It doesn't get more '80s than David Hasselhoff. And it doesn't get any more awesome than his Knight Rider sidekick KITT. And now you've got the chance to own the Hoff's personal, fan-made, full-size, street-legal Knight Industries Two Thousand.
Few automobiles are as famous as its human costars--the Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee and James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, come to mind. But KITT was in a totally different realm. It just didn't have personality. It was a personality.
The Pontiac Firebird was nearly indestructible and had us screaming "Turbo Boost!" in our Superman PJs, but its artificial intelligence system was the star of the show, serving up physics defying feats along with cheesy one-liners.
This specific KITT was made by a Knight Rider fan Jennifer Catano, who gave the car to Hasselhoff as a gift. Catano started with a 1986 Pontiac Firebird and added scads of LEDs and digital gauges to ape the hero car. She also added Lamborghini-style scissor doors, a W-shaped steering wheel, and the iconic oscillating LEDs on the front grill. And if that wasn't enough, she embedded over 4,000 sound clips from the show to play on command.
The car is going on the auction block along with heaps of other Hasselhoff-related items. Along with KITT, the Hoff is auctioning off belongings like a Baywatch pinball machine and floor-length denim duster jacket. If the full-size KITT is too expensive, he’s also selling a KITT golf cart.
For now, Catano’s creation is as close as you can get to the car that was in front of the show’s cameras. While most other stunt-heavy shows like Dukes of Hazzard and Starsky & Hutch launched and crashed multiple stunt cars, Knight Rider used only four versions of the original KITT car, all of which are already spoken for. The car used for close-up shots was a 1982 Pontiac Trans/Am created by George Barris specifically for the show and it sold several years back for over $150,000.
