The original 20 or so cars disappeared-lost in a vast parking lot full of replicas, or worse, unceremoniously crushed in a studio lot. Some hit the marketplace, sold as 'authentic' by either misinformed sellers or nefarious con men. Die-hard knerds (as KITT fans sometimes refer to themselves on message boards) built replicas en masse, allowing themselves to own and drive fragments of their childhood memories.Įventually, those replicas far outnumbered the cars that were used on the show. Toys flew off the shelves.Īfter the show was canceled in 1986, the car continued to rev in the popular imagination and became a collector's fetish object, the kind of thing bored celebrities and sleazy white-collar businessmen buy to show off. The car (and the show) was a hit, thanks in part to its 300 mph max speed, flamboyant attitude and about 120 assorted superpowers, including Super Pursuit Mode, missiles, a grappling hook, high tensile reflectors, a laser gun and a laser printer (maybe Knight needed to print out his résumé?).

No offense to the Hoff, but KITT was clearly the star. After nearly 30 seconds of close-up shots of the car's features-essentially, a moody car commercial-it finally introduces Hasselhoff. Knight Rider's intro-a Pontiac Trans Am blazing across the desert to a strobing synth beat-somehow skirts the line between extreme camp and retro cool. Feeny from Boy Meets World, for those too young) played the car. David Hasselhoff starred as former detective Michael Knight, and an uncredited William Daniels (Benjamin Braddock's father in The Graduate, for those too old to remember the show Mr. Knight Rider (1982) was ostensibly a remake of The Lone Ranger, replacing Silver the horse with a talking car (see: '80s, cocaine).

The show was created by pop-TV producer Glen Larson, who was responsible for a staggering number of hit TV shows in the '70s and '80s, including McCloud, Magnum, P.I. The nexus of this trope, where all of the different flying car styles meet in one sleek-and-somewhat-dated muscle car chassis, was Knight Rider's KITT. This fad touched all genres, whether futuristic ( Back to the Future, Blade Runner), comedic ( The Blues Brothers) or Southern-fried ( Dukes of Hazzard). The era that popularized cocaine, shady banking and dementia-addled presidents also gave us Chekhov's car: If there's a Camaro in the first act, it absolutely must go off a cliff in the third act.Īnd not just cliffs-cars were regularly launched off ramps and freeway overpasses or lifted with hover technology. At least, that's what TV and film would have us believe. Cars couldn't stay on the ground in the '80s.

Knight rider 2000 theme