Kitt - About The Automobile

About The Automobile

• When asked about KITT's whereabouts, David Hasselhoff indicates that, like Roy Rogers did to Trigger, KITT is now stuffed and mounted in Hasselhoff's living room. Although rumors persist, Hasselhoff has never owned an original Knight Rider vehicle. He did have two Trans-Ams - given to him and his then-wife - converted into KITT cars for use in singing tours. One of these was auctioned by a radio station in South Africa (current whereabouts unknown), the other was bought by Gerry Cottle's circus (touring Austria and Germany) before being sold to the former Cars of the Stars Motor Museum in Keswick, Cumbria, England. The museum closed in May 2011; the new home of "Knight Rider's KITT" (as the car was described) is not yet known.
• KITT's scanner is similar to that of Cylons from the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica. Glen A. Larson, the creator of both Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica has stated that the two shows have nothing else in common and to remove any fan speculation, he stated in the Season One Knight Rider DVD audio-comments, that he simply reused the scanning light for KITT because he liked the effect. In an episode of the original incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, the character Starbuck pilots a new type of Viper that has an A.I. installed into it named CORA, which was able to pilot the craft and verbally interact with a human pilot (similar to KITT).
• KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
• A total of 23 cars were made for use in filming the series. All except one of these cars survived until the show was axed; all except 5 of the remaining 22 cars were destroyed at the end of filming. Of the 5 that remained: 1 'hero' car was shipped to a theme park in Australia, but is now believed to be back in the US (whereabouts unknown); Universal kept one 'hero' car and one stunt car (and had a further replica made later) for use in the Entertainment Center display - the two originals have since been sold to a private collector in the US; another, a convertible (not to be confused with the 'Hasselhoff car' mentioned earlier), disappeared for a while before being sold to the former Cars of the Stars Motor Museum in Keswick, Cumbria, England (the owner is yet to announce the new home for this car); the fifth car is believed to be in private hands in the UK. One car is at the Dezer Collection, Miami, Florida.
• A press release in April 4, 2007, stated that "one of the four KITT cars used in production of the television series" was being put up for sale for $149,995 by Johnny Verhoek of Kassabian Motors, Dublin, California.
• A story in USA Today from December of 2007 states that a slain real estate developer and car aficionado Andrew Kissel was in possession of one of the surviving cars.