Knight Rider KITT: 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

The original KITT is a modified 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. The name is Knight Industries Two Thousand. Knight Rider, created by Glen A. Larson, premiered on NBC on 26 September 1982 and ran until 4 April 1986. David Hasselhoff played Michael Knight. William Daniels voiced the car and asked not to be credited. The red light in the nose is a scanner. The armour, the guns and the jump are the script.

A Ford Mustang with a scanner is a different car. The 2008 reboot calls its Shelby GT500KR the Knight Industries Three Thousand. The 1991 film Knight Rider 2000 moved the processor into a Knight 4000 built on a Dodge Stealth. This page is the 1982 Trans Am. The same model year, without the scanner, is the car in Smokey and the Bandit III.

1982 Trans Am Under the Scanner

The table is the production car Pontiac actually sold in 1982, plus the few modifications that are documented on the picture cars. Anything the episode treats as a weapon belongs in the fiction column, not in the spec sheet.

The Scanner Is a Light, Not a Weapon

Larson wanted the car to have a heartbeat. He had already put a sweeping red eye on the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, and he asked Scheffe for the same idea on the nose of a Trans Am. The show’s name for the bar is the Anamorphic Equalizer. In the fiction it sees infrared and X-ray and tracks a car for ten miles. On the stage it is a lamp that sweeps, and it re-uses the Cylon scanner sound.

The Pontiac nose was lengthened a little so the bar would sit in it. The pilot and the first-season titles still contain brief shots of the earlier nose, before that extension. The scanner does not run along the sill. A light bar down the rocker is a later costume, not the 1982 car.

Scheffe also built the dashboard. Only the principal studio car had a working version of it. Close-ups of the voice box were shot on a sound stage with a mock-up. Some stunt cars carried a dummy dash so a wide shot would not show an empty cockpit. Universal took over the later modifications. Pontiac design chief John Schinella’s side of the job was to keep the car recognisable as a Trans Am. A black Trans Am was already a star. Bandit had made sure of that.

What the Episodes Invented

The shell is called Tri-Helical Plasteel 1000, or a Molecular Bonded Shell, and the script gives it a frame tolerance of 223,000 lb. Turbo boost is a pair of rockets behind the front wheels that, in the story, throw the car over a truck at more than 200 mph. None of that is on a 1982 order form. The cars that jumped were stunt cars. When Hasselhoff appears to be driving and the car is in motion, it was usually being towed, with Daniels’ lines played to him through the stereo. Daniels recorded after the picture was cut. He has said an episode of dialogue took him about fifty minutes.

The voice credit is the cleanest fact in the whole build. Daniels was on St. Elsewhere. He asked not to be listed. The episodes still carry his performance.

How Many Cars, and Who Built Them

Count the fleet the way the paperwork counts it, in layers.

Hagerty’s account of the Pontiac placement says the first order was three loaded black 1982 Trans Ams, signed through Bill Hoglund after the sales side had already started the work. A separate production description, the one repeated from Newsweek’s set reporting, splits the early cars into four jobs: a hero car for close work, a jump car, a car with a driver hidden so the cockpit could look empty, and a car for ground stunts. More Trans Ams were bought later, some of them for a dollar once the show was using them up.

The figure that floats free of those early memos is 23 cars built for filming, with a guess of 25, and five said to have survived: a hero and a stunt car kept for a time by Universal, a stunt car that went to World Expo ’88 in Brisbane, a convertible that passed through the Cars of the Stars museum and on to the Dezer Collection, and a fifth believed to be in a private collection in Britain. That is one published inventory. It is not a factory serial list. A right-hand-drive car built later for Hasselhoff’s “Jump in My Car” video is a different object again.

George Barris did not shape the original nose. That is Scheffe. Barris did build the convertible and the Super Pursuit Mode cars that arrived once the series needed a new silhouette. Hasselhoff’s autobiography, as quoted in later anniversary pieces, puts Barris on the first bodywork and prices General Motors’ modification at $18,000. Wikipedia’s series page prices the customised car at $100,000 in 1982 dollars. Publish both, and say which sentence they come from. They are not two ways of writing the same invoice.

Where Are the Original KITT Cars Today?

Counts differ by source. Hagerty says Pontiac’s first order was three hero Trans Ams, joined by about a dozen stunt cars bought from a train-derailment salvage lot, around 15 cars in total. Newsweek’s 2017 investigation put the total nearer 20, and the series inventory quoted above says 23. Most were wrecked, and some were reportedly destroyed under the agreement with General Motors. Hagerty says all three original hero cars survive; Newsweek and later reports count five survivors.

Newsweek traced the surviving cars to the Cruise Automotive Museum in Indiana, a private collection in the UK, the Miami Auto Museum (the Dezer Collection), the San Diego collection of KITT historians Joe Huth and A.J. Palmgren, and a former Universal Studios car that the same pair later recovered. The KITT many visitors photograph at the Volo Auto Museum in Illinois is, by the museum’s own description, a recreation built from the original designs with authentic interior parts and signed by George Barris. It is not a screen-used car.

How Much Is a KITT Car Worth?

A genuine screen-used KITT almost never comes up for sale. The prices below are the public reference points, from real promotional cars down to home-built replicas:

The gap tells you how to shop. Most of a replica’s value is in the dash, the scanner and the quality of the conversion, not in the base Trans Am. Ask for build photos, the dash supplier and the donor car’s VIN, and treat any “screen-used” claim without studio paperwork as a replica.

The 2008 Mustang Is Not This Car

Knight Industries Three Thousand is a 2008–2009 Ford Shelby GT500KR. The reboot gives it a shell that changes colour and Attack Mode. Knight Industries Four Thousand, in the 1991 film, is a customised 1991 Dodge Stealth, because the studio could not use Pontiac’s Banshee IV concept. Carmen Argenziano voiced that car’s first computer. Daniels returned, still uncredited, once the old processor was in it. If a listing says “original KITT” and the photograph is a Mustang or a Stealth, it is one of those later shells.

Batman Garage Verdict

The car people mean is a black 1982 Firebird Trans Am with the scanner in the nose, a quiet voice, and a stock 305 underneath. Ask which of the picture cars a replica claims to be, and do not pay a Molecular Bonded Shell price for a lamp and a dash. The same third-generation Trans Am, in a different film, is the Bandit car. The other film cars in this set are the 1972 Gran Torino Sport and the Hangover 220SE, which is not a 600 Pullman.

Sources

• Knight Rider (1982), Wikipedia — premiere 26 September 1982, Daniels uncredited, Scheffe nose and dash, US$100,000 build, Jack Gill ride height
• KITT, Wikipedia — 1982 Trans Am versus 2008 GT500KR and 1991 Stealth; Barris on the convertible and Super Pursuit; the 23-car inventory
• Hagerty — Pontiac’s first order for three loaded black 1982 Trans Ams
• HotCars — period still of Hasselhoff with the 1982 Trans Am
• Pontiac Trans Am — Smokey and the Bandit — the same 1982 model, without the scanner
• Newsweek (2017) — fleet size, survivors and their locations
• Hagerty — three hero cars, derailment stunt cars, Barris role
• Volo Auto Museum — the museum’s KITT is a recreation
• Hagerty and JustCars — Julien’s 2020 sale, $192,000
• LiveAuctioneers — Hasselhoff auction, 2021
• Autoblog — $32,500 replica
• Paul Fraser Collectibles — Catawiki replica sale
• KRC Workshop — turnkey replica prices
• CLASSIC.com — 1982 Trans Am sales

Frequently Asked Questions