The Case of the Missing ‘Knight Rider’ Cars
Cars couldn’t stay on the ground in the ’80s. At least, that’s what TV and film would have us believe. The era that popularized cocaine, shady banking and dementia-addled presidents also gave us Chekhov’s car: If there’s a Camaro in the first act, it absolutely must go off a cliff in the third act.
And not just cliffs—cars were regularly launched off ramps and freeway overpasses or lifted with hover technology. This fad touched all genres, whether futuristic (Back to the Future, Blade Runner), comedic (The Blues Brothers) or Southern-fried (Dukes of Hazzard). The nexus of this trope, where all of the different flying car styles meet in one sleek-and-somewhat-dated muscle car chassis, was Knight Rider’s KITT.
The show was created by pop-TV producer Glen Larson, who was responsible for a staggering number of hit TV shows in the ’70s and ’80s, including , and . (1982) was ostensibly a remake of , replacing Silver the horse with a talking car (see: ’80s, cocaine). David Hasselhoff starred as former detective Michael Knight, and an uncredited William Daniels (Benjamin Braddock’s father in , for those too old to remember the show; Mr. Feeny from , for those too
