Oprah Winfrey’s “You Get a Car” Giveaway Had Last-Minute Change

“That first woman, that first Black woman, who goes, ‘I got it. It’s me.’ And then someone next to her said, ‘No, I got it, I got it.’ So I thought, ‘Oh, we’re gonna have pandemonium with everybody thinking, ‘No, I’m the one that got it.’ I was screaming it because they were screaming so loud,” she said. “Nobody could hear what I was saying.”

It was at that point that Winfrey led the audience members outside to see their new 2005 Pontiac G6 sedans that were all decorated with giant red bows. 

And it wasn’t just the gift boxes that required a last-minute change. The bows had caused their own problems as well, with Winfrey’s team staying up all night to swap out the decor. 

“You needed the bow to cover the whole car. And when I went through and I saw them, I went, ‘All these bows have to go because they’re too small. We need larger bows.’ Because what you want to be able to do is to drive the car home and have the big bow when you get there,” she reasoned. “You don’t want those little Christmas bows that are the little pointy things. You don’t want that. You want a big bow.”