Every year, on the same day, a bunch of trolls pull one over on a bunch of apparently gullible idiots. But not today. Not this day. Today, we need to band together and expose those little goblins for who they really are - this will be for all the times they got our hopes up and smashed them at the stroke of midnight. With that, I ask, what are the worst automotive April Fool’s jokes you’ve seen so far?
Like the rickroll that apparently never gets old (even when Ted Cruz does it), April Fool’s day is the day that everyone anticipates with fervor then forgets the very second they come across a really juicy headline. The day prompts people to question the validity of pregnancy results, winning lottery numbers, and high-profile car launches almost universally. And every year, like clockwork, we’re still fooled.
My submission is from a small auto blog called Shifting Lanes, which got some traction on Facebook for posting what seemed to be breaking news that UK Top Gear had budget constraints and would be letting go of three of their presenters, leaving behind Evans, LeBlanc, Schmitz and The Stig. While I probably should’ve known that it was fake, something in the back of my brain, triggered by the dry, ad-copy-esque writing with just the right amount of quotes and truthiness, made me think otherwise.
The fact that the source of the apparent leak was listed as Disney with no link and the whole thing was filed under satire, I knew I’d been had. So I raise the question to my fellow gullible humans, what have been the worst and most egregious April Fool’s pranks that you’ve seen in the car world?