By Joel Strickland
For many of us car guys/girls we grew up with Knight Rider in the 80’s it was one of the best car shows on TV.
Michael Knight and his sidekick pal KITT the Knight Industries Two Thousand, the highly modified and tech-filled Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. The two were always out to help those in need or needed help justice. KITT is one of the most famous TV cars ever to appear onscreen. There have been countless replicas made of KITT over the years and there was even another TV series made in the early 2000s. The second Knight TV series that came out in 2008, while it was short-lived, it did use a different vehicle, KITT was based on a 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR and was voiced none other than Val Kilmer.
After the flop of the most recent TV series, there hasn’t been much talk of a reboot of the series, until now. News has appeared online that there is a new movie being developed based on the original TV series. The film will be produced by non-other than James Wan, director of the recent Aquaman film. No talk on cast or plot at this stage.
This brings us to the important question and today’s Hooniverse Asks, which car should be the base for the new KITT ? What car present or past, say like in the last 5 years, would you like to see as the new KITT?
Kamil Kaluski 
Jeff Glucker
New Ford Bronco, because a by the numbers reboot of something we’re vaguely nostalgic for but wouldn’t actually sit through for any length of time now seems entirely appropriate.
A De Lorean DMC. Powered by Mr. Fusion
No?
Mustang Mach E.
Already used a Mustang. Gotcha. And a GM product has been used.
…
Fisker Karma.
No? Won’t translate into any new Fisker Karma sales, right.
No, not Tesla. Tesla is never the right answer. The bad guys can drive Teslas, how ’bout that? But you gotta crash the shit out of them in ever more horrific ways. Just make the whole show about grinding Teslas to bloody pulp.
Well, okay you get what every chiseller scraping the bottom of the barrel for nickles and dimes gets:
Whatever electric vehicle Mopar is making, I can’t be bothered to look up if that’s even a thing. Go away and stop bothering me. Enjoy your Mopar.
It’s 2020 people. Why are we rebooting Knight Rider when what we should be rebooting in the Fast and Furious inclusive world is this. Think of the possibilities here. No one remembers it, well besides me, and you can fill out the cast anyway you want. It’s easy peezy , fresh and squeezy.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a7b07e42183058cd56de8690ca096bff483827946caddeb921d58fbd012386e.jpg
First and foremost, they should not attempt a reboot of Knight Rider.
That being said, if they do remake Kight Rider, the obvious choice would be a Tesla. Probably a Model S unless the next-gen Roadster exists by the time the show is greenlit.
A Hellcat Challenger kind of works, but it feels a bit closer to the failed prior reboot than it does the original.
They could also build a one-off “Trans Am” out of a gen 6 Camaro… you know, I don’t hate this idea, but it does forego the product placement money they might be able to get out of a manufacturer.
I was just about to say Tesla – beyond being swoopy and vaguely modern (and also built in California), you know Elon would be all over that.
Samcrac’s pizza car.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qN-yLTDkAS4/hqdefault.jpg
In a Teenage Mutant Nnja Turtles / Go-Bots / My Little Pony shared universe, because that’s how studios roll these days.
In the 80;s, KITT’s features were pretty futuristic. But now even mundane cars have video dashboards and smaht pahk. The new Knight Rider must have an onboard pizza oven in order for the show to have believable technology that you can’t buy.
Ugh, they’re so bereft of ideas that they’re resurrecting a stupid idea that wasn’t good and an abysmal failure as a reboot? Again?
I suggest they just use a 3rd gen ‘bird again – in it’s current condition
https://cs.copart.com/v1/AUTH_svc.pdoc00001/PIX134/5c6d7567-fead-437e-b550-92236c790ccf.JPG
I’m with you on this one. Just walk away, people. Campy shows like Knight Rider, The A Team, and Greatest American Hero may have worked in the 80s, but are difficult to pull off today.
Almost all TV in the 80s was directed at 12 year old boys, then videogames happened.
Very good point.
The other big TV watching demographic in the 80’s were people glorifying mind-altering chemicals.
Cheers was about a group of staff and regulars at a bar. Miami Vice glamorized the drug trade. And the No. 1 tv star of the decade–Cosby–where would he be without Roofies?
I dunno (Cosby excepted), pretty low key to half the stuff on Netflix, or most British pre-school kids TV shows from the 1960s to the present.
On the other hand, if it were a show set in the modern day starring someone wearing the Greatest American Hero suit while driving a very much worse-for-wear original KITT, with a plot revolving solely around constant, never quite successful pursuit of the A-Team, I’d watch it.
Why not just bring back William Katt driving KITT while your at it as well. Heck let’s go for a buddy team and put Dwight Schultz in the passenger seat for the comic relief. He can even make Star Trek references just to make the kids go nuts. Now Will Arnett was the original voice of KITT in the 2008 reboot and they even recorded him for it. Although that recording has been lost to the dusts of time. Val Kilmer came in at the last minute. Personally I think it was one of the things that killed the series. One that I still liked but that’s me. Will lost it since he was doing Chevy ads and hey didn’t want him voicing a Ford. Makes sense really. So let’s get him back voicing KITT again. The little kids will like this since they know his voice from LEGO stuff.
I thought about specifying Katt but then realized I’d watch it either way. Bonus points if the entire series, with or without Katt, never makes it entirely clear whether or not the suit, the car, and the pursuit are “real.” For this I figure the most effective (and cheapest) option is for KITT to speak only using prerecorded lines from the original series, sometimes in questionable but still arguably plausible context, and for the A-Team to be seen only in the form of their now equally decrepit van escaping into the distance at the end of each episode.
Getting a very live action Venture Bros feel to this.
I was really hoping for a gritty reboot with the A Team movie, especially since they had Liam Neeson.
Your pic is perfect for one hackneyed idea: The “look what we found buried in the dirt/warehouse/low-earth-orbit… it’s the original KITT! Let’s refit it and call it the Knight Industries THREE Thousand, or ‘K.I.T.T.'” (They won’t do that because it won’t sell new Pontiacs.)
Rebooting a borderline lame 80s series speaks to the creative bankruptcy of Hollywood so I guess the car should be something equally bereft of originality.. Anything in Guy Fieri’s garage would do.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FMKqF-HuTLE/maxresdefault.jpg
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The negativity towards the original series here misses the point: This wasn’t a show for grownups. 7 year old me though was excited to watch every single episode. The star status of Hasselhoff in the former GDR is no secret either. I don’t know if today’s seven year olds can even be interested in a TV show about a talking car…but I know that whenever I try to predict something lately, I seem to be off by a bit.
K.I.T.T. was cool in its age and time, but today, a sports car wouldn’t really connect with the general population, would it? I was first thinking about an EV SUV, but a more fitting plot for our time would be a Chinese Tesla clone. After gathering enough intelligence in the hands of a young, curly nerd, the car turns against its master and tries to make it to China. A typical Hollywood plot twist is ignoring the existence of email and FTP servers, so that’s tradition. After many episodes of nearly catching the car across the world, our heroes reunite and curly nerd reaches a sort of AI consciousness that makes the car choose The Free World over its master – despite exploding in the process.
Yes.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/images/car-reviews/first-drives/legacy/xpeng_p7.jpg
There could be another AI character called Morpheus, who trains our K.I.T.T. in VR …cut to a scene where everybody looks at meaningless green heiroglyphics scrolling across some screens and exclaims “MORPHEUS IS FIGHTING NIO”
I think you hit on why rebooting the series won’t work. You’re right– the original was indeed targeting kids (I personally was a loyal 9-year-old viewer who loved cars). But today’s kids don’t love cars. They love tech. Some teens are so disinterested in driving that they don’t even bother obtaining their license. So, the new series should be aimed at 40-somethings that still love cars.
Do 40 somethings watch car entertainment though? I would maybe watch it out of curiosity, but there’s no way for this to not be cheesy. Then they should go all in and give the whole thing some kind of The Office tone.
True that. I almost never watch television. In fact, I’ve probably watched less than 2 hours of non-news-network television in the past 3 months.
A De Lorean DMC. Powered by Mr. Fusion
No?
Mustang Mach E.
Already used a Mustang. Gotcha. And a GM product has been used.
…
Fisker Karma.
No? Won’t translate into any new Fisker Karma sales, right.
No, not Tesla. Tesla is never the right answer. The bad guys can drive Teslas, how ’bout that? But you gotta crash the shit out of them in ever more horrific ways. Just make the whole show about grinding Teslas to bloody pulp.
Well, okay you get what every chiseller scraping the bottom of the barrel for nickles and dimes gets:
Whatever electric vehicle Mopar is making, I can’t be bothered to look up if that’s even a thing. Go away and stop bothering me. Enjoy your Mopar.
Wait! I got it! The bad guys are Teslas. See, a nefarious intelligence has infected all the Teslas and wants to take over the world and oh I’ve just described Elon Musk… well anyway autopilot is just how they run down all their enemies.
How ’bout KITT Is a Harley Davidson LiveWire?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2543c568f625750380459430790a649f8733a5f2cca459223f221e3204025baf.jpg
It’s 2020 people. Why are we rebooting Knight Rider when what we should be rebooting in the Fast and Furious inclusive world is this. Think of the possibilities here. No one remembers it, well besides me, and you can fill out the cast anyway you want. It’s easy peezy , fresh and squeezy.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a7b07e42183058cd56de8690ca096bff483827946caddeb921d58fbd012386e.jpg
A C8 comes to mind for me.
1) Koenigsegg Gemera
2) McLaren Speedtail
3) Cloud Based K.I.T.T. with multiple Lotus chassis options : Evija (Hypercar) / Eletre (HyperSUV)