KNIGHT INDUSTRIES 2000 - Car Of The Week 10/8/2015
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KITT was an awesome car, and somehow the union of absolute technological wizardry with William Daniels' dry, sarcastic voice made it just that much better. 
Love this vehicle!
The final season SPM refit was my favorite version of KITT.
IIRC the reason they ended up with a Trans Am for the base car was that GM had a train derailment and those cars involved were sold for pennies on a dollar since they could not be sold to the public as new automobiles- insurance totaled them out..
The final season SPM refit was my favorite version of KITT.
IIRC the reason they ended up with a Trans Am for the base car was that GM had a train derailment and those cars involved were sold for pennies on a dollar since they could not be sold to the public as new automobiles- insurance totaled them out..
My avatar is very suitable for this topic, a screenshot from Knight Rider season 3 Halloween Knight. 
I still enjoy watching those episode. The car looked great and still does...and that voice!
Even after all these years it still looks pretty modern.
I still enjoy watching those episode. The car looked great and still does...and that voice!
Even after all these years it still looks pretty modern.
Anyone remember the "K.I.T.T. Kit"?
There was an ad (found it on YouTube) back in the day with the Hoff standing in front of K.I.T.T. showing a fold-out sheet with vehicle schematics on it. It was a promotional thing for one of the the new seasons, IIRC. I actually got it and it was pretty impressive (for the time) for tech-heads like me. I think I still have it somewhere buried in all my Trek stuff. Team Knight Rider has scans available for download here.
There was an ad (found it on YouTube) back in the day with the Hoff standing in front of K.I.T.T. showing a fold-out sheet with vehicle schematics on it. It was a promotional thing for one of the the new seasons, IIRC. I actually got it and it was pretty impressive (for the time) for tech-heads like me. I think I still have it somewhere buried in all my Trek stuff. Team Knight Rider has scans available for download here.
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For me the only real negative was in the layout of the control panel/dash board. Have you noticed the button that Michael Knight hits multiple times a show, often in an emergency, the Turbo button is right next to the button he should almost never hit and then only under very specific conditions- the Left Side Ejector Seat. I can just imagine during a frantic chase scene and suddenly he is flying up and over KITT instead of jumping over that obstacle..
The steering wheel looked cool but it's impractical. Sometimes you need a full wheel to grip when you make those turns.
I'm still trying to track down an old commercial - probably the first - showing some guy in a jumpsuit talking about the supercar and how much better it is than a car that "jumps over puddles" or something like that, and he walks in front of a General Lee Dodge Charger with a "00" painted on the door instead of the correct "01", as a clear slam on Dukes of Hazzard. I remember the lights on K.I.T.T. were moving differently, from the center going to the outer edges of the scanner, as opposed to the more "Cylon" side-to-side scan.
That's the same kind of wheel that Korben Dallas' taxi used in The Fifth Element...
KITT was an awesome car, and somehow the union of absolute technological wizardry with William Daniels' dry, sarcastic voice made it just that much better.
One of my most vivid memories of the series was a scene where the bad guys managed to trap KITT in a garage and get him up on the rack and the girl of the show happened upon him and he asked her to get him down. She was surprised enough that he was talking, so the request for help threw her completely off balance, and when she was like, "Get you down?" he said in that tone: "My dear, I am a car, not an airplane."
137th Gebirg said:
I got the version of that from the show where Michael had to turn KITT's turbo booster into a ramjet after they got beat down in the desert. The big deal was that the promotional item in your hand was the same thing Michael was basing his repairs on. (Of course, you couldn't actually build a turbo boosted trans am with them. Too bad...)
Richard Baker said:
I have mixed feelings about Super Pursuit Mode. It was cool to see KITT travel as fast as a prop plane but I didn't necessarily like him looking like one when he did it.
What bugged me about Michael pushing buttons is that there were times when he shouldn't have had to, like when he tells KITT "Get me Devon." KITT responds to voice commands and can anticipate Michael's intentions so he should just be able to say that, and KITT would raise Devon and take over driving while Michael turns to the display screen. But every time Michael said that he'd reach up himself and punch like five or six buttons on a ceiling panel that you never see for no apparent reason.
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KITT was an awesome car, and somehow the union of absolute technological wizardry with William Daniels' dry, sarcastic voice made it just that much better.
One of my most vivid memories of the series was a scene where the bad guys managed to trap KITT in a garage and get him up on the rack and the girl of the show happened upon him and he asked her to get him down. She was surprised enough that he was talking, so the request for help threw her completely off balance, and when she was like, "Get you down?" he said in that tone: "My dear, I am a car, not an airplane."
Did they ever explain, on the show, where KITT's voice came from? Did Daniels ever appear in a live-action role?
Similar to Time Trax, where it is revealed that the "model" for SELMA's hologram was based on Darien Lambert's mother.
IIRC, part of the backstory (though never explained) was that Knight Industries was an aerospace firm, so KITT's steering wheel was meant to evoke the yoke of an airplane. From a practical filming point of view, the incomplete steering wheel probably made it easier to get shots of the awesome dashboard.
Daniels never appeared on the show in person; his reading of KITT's dialogue was always dubbed in later. No explanation was ever given for why KITT's voice sounded that way. He and Hasselhoff didn't even meet for the first time until the 1982 NBC Christmas party.
I was a Firebird nut as a kid (driving my own '79 from 1984-87) so this was must-see TV for 4 years.
Of course, by the time KR was cancelled I was in love with Crockett's white Ferrari 512 Testarossa over on Miami Vice.
I always thought the steering wheel in Kitt was a precursor of modern-day Formula 1 wheels.
Of course, by the time KR was cancelled I was in love with Crockett's white Ferrari 512 Testarossa over on Miami Vice.
I always thought the steering wheel in Kitt was a precursor of modern-day Formula 1 wheels.
That was supposed to be a deliberate shout out to the competition. It comes from a season one episode.
awesome classic car and tv show,brought the diecast models a few months ago.
I haven't watched an episode of Knight Rider in donkey's years but I did always have a soft spot for KITT. I also liked KARR 
did every 80's American TV drama feature an evil version of the vehicle/cast? I remember a bad A-Team (minus a Murdock because they didn't know about him) and Redwolf, the evil version of Airwolf (complete with "laser") that was actually rubbish. That was one of the worst dogfights ever on that show, Airwolf dodged everything Redwolf threw at it, then just turned around and blew RW out of the sky as if it was a static target!
did every 80's American TV drama feature an evil version of the vehicle/cast? I remember a bad A-Team (minus a Murdock because they didn't know about him) and Redwolf, the evil version of Airwolf (complete with "laser") that was actually rubbish. That was one of the worst dogfights ever on that show, Airwolf dodged everything Redwolf threw at it, then just turned around and blew RW out of the sky as if it was a static target!
Yeah, the "evil twins" thing was a popular artificial drama trope during that decade. Hell, even "Datalore" was in 1988.
Knight Rider kind of jumped on the "evil twin" trope with relish, though. You had two episodes with KARR, two with Garthe Knight (both of which were two-hour eps, so in syndication that became four), and the S4 premiere involved the villain abducting Devon and creating a fake Devon via advanced plastic surgery who would then go in and undermine Michael's mission.