Well in fairness the car-into-space on the first Falcon Heavy launch thing was only half-meme. New prototype rockets do usually lift some inert mass about the same as a satellite, to be able to see how the rocket actually flies with a satellite without risking an actual expensive satellite. It's usually a block of concrete. That rocket was going to be launched regardless, and it was going to have a heavy test payload anyway to get the math right, so why not chuck a car into the asteroid belt? It had the side benefit of being something way less dangerous than a solid concrete block if anything went wrong and the whole thing had come crashing back down to Earth.