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Jay Leno Drives Knight Rider’s KITT

Jay Leno has driven just about every type of car ever made, but he's never driven the Knight Industry 2000...until now.

Jay Leno has driven every type of car: exotics, luxury, muscle and electric. But he’s never driven a talking car. Ok, he still hasn’t driven a real talking car, but he has driven a 1982 Pontiac Firebird that played a talking car on TV. Specifically, KITT from the hit 1980s action shows Knight Rider.

Joe Huth, who owns one of the five surviving Trans-Ams that played KITT, joined Leno on Jay Leno’s Garage to discuss his KITT car. “I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. Seeing an indestructible car that could talk and jump over things just capture my imagination,” Huth told Leno.

From the second that Jay settled into the car’s cockpit, it was obvious this was no ordinary Pontiac. There was the iconic steering yolk, which surely influenced Tesla designers, as well as a myriad of screens and gauges for things like “Normal Cruise,” “Auto Cruise” and “Pursuit.”

While KITT is too old for infotainment features like Apple CarPlay, the car does feature a phone and a 9-inch color TV that was used by the show’s other star, Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff), to communicate with his team back at headquarters. Some other cool features of the car include turbo boost, as well as the ability to create an oil slick and release smoke.
The dashboard of this particular model was retrofitted for this episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. While KITT was a Pontiac Trans-Am on Knight Rider, the example that Huth brought to Jay Leno’s Garage was a base model Pontiac Firebird dressed up as a Trans-Am. It served as a stunt car, but after the show stopped airing the studio added the interior features seen on the TV show and put it on display at the Universal Studios theme park.

 

The car’s base engine is decidedly less powerful than the turbine jet engine that powered the car on TV, and the car cannot drive itself. It only has about 500 original miles and is equipped with a three-speed automatic transmission. That transmission was chosen for its durability, which allowed stunt drivers to be as rough on the car as they needed for the show’s trademark action sequences.

Besides design elements, which include the car’s distinct red oscillating light below the hood, the car’s most important upgrade was a brake line lock system. This holds the front brakes in order to allow the rear wheels to spin and smoke the tires. It can also hold the rear brakes to allow the car to do 180-degree turns.

This version of KITT was the least modified of the five remaining cars that appeared on the series, so much so that it still rides on the original Eagle GT tires. “They have great tread, but they’re a little stiff since the rubber has hardened quite a bit,” Huth said.

So what did Leno think of KITT? “It drives nice. It drives like a stock Trans-Am,” he said.

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