Prizes for "The Price is Right" cars are recorded on a dedicated Instagram account.
The Price is Right will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2022, and for the past 50 years it has been giving away cars to lucky contestants; an Instagram account documents those cars, from the classic to the esoteric.
First discovered by Grassroots Motorsports (via Autoblog), the account, called tpircars, had 176 posts at the time of publication. Each post included a screenshot of the prize car and a quote from the show describing it.
Currently, the posts focus on cars from the 1970s and 1980s, including the first "Price is Right" car prize. It was a 1972 Chevrolet Vega hatchback that appeared on the show in 1972.
"Price is Right" also gave away more glamorous cars during this period, including a 1978 Mercedes-Benz 280E (W123) and a 1989 Porsche 944. Others, such as the 1977 Chevrolet K5 Blazer and the 1984 Toyota pickup, were definitely in line with the trends of the times.
Other cars that seem to have made a big splash at the time but are not so well remembered include the Ford Bronco II, given away as a prize in 1984, which would have seemed exciting until the winner actually drove it; the Renault Alliance DL, which appeared at the show in 1985, a 2-door, a partnership between the French automaker and AMC, was intended to save AMC, but it failed.
Some cars simply disappeared into obscurity. You would be hard pressed to find a surviving Mazda 808, Pontiac J2000, or Fiat Strada (the US market name for Fiat Ritmo). This account is truly an automotive time capsule and definitely worth following if you're on Instagram.
