April Fools

Podcast Episode: 0244
Laughter in the Fast Lane!

​      Ah, the joy and chaos that April Fool's Day brings each year to our inner prankster side! AutoLooks takes a look at how this beloved day of tomfoolery has left its mark on the automotive industry and why automotive companies take it so seriously now.   So, buckle up and enjoy this fun ride through the world of automotive humor and April Fool's Day antics.

       ​I think it was Bart Simpson that actually said it the best April fools, as Homer cracked open his beer and it blew up. Why? Because Bart put it in a paint shaker and shook the crap out of it. Yeah, something you've never really done. I've tried to shake up, you know. Pop before to see if it actually goes that far and eventually the pressure inside of it will just start popping out the sides. It doesn't get to the point that of the Simpsons. It was a great gag reel on an amazing cartoon and one of the most famous April Fools of all time. Everybody remembers that.
 
     If you've watched cartoons as a kid and you've watched the Simpsons, you understand the significance of the April Fools episode and you're probably just like myself. You watch it every single year on April Fools, after fooling everybody all day, and for myself. Yes, April Fool's lasts 24 hours. It doesn't end at noon because it's called April Fool's Day. A day constitutes 24 hours, which means, in all reality, workplaces that tell you the need to stop at noon. I'm sorry but I don't know, but really you should have started at noon the day before. So today, AutoLooks is going to be taking a look at some of the cool April Fool's jokes that automotive companies play on us every single year and why they do it Seriously. What is the reason behind them playing jokes on us? There's actually a good reason behind it and you'll find out that answer today on the AutoLooks Podcast.
 
        Welcome back to the AutoLooks Podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by check it out. Read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have car companies from around the globe and on top of that, stop by read some of the reviews from year to year that we have placed on our website. Check out some of our children's books and find some help on the help pages all from the AutoLooks.net website. It is the main site that pre-existed the AutoLooks podcast and has been around since 2008. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. 

      So, like I said in the beginning, the Simpsons oh yes, that amazing joke. As Homer opens the beer. It blows up and blows the whole house and then you see Lou and Chief Wiggum. Chief, I believe that was the old Simpson house. Ah, that's three blocks away. I believe its beer coming out of the chimney. I'm proceeding on foot. Call in for a code 8. We need pretzels, repeat pretzels.
 
      It's one of the greatest April Fool's things of all time. He's literally Chief Wiggum's running down the street going after the house because it's just full of beer and it actually puts Homer into a coma. You know, not the funniest thing to happen out of some of these jokes, because really every year there are all kinds of either deaths or injuries due to April Fool's jokes and most workplaces have put an end to April Fool's jokes, either totally throughout the day or they cut them off at noon. Now for myself, I don't get crazy like that with April Fool's jokes, unlike some of the car companies out there that really fool us into thinking that some of these products are real. Nah, I just throw some easy ones out there. You know, tying an air horn to somebody's seat, so when they go to sit down in the morning all they hear is scares, the crap out of them. It's so funny. You know the good old saran wrap and the door sill, putting Vaseline or even margarine or butter on a toilet seat and watch people slip and slide all over it. Oh yeah, there's some great, great April Fool's jokes you can play on people out there and in the workplace. There's some of them you can do to people that will even not cause harm, changing the background. Sending them a million different types of spam emails hell, even sending them an email that automatically opens up as you RickRoll them at work. Oh yeah, or as my son likes to say, you send them a copy of buddy holly popped up and you Weezer them. It's just too cool.
 
      April fools is one of those great pastimes for everyone there. Everybody just likes to play jokes on anyone else. It gives you a date to literally play jokes on people where they understand why you're playing jokes on them. Everybody has to lighten up just a little bit to allow people to have some fun, and for myself, I love play jokes. I scare the crap out of my wife all the time.
 
       I literally will stand at the end of a hall in our basement. We have a long hallway from our living room all the way to the other end where our laundry room is, and our laundry room doesn't have a door to get into it. It has a curtain. We have a light-up lightsaber. I stood behind that for probably about 15 minutes of 15 minutes. My kids knew I was there and they didn't tell their mom and all of a sudden, she opened the door and all she hears is and sees the red come out and this dark figure at the end. Oh yeah, scared the crap out of her. Not as much as when I moved like a doll to the end of my office and I rolled the ball down and she turns, sees the dollars. It's great. April fool's day is great. 

      It just gives you a reason to play jokes on people, and automotive companies do this every single year. I remember a few years ago Citroen had their cactus inspired cactus, it's kind of funny, but the car is already bizarre and really weird looking and they made a cactus feature for it. You can actually cover it with a cactus wrap, make it a prickly perch of a car. But it was just that. It was one of my first introductions to automobile companies, playing jokes on people, and over the years some great ones have actually come out of this Aston Martin with a monster truck, a Honda CR-V. It was both a roadster and a convertible.
 
      Hot Wheels had one year where they actually sent out this new disclaimer that they're not going to be allowing people to build their own cars starting on April 1st. Oh, people lost their shit. It was funny. They're like what do you mean? I'm going to have to put my own Hot Wheels together. I buy tons of these things. Nobody's going to want to buy them. If they got to put them together, even in the future, so many things could happen with it and nobody understood what day it was coming out.
 
     But automotive companies do this every single year. McLaren last year had a really good one. They wrapped a 650 in feathers and stated from the factory you can now get a brand-new feather wrap. Kind of funny because, uh, in a sense they're almost making fun of one of their competitors on the grid and formula one red bull, because they always say red bull gives you wings. Well, a McLaren with its doors open is essentially wings and covered with feathers. Just makes it that much more fun of a joke. And the funny thing is every year people see these things and they don't realize that it's fake. 

      And now, with the addition of AI technology, like yesterday, I was going through some videos and I found one for Ace Ventura 3 and I'm watching it and I'm thinking it's real and I get right to the end. When he starts talking, I'm like, oh no, the second he talks at the end of it because there's no talking until right at the end. You can tell 100% that this is AI created. It's not a real movie. Well, when it comes to images, it's even harder to decipher and automotive companies are now using that to their benefit and they use brand new technology like this to kind of make a statement.
 
      Since the introduction of essentially social media, automotive companies have been playing April Fool's jokes on the online world. Before they used to do print ads and some television ads. But you have to remember you've got to pay in advance. There's no guarantee it's going to come out exactly on that day to freak people out. They're going to get all kinds of things. It created more of a headache to automotive companies.
 
      So, around the times of the internet and the early days of myspace, the precursor to Facebook. For people who don't know what myspace actually was, if you really want to learn about it, I suggest watching the music video white nerdy by the, the great, the great, great man that I'm going to see this summer, Mr. Weird Al Yankovic white nerdy as he says he pimps out his MySpace page. You can basically build your own essential website and communicate with tons and tons of people. It's like a precursor. It's a Facebook. You remember Facebook? We used to be able to personalize everything on it besides, just like your banner image and your actual image. You used to be able to pimp out tons of other things in it. Yeah, those were great days. Automotive companies are now using this new technology because everybody is literally plugged in, from young kids all the way up to the elderly. 

​       People are on social media all the time and they know people are on it all the time. That's what makes it so great. It was so much disinformation out there. Tons of people have trouble trusting every single thing they either see or hear out there. A lot more people actually trust things that they see than they hear. So, in saying that, I'm taking a wild guess that a lot of people listening right now probably don't trust me, more so than if they saw me in an actual podcast talking to my microphone right now, as I'm doing, you know, staring at you, talking to you on my microphone with this amazing cool light coming off the back of it. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm so entranced in this light coming off the back of it. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm so entranced in this. Yeah, it's amazing. It's like Mr. Everett Jay's talking to me face to face and he's getting really close to that microphone. All reality, hearing, reading, seeing it's all part of how we take in information, and automotive companies, like I said, have been utilizing this to play April fool's jokes on people for years.
 
       One of my most favorite ones of all time was Jeep A few years back created the Jeep grill, literally a barbecue that was made to look like the Jeep grill. They actually had a working model of it and real people Like it was a legit advertisement and I'm looking at it going, wow, that is cool, that would be a great idea. You know, I've seen those ones that are like people build these fire pits that look like the Death Star. I've even seen the ones with like Darth Vader heads, tie fighters. You know all these cool, cool things. Why not make a barbecue of a Jeep grill? I'm like, oh, that is so cool. Jeep is getting into some really neat stuff. I've heard of, like the Bugatti office desk or Ferrari luggage, but not a Jeep grill. And I would buy one of those things. I have, like this little Ford F-150 at the end of my spatula for my barbecue. You know, my little truck one. You know I only got it because it's a truck and, in all reality, I got it from a dollar store, so there was no choice on the truck at the end of it. But it made me think, oh, this is cool, this is great. Then I see the date it. But it's fake.
 
       Yeah, like Skoda with their noise-canceling headrest, or BMW saying they're going to get rid of all features from vehicles that nobody uses, including turn signals, because BMW drivers are some of the most prevalent ones to not use their turn signal while changing lanes. It's a proven fact. I'm sorry to all the BMW fans out there, but literally so many different car magazines and media sources have done the stuff on this, they found BMW drivers are the most aggravated ones without using their turn signals. So, BMW played off of that for an April Fool's joke, basically stating to people oh yeah, we're just going to get rid of the turn signals from the car since nobody uses them. Why do we need them. They also had the BMW truck option, the 3 Series truck that they were going to build. 

​      Well, you got to remember, with the world we live in today, people look at some things like that kind of like the Jeep barbecue and say, hey, you might have thought it was a joke, I thought it was real and since it's not real, I'm going to make it. And how many people out there have chopped up BMW 3 Series in their garages to build their own pickup truck? Funny thing is I haven't seen anybody go out and take a BMW X5 or an X7, chop it up and turn it into a pickup truck. See, that would be a lot better because it's actually built for off-road environments. A 3 Series pickup truck is kind of like one of the world's greatest drift cars ever, custom built for drifting in Japan the Silvia truck. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. It's one of the coolest things, kind of like those old Holden Maloos and the FPV Falcon trucks. The Utes are amazing and fun and are cool vehicles and they're not a joke. So, the Jeep truck was something that people actually took seriously and then when Jeep didn't bring it out, they're like fuck man, I might as well just make myself one. And they did.
 
      Another cool thing they actually did a couple years ago was the BMW magnetic tow option. So, on the front of your vehicle, when you're on the highway, you could literally just turn on the tow option and it would click onto the vehicle in front of you and with that what it would do is you could literally it's like a tractor beam it would hold you onto the car in front of you. You guys would do the same speed. You'd just use it as cruise control. Huh, tech people see this and it's like what we could build an autonomous system that actually does that. And here we go autonomous technology at its best. Hell, things like this have been working for years. BMW gave us the insight. So, car companies’ kind of give you a precursor to information and technology that they're kind of working on some of these products that we'd never create.
 
      Like I said, the jeep grill it went great. Or even the Volkswagen luminescent ID.3 harlequin edition okay, one that actually lit up. It glowed in the dark. Or how about the old Voltswagen one? They were going to change their name. They did it for April fools, the year that that whole you know diesel gate thing happened and they wanted to change people's perception of Volkswagen. So, they literally sat and did like a month of pr stuff all before April 1st, saying how they were going to change their name over to Voltswagen and go fully electric for the future. They were going to be taking the internal combustion engine and diesel options completely out of their lineup, going all in on electric. And to do it they had to change their name to Volkswagen. Everybody thought they were serious, like they literally led us on a trail for over a month and then bam, April Fool's Day, they have the special ID.3 Harlequin edition come out and they tell us it's a joke, they're not going to change their name to Voltswagen. That's just dumb. Volkswagen already means people's car. Why would we change the name of it? But at the press release stating the fact that it was an April Fool's joke, they told everyone that they were going heavily into the electric vehicle industry and soon enough Volkswagen had become one of the top players in the world for electric vehicle technology, investments and products out on the automotive world. So essentially it was a great April Fool's joke to bring massive PR to the car company where in the end it was a joke the name changeover. But everything else behind it was not a joke and because you dove so deep into it, they had you hooked. It helped to increase the sales of the brand new ID.3 electric hatchback. That's essentially a PR stunt made to boost sales, and that's what a lot of the April Fool's jokes are to bring more brand awareness. 

      If you don't remember, years ago Volkswagen did a little kid as Darth Vader for the Super Bowl, where at the end the kid's trying to turn the car on and his dad presses the button. The kid gets freaked out. It's like whoa, I did that. Well, it became one of the most memorable commercials of all time and it made you remember that that was Volkswagen that did that. So, these companies bring this massive awareness, even through jokes, to their car companies. You remember them, and it's not just today. You remember them. You remember them in the future.
 
       You're going online, you're hearing about April Fool's coming up and you know Mini's got this new one coming out. You're like Mini; it's like ah. I remember a couple years ago when they did that special edition one, the hipster hatch edition, for the man bun plaid wearing, you know, hipsters type people from the inner city. And then they also had that one that apparently ran on tea because they're from Great Britain. That was funny. I remember they did that. It makes it memorable and you remember these car companies.
 
      So, it's another form of advertising and people remember humor a lot better than just a decent experience. And I'll tell you one thing I learned in business it's harder to keep people than it is to get new ones. Why? Because when you make one mistake after you gain the trust of one person. One mistake with that person and they'll go tell nine people you give the most amazing treatment ever, like literally lay out the red carpet for them. That's all three of their friends. They tell less people about good experiences. Social media proves that to us.
 
      People who don't like my podcast will go online in droves and talk badly about it, but you'll never read good points. Why? Because they use the platform for bad. So, when these auto companies use the platform for humor and it catches these people off, they turn it into a bad situation, because some of these people get just so pissed off at it that it's a stupid idea and they go right off the rails. You know that nine factor just keeps growing and growing and growing, right in the end when they get proven that it's just a joke and they also just kept their mouth shut. 

​     Well, all you could say is there's a ton of people that remember what they said and who they talked about. Well, yeah, you have to remember. You write something in a form bad thing about one of these car companies. They'll remember it's pretty interesting. But a lot of them like to play around with funny ideas, like the aero soul. Like you can tell right from the picture that it's literally a photoshopped picture made by kia to even look bad, to make you aware of the fact that it's a joke. And yet some people still thought that was the most butt ugly thing and they're going off about this design, not realizing it's a joke.
 
      Like I said, more people will talk bad than good. I do that all the time, like right now, especially with this whole thing about, you know, Canada becoming the 51st state. I always tell people I said I don't want to do it, I don't agree with it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I said but there's a silver lining to it. I always like to try and find the good and the humorous. In all situations I'm like yeah, you just got to remember if we join the United States. The province of Ontario is fucked, seriously Like fucked, why, because of the interstate pact, the province of Ontario would have to four lanes, like limited access throughway for highways 17 and 11, which would equate to nearly 4,000 kilometers of roadway. I'm like see, there's a silver lining in it. I don't give up my healthcare but I'm going to gain my highway.
 
       Right, you have to find the humor in the situations and these companies find the humor in the situations. Some of them their humor, at the end of the day, just creates a good laugh. Some of them, at the end of the day, inspires people to go out and create things like this, and some of them, at the end of the day, people are literally looking at it, going why. That seems like the stupidest thing you could ever do, even for a joke. But in all reality, you remember the joke when you get told a really funny joke, whether it be from friends, family or even a co-worker at work. If it's funny and it made you laugh, you'll remember it. And car companies know that and they understand that it's part of marketing and advertising. A humor-based advertisement can really make you think. 

      Aston Martin had one. That was actually a serious. One years ago, it had this amazingly attractive female on the front, literally like a little lace gown you could see her nice butt and she's standing there getting ready for a date night. And it was all about selling Aston Martin used vehicles and it said you may not have been the first to drive her, but at least you know she'll be well prepared when you get her. Basically, stating that when you buy one of their used vehicles, it doesn't matter that it's been used by somebody else. They're going to make sure that when you buy it it's like getting it new it's already pre-broken in so you don't have to go through some of those bad points about buying a new vehicle. And by using this amazingly great looking female in it really appeals at least to the male side, some female side. But whatever, whatever, everyone's into it appeals to them.
 
     And for myself, when I saw it, I'm like naturally it's attractive to female. My eye just freaking dilate as a standard. It's like whoa. And then I read it and I'm like that is funny. I saw that ad before my son was even born, God, almost two decades ago, and I still remember it, kind of like the citron cactus. That was 11 years ago that I saw that on April fools and I still remember it. Some of these amazing things I remember.
 
     Like I said, people remember bad experiences and they remember funny moments. Why do you think when you watch tv shows and you ask somebody and you use a, you know a serious line from a show like N.Y.P.D. Blue or Blue Bloods or you know even E.R. nobody gets it. They'll stare at you like what the hell and you're like oh, you know it's from E.R. and they're just like and I watched it. Well, I don't remember any of that crap. But for anybody who's seen a show like south park family guy, the Simpsons, bob's Burgers, even Futurama those main five ones are my key go-to for humor in my life. Beavis and Butthead is a big one too and I have a famous line I like to use from Beavis and Butthead. It was a very funny moment because Beavis literally gets kicked in the nuts and Butthead looks at him and goes don't worry, Beavis, you can cry. Crying gets all the sad out and it's like oh my God, it's funny and truthful at the same time. But it's an idiot, but that's deep man and it's funny. How many people watch the Simpsons and remember those funny moments. 

       Like I said at the very beginning of this episode, the April Fools. If I look at you, I point as I'm standing on a hallway and I go April Fools and if you've seen the Simpsons, you automatically in your head see that house going and then you see Chief Wiggum calling in for backup because he needs pretzels. It's humor. Humor lightens up our day. It puts a smile on our face and even to the most hard-pressed, cold-blooded people out there, if you can crack a smile and make them laugh, then you've made their day. And trust me, in my life there's only one person I know of that I can't do that to. I've heard them laugh but I can't get them to laugh because they take me too seriously with everything, because we're at edge. You can probably guess who it is if you've listened to a lot of my podcasts. But anyone else I can get a laugh and I love laughing.
 
      I like to get the humor out of any situation. I don't even death. Why? Because people who laugh live longer. Yeah, some of the oldest people in the world. They always say don't hold stress or regrets or grudges. Learn to laugh and live life in the moment. Why? Because stress kills you, being pent up and worried about everything kills you all the time, and I try and tell that to specific people I know in my life, but it doesn't change anything. You need to let the laughter in. Think about it. When Krusty died on the Simpsons, well, faked his death and they had the giant monument of Krusty's head there and everybody's crying. What does it say on Krusty's tombstone? It's him smiling, him smiling and laughing, saying see you real soon. Kids Like that. That's dark, but in a sense it's also funny. And if you can't get the humor side of that, you got issues.
 
      April Fool's jokes from car companies are a way for you to remember and signify with a car company about something that made you smile, because when you smile, the whole world smiles with you smile Because when you smile, the whole world smiles with you. Louis Armstrong said it best for a man that had so much despair in his life and went through so much, he created one of the most beautiful songs in the world and he had a point when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. If you really want to get into context, there's also another one right after that. I'm going to leave you this one last bit when you smile, the whole world smiles with you and when you fart, you stand alone. Think about that. If you just giggle a little bit, that was the point of the joke. 

     If you were disgusted by it, you didn't understand the point of the joke where, if you see some of these car companies putting these fun things out, like mg tires that paint the road, or the invisible car, Hyundai that click to fly in, the new i10 Popemobile or hell, you even do a joke. That isn't a joke. Like BMW of New Zealand, they gave away a free car a couple years ago and everybody thought it was a joke. But it was a reverse April fool's joke. And one person, Tiana Marsh, showed up at the dealership and asked for her free car. They failed out the paperwork and she drove away with a BMW 1-Series with a license plate. No Fool, because she was the one smart enough to realize that it wasn't an April Fool's joke and even if it was, she was bold enough to go in and have a good laugh about it, because literally everybody needs a laugh and the world would be so much better of a place if we all learned to laugh every once in a while.
 
     I'm going to leave you with one of the most famous sayings that I've ever heard. People always ask us why there's so many comedians in Canada. My dad had the perfect explanation for this. One, we have bad weather. Two, we always have bad government. Three, we have bad roads. So, if we don't learn to laugh about things, we're just going to die so much sooner. Because, literally, why do you think somebody like John Candy, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers or even Seth Rogen got so funny?
 
     They had to find the humor in a bad situation, and car companies do that. They use the humor of April Fools to, even if something is so bad like Diesel gate, they could turn around and make it one of the funniest jokes of all time. So, humor we all need to just smile and laugh. Because, trust me, I don't like to live in a world where it's 100% serious all the time and I don't like to work in workplaces like that. I have worked in serious workplaces and they are the most toxic environments ever, especially the ones that don't let you play April Fool's jokes. So today, on April Fool's Day, go out, read some of the news articles, check out websites like CarScoops, Motor1, Car News China or hell, even the AutoLooks website, and find some of these great, funny April Fool's jokes that car companies are putting out to the world. Because we all need a good smile today, even if we're the one that had the joke played on us. We have to remember it's funny and we need to lighten up just a little bit, because April Fool's is all about letting go. 

​      So, if you like this podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any of the major social feeds or streaming sites that you've found the AutoLooks podcast on you know. Write a comment, click the like button up below and share this with all your friends, family, well friends, family well-wishers, co-workers and even your boss. Send it off to them, tell them to lighten up and let you play jokes for the whole day. It doesn't end at noon. It's called April Fool's Day. A day consists of 24 hours. That's 24 hours of good jokes and great fun that you can have.
 
     So, if your boss is one of those people that tells you it ends at noon, tell him to fuck off. If he asks you who told you to say that, tell him. Mr. Everett Jay from your Outlooks podcast told him to say it. And tell him to send me an email Because I'll tell him, or her, or them or they or whatever. Lighten up, buddy. You got to put a smile and after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings, go from around the globe, all available on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, for myself, I'm Richard, the AutoLooks.net website and the Ecomm Entertainment Group, strap yourself in for this one fun, funny ride that April Fool's is going to take us on.