Oprah Winfrey Gives Cars to Audience

20 minutes ago


CHICAGO - Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.


"We're calling this our wildest dream season, because this year on the Oprah show, no dream is too wild, no surprise too impossible to pull off," Winfrey said on the show that aired Monday.

Winfrey said the audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written about their need for a new car. One woman's young son said she drove a car that "looks like she got into a gunfight"; another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles.

Making sure the audience was kept in suspense, Winfrey opened the show by calling 11 people onto the stage. She gave each of them a car — a Pontiac G6.

She then had gift boxes distributed to the rest of the audience and said one of the boxes contained keys to a 12th car. But when everyone opened the boxes, each had a set of keys.

"Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!" Winfrey yelled as she jumped up and down on the stage.

The audience screamed, cried and hugged each other — then followed Winfrey out to the parking lot of her Harpo Studios to see their Pontiacs, all decorated with giant red bows.

The cars, which retail for $28,000, were donated by Pontiac.

"A little idea grew into a big idea," Mary Henige of Pontiac told The Associated Press.

She added that Pontiac will pay for the taxes and the customizing of the cars.

In other segments on the show, taped Thursday, Winfrey surprised a 20-year-old girl who had spent years in foster care and homeless shelters with a four-year college scholarship, a makeover and $10,000 in clothes. And a family with eight foster children who were going to be kicked out of their house were given $130,000 to buy and repair the home.

"The Oprah Winfrey Show," which debuted in 1986, is syndicated to 212 domestic markets and 109 countries.

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Vrooooom

Well, they were donated by Pontiac, but it still probably took Oprah's clout to get it done. A very, very, nice thing to do.

She's not a patch on our Trisha though.

i gotta be honest. i'm really jealous of those people right now.

why am i not impressed by this?

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

You can't drive??

doctormcmeekle said:

Do you want a lie detector?

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

probably because these are material things and it is not from the heart. it wasn't such a big surprise to me. the only thing that has impressed me is that oprah used her money to help kids in africa by building them a new school and helping with their education. but i'd still take one of those cars!

doctormcmeekle said:

i'm dead serious, mcmeekle...this don't impress me in the least.

Im pissed off about this

I want one

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Same here.

i just watched that episode...

i'm officially out of kleenex

suomynona said:

I don't even want to know what you do while watching Oprah.
[Edited 9/13/04 17:02pm]

suomynona said:

Yeah I got teary when she gave the girl wardrobe and money for school

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Yeah, I say feed the hungry children in the inner cities and clothe them too.

luv4u said:

good point.

luv4u said:

Oh my Jehovah! The woman can't do EVERYTHING!!! She gives a hell of a lot more than most people!

I have'nt watched Oprah at all for several years, and the hype around this show was noxious. From what I could see, it was all women in the audience, and they wer screaming like they saw roaches on the floor. I'm surprised no one passed out, or had a heart attack. Oprah is spiking the Kool-Aid, her crowd is on something.

simple tax write offs and free publicity for the car company. if oprah really wants to impress me, she'll keep her charity anonymous and simply enjoy the giving quietly rather than boastfully.

i'm still gonna go on that show and try and get something, lol!

CarrieLee said:

That's right. She does plenty for many people including the poor. I know some people don't like her, but she has a heart of gold and is always trying to help someone. Who cares if the merchandise is donated, it takes her name to ask for it and get it. Stop dissing on Oprah! She's come a long way baby and she's earned every cent she has.

huh...ya'll...these ppl NEEDED the cars.....


and did ya'll not see the rest of the show. I think its sad that anytime someone gives something here goes the "tax write off" stuff....

if she gave you a car...it would be a different story.

I say BIG ups to Oprah for even thinking of the various things she did on the show....especially buying that house for that family and helping the homeless young woman.

Rhondab said:

I need to start attending Oprah tapings.

Rhondab said:

i don't discount what she does, i discount HOW she does it. you want to help people, fine, please help them. why do you need to do it on your show? why do you need to record it and show the world? this says a lot about the motive, i believe. many people do extremely charitable things every single day and the reward is knowing they helped. oprah is so full of herself and this only adds to her ability to feel secure about her success and boost her own ego.

kisscamille said:

yep and she always makes absolutely sure there is great publicity made of her generosity and her 'helping' of people. that's what makes me retch.

this whole car thing was a big publicity stunt. it's great that those people who got cars truly NEEDED them and that IS a good thing and I appreciate that fact, but Oprah seems waay too concerned about making sure everybody is very very VERY aware of how benevolent and philanthropic she is.

do good works. that's WONDERFUL. but do them quietly and then forget about them.

what's with Oprah having to constantly shriek, LITERALLY, throughout the show: "I love helping people!!!"?

sad
[Edited 9/14/04 12:35pm]

IMO I don't feel she's saying, "Look at how GREAT I am." Sure there are people who do this kind of thing on the DL but how many of them have the cult-like charisma of Oprah? Her approach is didactic. By televising stuff like this she's showing by example. Of course not everyone can afford to buy a car for anyone who desperately needs one, but we can extend ourselves in smaller ways.

Oprah has a heart of gold. The woman with the foster kids has a heart of gold. The neighbor who wrote to Oprah about this woman has a heart of gold too. Different people give of themselves differently, is all.

When we were little my mom's thing was "If I have it, you have it." So of course I was blown away when a co-worker flat out said: "I don't share, and I've taught my son not to share either." WTF?! Her reason? Well, when she was little and would have a bag of chips or whatever, her cousins were always begging, "Can I have some?" So when she let everyone have some of her chips, there were none left for her.

Basically, I can't wrap my brain around selfishness. I only hope that such people will never need a transplant, or bone marrow, or are ever starving, or homeless, or ever left disabled, or....

TimCalhoun said:

i believe there should be a degree of modesty when you do good works. the thank-yous one receives sotto voce is greater and speaks louder than any front-page headline/evening news spiel. anything more and you appear plasticine and false.

Rhondab said:

Yup!! I don't care what anybody says about Oprah. I love her and I always will.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

exactly. well put.

as a child I was taught "When you do a good deed, do it quietly and then forget about it" (which is why I wrote that in my previous post). there is no need to publically broadcast or advertise those good works. well, no need to unless the publicity is what you're really after.

Oprah acts like she thinks she's the Wizard of Oz or something.