Knight Rider’s Original High-Tech Car K.I.T.T.

The novelty of a self-driving car has worn off in an era where reality exceeds vintage sci-fi shows like Knight Rider. The David Hasselhoff-driven action series was a seminal hit in the 1980s. Like many shows from that decade, it enlightened a generation of dreamers to turn fantasy into reality. From Tesla to Google, the new era of the automotive industry promises to make Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T. proud to be the original high-tech car.

“This looks like Darth Vader's bathroom," said Michael Knight in 1982, the first time he got into his new car. He was right that something was different. The car named K.I.T.T., an acronym for Knight Industries Two Thousand, was not a typical black Pontiac Trans Am. It was a blinking, talking, computerized dashboard that featured an auto pursuit, emergency eject, and X-ray surveillance systems. K.I.T.T. could turbojet into the air over obstacles like trucks and trains, and accelerate to 300 miles per hour. It also came with a super tough exterior. Most drivers were satisfied with AM/FM radio and air conditioning back then. But Michael Knight, played by actor David Hasselhoff, was no ordinary joyrider. He and K.I.T.T. battled the forces of evil on NBC-TV's Knight Rider from 1982 to 1986.

Could Super Car Kitt Exist?

The technology it would take for a car to really do all those stunts may exist, but Tesla has not announced an eject seat is coming any time soon. Knight Rider's creators made the impossible seem real. A top-notch stunt crew, 12 different look-alike stunt cars, and all kinds of camera tricks put K.I.T.T. through its amazing paces. Without this Hollywood help, K.I.T.T.'s wizardry might never have gotten off the ground. In many an episode of Knight Rider, K.I.T.T. retro rockets over a tractor-trailer or a train, then lands back on the ground.

"In a car K.I.T.T.'s size, there's no room for a jet engine big enough to send the car up," said Dr. Jearl Walker, professor of physics at Cleveland State University. "Furthermore, neither car nor driver would survive the impact when it comes in for its landing." Ouch! But the Knight Rider stunt team did several of these leaps every week, said Bob Ewing, the show's associate producer. The car and driver always survived.

Jump Cars

"We had two jump cars," said Ewing. The cars looked identical to K.I.T.T., but were made of lightweight fiberglass and contained high-powered engines. A stunt driver raced this fiberglass car at high speed toward a hidden ramp. That ramp sent the car up into the air, then down to another hidden ramp angled for a safe landing. The car leaped over real trains and trucks. The stunts were timed to the split second to make certain no one was in danger. "We never had an accident," Ewing said proudly. "If a stunt was too dangerous, we didn’t do it." How did the driver survive? Jump cars were specially built to survive leaps and stuntmen were tied into that car every which way one could imagine.

Self-Driving K.I.T.T.

Of course, sometimes K.I.T.T. didn’t even have a driver. When Michael was in trouble, he simply radioed his four-wheeled sidekick on what looked like an Apple Watch. K.I.T.T. got into its auto-cruise mode and raced to the rescue. Back then the producer’s believed, "You'd need a structure the size of a truck to hold a computer large and fast enough to make the decisions K.I.T.T. makes while auto cruising down the block.” Today we get daily updates on the hundreds of thousands of hours Google is spending testing self driving cars, guided by computers that can fit in the dashboard.

Back in the 1980s the Knight Rider crew got around this question of self driving cars by using two tricks that made it look like K.I.T.T. was driving itself. In some scenes, explained Bob Ewing, K.I.T.T. was filmed so you couldn’t tell that the car was actually being towed by a truck. In other scenes, where a towing cable might have been visible, K.I.T.T. had a backseat driver. The driver was hidden in the back seat behind dark glass. The glass acted as a kind of two-way mirror. The driver could see out, but the camera and the audience couldn’t see in.

K.I.T.T.'s Special Effects

Some K.I.T.T. effects were easy. K.I.T.T. was supposed to be able to go up to 300 miles per hour. To make the car appear to go this fast, K.I.T.T.'s creators showed the speedometer spinning higher and higher. Then, they switched to a shot of the car zooming down the road at high speeds, but not near 300 miles per hour. A car going that speed couldn't keep the tires on its wheels if it tried to stop abruptly, which K.I.T.T often did. It'd be like somebody's sneakers getting caught as they were running, the sneakers would stop and the person would keep going. But K.I.T.T. didn’t worry about stopping, or about fender benders, bullets, or crashing through walls. That's because the car's exterior was supposedly made of super-tough material. Such metals exist, but very few are light enough to be used on even today's high-tech cars.

Knight Rider 2000

David Hasselhoff briefly returned to the driver’s seat in the made for TV, Knight Rider 2000. In the future, viewed from the 1991 writer’s perspective, guns are outlawed and the criminal element are sentenced to cryogenic freezing for their sentences. Not a bad view of the future, unfortunately Y2K was kind of a dud. Michael Knight is asked to come back and battle a group of gun toting baddies. His only problem is that his super car K.I.T.T. has long since been deactivated. K.I.T.T. is not to pleased with his friend Michael Knight for allowing him to be turned off. But the two quickly bond and get back into action.

Knight Rider 2008

In 2008, Knight Rider was passed briefly to a new generation. Justin Bruening starred as Michael Knight's estranged son Mike Traceur. Unfortunately, by 2008, the notion of a sidekick talking Trans Am didn't seem to excite a coming of age generation of millennials. Ford Motor Company sponsored the show and it aired with great fanfare. Much to its fan's disappointment, NBC did not renew the show for a second season. The one saving grace for the show was the voice of Val Kilmer as the new K.I.T.T. Top Gun's Ice Man voicing an artificially intelligent car would have been enough for me to stay tuned for a second season.

Knight Rider Returns

David Hasselhoff has been public with his wishes for a return of Knight Rider. “I see it as more of a continuation of the TV series, and they can add new characters or whatever, but they should basically keep the same feeling of the show. There are so many people out there that will absolutely freak out and love it,” he explained. “It would be Michael Knight kind of coming out of retirement with his son and having adventures around the world, and doing a Fast and Furious with the Knight Rider car. How cool does that sound? How cool could it be?”

If the studios agree, Hasselhoff looks forward to climbing into a new K.I.T.T., “I’d love to turn Knight Rider into a real franchise,” he added.