Just in case you didn’t know yet, the Knight Rider is ALSO being remade in 2008 and will be on NBC starting February 17th, with a big 2 hours special.That’s really exciting and we’ve been wondering for years why there were no good car-centered TV shows being done anymore. But… why the heck did they choose a Mustang?The original version of the show, with David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, the hero, and a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans-Am as KITT, his sidekick, was a good trick from GM’s marketing department to raise public awareness and interest in their upcoming model, BEFORE launching it on the market. With some good design by Michael Scheffe and later by George Barris, KITT looked futuristic and exciting and Pontiac sales did very well. The series had a huge impact on the automotive industry, who started to feature computers and futuristic graphics in their cars to please their now technology-avid consumers.

Reed more and get more pictures after the jump

Even “talking” devices got popular in that period of time…The Mustang KITT looks, well… 3 years old, if not more, considering that the actual model is based on the first design of the car, released in 1964. Harald Belker (who designed the wonderful Lexus from Minority Report and tons of other movie vehicles) was in charge of the look and he did a great job, but still… it’s a Mustang with spoilers and red LEDs.     Ford paid for the product placement of the GT500KR (as revealed by Jalopnik, themselves quoting AdAge) and the good guys at Autoblog think that there was no alternative car possible. Apparently the Chrysler Crossfire (!) was considered and most likely so was the Corvette. I personally still think that if GM managed to get a Camaro ready for Transformers, they could have done the same here. It could even have been a dream launch for a Trans-Am version of the new Camaro, since in the past Camaros and Trans-Ams were the same cars with a few aesthetics differences. Anyway… we’ll be watching NBC on the 17th.

Harald Belker’s website. 

Official Knight Rider  website. (more like a static page… I’m sure NBC can do better than that)

Harald Belker’s side rendering.

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