stung some of the production crew, who felt they had gone all out to try and do a nice thing.

At the very least, the iconic TV moment will live on forever – partly as a meme.

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