The real reason Oprah Winfrey wore red in her iconic 'You get a car' giveaway

The red suit, the red bows and the most gifted cars you've seen in your life — Oprah Winfrey's 2004 car giveaway was one of the most memorable TV stunts of all time.

Now, we're learning just how much thought the talk show host put into the major event.

Speaking on People's new 'Pop Cultured' interview series, TV host, editor of 'O' Magazine and best friend to Winfrey, Gayle King revealed that her friend laboured over every detail for the show. Watch the clip above.

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"Oprah is a girl who will tell you all the time, love is in the details," King says.

"She wanted to make sure that every car had a bow and not just a regular bow. It had to be an oversized, jumbo red bow."

Writer and comedian Annie Lederman also revealed that the night before the show would be filmed, Oprah took issue with the bows her staff had popped on top of each giveaway car.

"She made her entire staff go re-bow each car the night before when she realised the bows weren't big enough," she says.

But the act was for good reason — the bows were an indicator of the biggest and the best — something the host always wanted to provide to her audiences and fans.

This is evidently why she chose to wear her now-iconic red suit on the big day. To emphasise to fans that what was happening for them was special.

"It does bring [it] together, you are going, 'Not only did Oprah give me a car, she gave me the fabric off her back," says Lederman.

King says Winfrey obsessed over the suit so much, she was analysing colour shades.

"I remember her looking at different shades of red to make sure it was the right shade of red," recalled King. "It was a whole big thing."

But when Oprah first told King she was planning to don the bright outfit, King wasn't so taken by the idea.

"You're not gonna wear that, are you?", she recalls saying.

"She said, 'It will be a great picture. It will be a great picture with the red,'" King adds. "She might have said something like, 'It won't be jarring to the eye.'"

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Details were important to Winfrey, particularly since the episode was proving to cost a small fortune.

On the day, Winfrey gave away nearly 300 brand-new Pontiac G6 sedans to everyone in her audience. This totalled at about $30,000 ($42,900) per person and US$7 million ($10 million) all up.

In the episode, Winfrey called the occasion "one of the happiest days of her life".

"It delights me, it makes me so happy, to see other people be happy and to be able to do that. That's one of the great joys of my life," she said.