1982 KITT From "Knight Rider" - Jay Leno's Garage

wow i'm in the actual night rider car how about that a very special car an iconic car if you're a member of a certain generation this is the actual car used in the tv show knight rider not a replica not one that looks like it the actual one and uh there are people that just covered these cars there's a whole club it's unbelievable i was a little old i was in my 30s when knight rider started so i would see it occasionally but i think if you were especially a young boy between 8 and 14 years old oh my god this was the car that did it for you well those kids are growing up now one of them's here today joe hooth joe come on in buddy good to see you hey jay congratulations you're the owner of this vehicle yes i'm the owner okay and obviously you were a huge fan as a kid yeah i've liked the show since i was uh five years old really i was a little kid i mean with the first time it came on were you just transfixed did it grow over time what was it no i mean it was from the first time i saw it you know seeing an indestructible car that could talk jump over things it was just it just captured my imagination yeah and so you somehow managed to find one or find the one well i didn't do it alone right yeah i have my partner in crime my fellow knight rider historian right aj palmer in helping me as well is that aj yeah this is aj my friend jay it's truly a pleasure good to see you good to see you thank you you live where i live in iowa in iowa yesterday des moines iowa yes and you're pittsburgh pennsylvania pennsylvania okay when this convention rolls into town you know sparks are going to fly we have a big night riding convention and there is a night rider convention isn't there there are several yes every year there have been several over the years yes so it's not just the car it's also the tv show now he's enamored with the car were you just the car or was it the show well i'm also was enamored with both the car and the show okay i'd have to confess you know a little bit more of the car right but certainly the story that one man can make a difference the hero yeah but it was both the man and the machine knight rider is a true story isn't it it's based on an actual thing so one man made it that would be michael knight that was that's right he's the only man that made it have either you ever met david hasselhoff yes very briefly he has i have not yes i've spoken with him all of 30 seconds over the course of probably four different meetings so 10 seconds here attention really yeah just hey get out of here hey get away it's that guy again and he probably doesn't know as much about the shows as you do correct he definitely doesn't no no i wouldn't want him i wouldn't want him to hear him say this because i mean you know he was the star he was on set filming every day but i don't know that he would ever care to pay attention to the level of detail about what was done with some of the cars behind the scenes that we would and we might have known you know at least three quarters of that stuff at one point but then forgot about it because it's not that important now if if you two had a trivia contest who would win do you think oh boy that's a toy you've never tried that we should try that oh boy no just to go through every episode who was the guest and you know guest stars and everyone right yeah for the most part yeah for the most part gina davis jason bateman we kind of we kind of look at this as kind of a team effort because this i i know there's i know about half of the stuff right and he knows about half of this stuff and of course there's an over overlap so we kind of if somebody's going to ask us hard questions we kind of should both combine our powers yeah i'm going to take a wild guess single man are you yes yes wild guess right but you're married i'm married and your wife is very beautiful thank you thank you she must be very patient to put up with her she is she's she's wonderful yes okay yes so and where is the big convention every year is it in des moines or where is it well no this year we have uh we have we're bringing this car to a car show right there's a well that's not the night rider it's not the night there's a show in chicago that this car will be up but the night rider car show is in atlanta every year and why atlanta well there's there's some guy there that's about as crazy as we are who's taking it upon himself to have his own expense actually organize a get-together of replica cars occasionally an original shows up right certainly a lot of fans like us that bring memorabilia and things like that it's like a shelby show with a shelby replica shop but then there's always one or two realtors yes right exactly yeah absolutely exactly do you have a car also yes what now what car do you have i have another one of the surviving originals oh okay so that and how many were there they used 20 in the show they're approximately approximately twenty thousand give or take one or two but not much more than that but there's five that have survived to five so between the two of us we've got two of the five okay so you could pretty much hold the christmas party in a photomat booth absolutely yeah all right all right sounds good okay what facts can you tell us about the car that you know that maybe he might not be familiar with or are there any i don't know that there aren't any that he would know what's the most obscure fact that you have on this car well let's see we could go into the dates that the the stuntman actually put some of the modifications on this car so you know that as well yeah i don't know exactly what they did but definitely for the episodes from which they did that since this is a car show let's first talk about what we have here we have an 84 transient is it a trans am it's actually it's actually a base firebird believe it or not this one this is the base firebird this specific one the other ones that they use were trans am okay this was a base firebird that they dressed up to be a trans am okay so if someone were to ask you know what was kit from knight rider the most accurate answer as far as we're concerned is kit was in 1982 83 and 84 firebird or trans am right okay all of the above okay now is this the most original least modified of all the cars would you say i would say yeah this is the one that's closest to as it left universal it looks like aj disagrees with that no well it depends on how you're asking that question so no i don't disagree with it um this one has probably been modified the least since its use on the show right but it has a whole another history after the show so each of these cars have multiple histories because some of them were used for tour after the show was over with to continue to promote the show now the engine that was the fictitious power plant in the car for the tv show was what a turbine turbine engine yeah so it was a mysterious turbine engine but it's a turbine engine that has a turbo on it which doesn't make it that's right so you see that's where the hollywood magic comes in the kids get to use their imagination and the adults that say that can't work i can't take this seriously and tell me about some of the other features what is the laser something what is that where there's a laser tracking scope oh lazy there was also you know lasers for cutting things and there were lasers for oh i see fending off the bad guys in some cases even the evil car itself i believe the laser was used twice for this yes that was an evil car oh yes yes cars literally called car called car with a k okay of course all right now you guys seem to have fun with this was it obviously there was a time you took it really seriously or maybe you still well i think we probably still do yeah probably i mean any anyone that would you would would would say these guys are just way too serious about right and they're right we're guilty right but we do have a lot but we do it because it's so much it's fun right yeah now when this subject comes up do the women just leave the room unless they're unless they're true night rider fans themselves which does happen unless it does happen it does there are so many there are some some ladies come to our shows and they're just as much fans as any other restaurant really yeah well that's good that's good i'm all for equality this it just makes me laugh as are we i think it's funny how can we this says what the basic 305 yeah okay yes stock transmission no it's got the they replaced the 700 r4 transmission with the turbo 350 three speed automatic and why did they do that aj um because that transmission would hold up a lot more under tremendous amount of abuse than the factory what was it joe the 700 in this one so that this one would take a tremendous amount of abuse and the stunt guys of course would beat the crap out of it right you know throw it in reverse real fast 180 go forward you're just doing all kinds of crazy stuff for it so did this car have any special effects on it that weren't just for looks okay you got the light in the front that it flashes yes does that only flash when the car is talking no it's it's it's it's flashing supposedly as far as the storyline yeah when the car is consciously looking around and scanning its environment you'll have to write it because i'm a novice no i'm not he doesn't even know i promise you jay i'm not that much yes okay so is there so it's basically a stock pontiac for the most part for the most part but is there anything else on it that would aid it in uh yes so the stunt guys uh jack gill was the stunt coordinator of uh knight rider as well as a number of others yeah yeah he uh put a brake line lock system in the car and what that does is that holds the front brakes so you can spin the correct it'll either hold the front brakes on right so that you could you know when you so you could spin the rear wheels and then release the front or the opposite where it would you press on the hydraulic brake and it would stop the rears but not the front to give you full steering control which makes 180s a heck of a lot more fun oh okay i gotcha okay and and so there's there's that and then the uh the subframe of the car the unibody wasn't as strong as the stunt guys wanted it to be so they welded a bunch of stuff to brace it up now what was the highest top speed on the tv show this car ever achieved do you know that 80 90. no no no fictional yeah yes well it is a turbine after all it is and it would corner as fast as a camera could speed it up really wow so okay so about 300 miles an hour yeah pretty to find some physics in the process there's no question about it okay all right well very good i mean it was fun no it's it's fascinating now uh joe and i are going to take a ride because i wouldn't subject anybody to this back seat i don't think you'd no and i i honestly don't blame you for that as much as i would love to join i honestly don't blame you because i've sat in that back seat as well as others and it's not comfy how many people show up to the conventions i'm curious anywhere from 50 to well it depends on the venue right so 50 100 somewhere in that range do they come from all over the world all over the world new zealand germany all over the world england germany the biggest because david well you know i i think he has had a tendency to be more famous particularly for his singing career in europe right right okay so but the show did play in germany absolutely i think it still does in some places from what i know well okay all right all right joe you're ready to go for right that's good this will be i've never actually driven a night rider car so all right jay thank you my friend jay pleasure thank you thank you thank you jeff joe let's go all right okay before we start the car let's turn on our gauges and what does kit stand for anyway night industries 2000 okay okay good you got it now this is the last speed we reached 200 281 miles an hour okay yes on the 405 freeway no problem we have normal cruise auto cruise pursuit mode yeah you've got a working compass on the far left hand side oh it tells you what direction you're going yeah well you can get that in the car now absolutely my favorite is this it's not even a a a flat screen it's just an old tv set it's a it's an old nine inch color tv yes wow and it has a phone wow it does it's got a phone it's got uh you've got your oil slick right smoke release smoke release yeah turbo boost turbo boost yes cool um there's so many gauges there i know satellite communications auxiliary yeah oil pressure you kind of have all the gauges this is your tachometer well i say let's get going all right we've got criminals to apprehend all right let's get this baby out of here wow i'm in the actual night rider car how about that now tell me about the features here there's an awful lot of things going on you've got uh of course the artificial intelligence well yes of course turbo boost got ourselves an oil slick in case you want to take out the well that's james bond he had that it's james bond yeah the ejector seat the ejector seat yeah don't eject me out please so those kind of been around for a while and just the fact that there's a phone in your car can you imagine being able to make phone calls from your car i know it's unbelievable it's very futuristic now see i had seen knight rider as a kid but you're way younger than me i was probably god i was in my 30s when that show was on the air you were probably what 13 or something like that take about 10 years off of that three i was born in uh 1981. the show premiered in 1982. wow so i uh you know i i would catch it in reruns after all after it was uh obviously you were transfixed by this guy i was there was something about something about the car you know doing all these fantastic stunts and uh never getting damaged it just struck a chord with me i mean tell me about the journey about trying to find the car you live in pennsylvania right so yeah so i live in pennsylvania you know i've i've loved the show my entire life that in the early 2000s i actually wrote a book on the show called night rider legacy you wrote a book yeah i did write it's a it's a thick 400 page 400 page book i uh i was in college at the time and i went out and i um i got interviews with a lot of the cast and crew wow and uh and did you ever meet david hasselhoff i've never i've never met david hasselhoff um and i couldn't even get an interview for the book with him so wow but uh you know it was always about the car more than right rather than the people right but uh so so i wrote this book so i kind of got my name out there and then uh you know in 2004 the universal studios was releasing the box set so they came out and they interviewed me i'm on the bonus features for the box set of wow so um you know it kind of snowballed from there and then uh in uh 2008 i got wind that this car which had been sitting uh unused at universal for about 15 years was uh it was sent to a junkyard now why do you think that was i mean here's a movie studio that understands the heritage they put out a box set they know people are interested in the car why wouldn't they have it on display what am i missing so they well they did have it on display so when the when the show ended in 1986 uh universal studios took uh this car and they retrofitted it to put on their in their theme park they they had a display over the water and um because you know when this car was used on the series it actually didn't have this full dash in it it was one of the it was actually a throwaway stunt car right and uh it had a it didn't have t-tops it had a solid roof and the studio put fake strips on the roof to make it look like t-tops for the you know the drive box yeah yeah so uh when the show ended uh universal uh wanted to you know put a car up on their theme park display so they took this car they had the t-tops added to it and then they took their insert dash so what you're looking at here this is the dash that sat on a sound stage that they would film all the close-ups so universal took the the uh they put it in the dash they put it in this car then they put it uh over the water at universal studios theme park and uh it was there for uh ten years and uh guests to the park would come in they'd get in the car there'd be a guy kind of off stage that would pretend to be the car you know he'd talk to them they were the car had mics and speakers right so they'd pretend to have a conversation with kit so tens of thousands of people have sat in this car actually just the drive pad it's not too bad the it's got the turbo 350 the three-speed transmission in it well that's my favorite thing turbo's one of those words like when you buy a wife a hat a hair dryer it's usually like pink or white right it says hair dryer when you buy the male version it's the same hair dryer because it's black it's got turbo hair exactly yeah so like super it's a macho yeah the car only has i don't know 500 original miles on it is that right yeah they just uh you know they take it out to the film shoot they'd do what they needed to do they loaded back up on a car carrier and and that was it there is no tougher life for a car than being a movie car oh my god i'll tell speed up i'll tell you what jay if you were to put this up on a rack and look underneath it you'd see uh you know that you'd see welds you'd see tears in the sheet metal yeah you'd see uh twists rivets the whole rear quarter of this car was uh is body filler pretty much you know a friend of mine had a citroen sm okay and some movie studio wanted to borrow it and you know they put at a good price like 500 a day or 800 yeah whatever it was and my friend said if you damage it you know you're gonna have to repair they said oh yeah we'll place a difference so to get a shot the cameraman or somebody took a sawzall and cut out a huge chunk of dash and put it in and my friend what do you go just send us a bill but there's no bill i mean you can't fix that right i mean it's not what and then we come no we'll pay for it yeah you know right that's why people always go do you lend your car to movies no right that'd be crazy to lend you exactly yeah there's actually a funny story so right underneath your feet uh the floorboards have a bunch of holes drilled in them yeah and as as we've been told the story goes the little kids would get so excited to see kit yeah that they would wet their pants wow so they they needed some drainage yeah yeah oh that's nice so uh yeah so the car you know the car had a hard life um on uh on set but then it almost had an equally hard life you know yeah for ten years with all these people getting in and out of it oh man so yeah you're married yes i met your wife beautiful girl yes thank you all right how does on that first date you know i wrote a book on knight rider i i i share your passion or she just tolerated she is one of the most understanding people i know and uh that's called she tolerates it yes and uh i can't say that i i broke that news store on our first date but uh we've been married 12 years now so she's accepted it i hope at this point you know one time i was on the letterman show and knight rider was the hot show and i was doing it i was doing jokes about knight rider and uh i told david that the my favorite episode was michael knight's evil twin yes and i said i knew it was his real evil twin because that twin couldn't act either as a hostile that's furious oh i'm sure he was so so i'm an nbc function you know one of these things was like and he's huge he's like six four yeah so you see him come in and say where's leno and i don't he sees me and i'm running i'm trying to hide from him right and i'm just ducking around corners and he's chasing me he was very nice it was actually very funny right it just it just made me laugh you take it so serious there's a story where um hasselhoff called his dad and said um hey dad did you see that episode where i i played the evil twin and his dad said yeah i think the evil twin is a better actor than you are so same yeah same thing so yeah you got it from all sides this car is one of five that have survived wow have you gotten together with other michael knight car owners yeah well of the original cars how do you find out who's the most original well no so my my buddy uh aj palmgren who um he actually he and i work together to secure this car but he owns one of the other originals he owns the very first one ever built by universal and then is he jealous of this one i don't i don't think so no because are you jealous of his it's you know would you rather have that first one yeah there's there's something about uh the first one the original absolutely yeah absolutely but uh you know this car out of out of the five surviving this is one is has been modified the least bite right by uh you know anyone else so the other ones have been some of them have been over restored right um customized so this one is as it was at universal now are you a car guy other than a night rider car are there other cars that you covet not as much as this car no not as much as this car i mean you know i'd love to get myself a first generation dodge viper you know different cars like that but uh you know it again goes back to my childhood you know that car came out in what was it 92 92. uh so i was 11 years old and and i remember my dad taking me to a new car show auto show and i saw that car and something again something clicked i can't explain it yeah so i've always thought man it'd be nice to have you know the original viper red viper yeah well let me ask you another question this seems to me you love the car must be fun to drive why do you not put it on the road you don't have a red flag for the road using no no how come well a number of reasons so first of all if something happened to it it's irreplaceable right um but you know looking underneath the uh the car there's there's studio markings and studio modifications underneath the car that could easily be destroyed over time if the car was subjected to you know road grime and water and whatnot because you know each one of the cars they had 16 to 20 of these cars and they needed to know which car to have on set for which day so they numbered the cars individually how do you insure this car what value you put on i use hagerty and uh yeah hagerty's very good and they understand what it is and how it's being used now so we've been very happy with hagerty but um yeah it's it's it's uh insured in the six figures which i think is fair but yeah um and you know it gets it's covered with uh show and paddock use yeah so it's it's it's uh not too bad but are these the original tires that were on 85. they are the original eagle gt tires from might be able to get 1982. of those if they're repopping they are but they're like 500 a piece so and these still have they have great tread they're they're a little stiff the the rubber has hardened quite a bit i'd love to see this car uh end up in a museum that'll take care of it one day so i'm hoping that that'll be the case it drives nice drives like a transaction yeah what would it be i think it was a stock trans am if you didn't know but you know it's interesting because when you're as into the show as i am you can actually tell the different cars seeing the scene you can tell which cars they use right because it's kind of like a thumbprint no two are the same right so this was the second to last car ever built for the show out of the 20 or so they had well i want to thank joe and aj i have learned more about knight rider than i ever wanted to know but it's hilarious i mean this is a car that is so much a part of a certain generation's childhood you know i i missed it i was in my 30s when i was on but i was still kind of interested in the car but these guys it's it's hilarious and there's thousands of them and it's just fun to to kind of get a chance to drive a car like this that you'd seen on tv and you thought well i'll never get to see that in person and it shows up here at the garage and and meet the man who owns it so joe thank you very much thank you jeff thank aj for me well i hope you learned something about the tv show i certainly did more than i wanted to know [Music] hahaha

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 3,164,701

Rating: 4.8559151 out of 5

Keywords: Knight Rider, KITT, Joe Huth, AJ Palmgren, David Hasselhoff, movie cars, TV cars, KARR, talking car, Universal Studios, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: 3YKtQrYNKPg

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 01 2018