Welcome back to another week of Iconic movie cars! This week we are going back to 1982 and talking about the 1982 Pontiac Trans Am know as Kitt from Knight Rider. The premise of the TV show is that self-made billionaire Wilton Knight rescues police Detective Lieutenant Michael Arthur Long after a near fatal shooting to the face, giving him a new identity via plastic surgery and of course a new name know as Michael Knight.

Wilton selects Michael to be the primary field agent in the pilot program of his public justice organisation, the Foundation for Law and Government also known as FLAG. The other half of the program in the knight Industries Two Thousand know as Kitt a heavily modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am with numerous features including a durable shell and frame, controlled by a computer with artificial intelligence.  Michael and Kitt are brought in when direct action is the only solution.

Kitt was the car that all of our younger selves wanted, with his red hood light that went back to forth scanning the surroundings and talking to Michael how could any of us not have wanted this car? Kitt could drive himself, he had a Molecular Bonded Shell that would protect him from small arms fire and heavy artillery would only seem to destroy inner components of the car and not the body panels. Kitt had more options on him than a 2014 car that we can buy now, Just to list a few, he had the greatly used Turbo Boost, voice projection, micro scanners, oil jets, and much much more! Kitt was awesome and I wanted one! A total of 23 cars were made for the series. 5 of the remaining 23 cars were destroyed at the end of filming; of 5 that escaped that fate, 1 of them was shipped to an Australian theme park but is rumored to be back in the U.S.

The 1982 Pontiac Trans Am is the third generation of Pontiac Firebird/Trans Am models it featured all new sheet metal. The front end sported hidden headlights and sleek styling. The total production of Trans Am this year was 52,962 it had a 5.0L V8 with 145 bhp. The Trans Am model also offered a “Cross-Fire Injection” version of the engine which used Throttle Body Injection to crank out 165 bhp.

Knight Rider ran for 4 seasons spanning 4 years and it gave a lot of people joy to watch Kitt and Michael run around and get the bad guys! Kitt was snarky, witty, and always loved to have the last word. He would try to protect Michael as best as he could but Michael had a mind of his own and didn’t always like to listen to him, growing up I dreamed of a car like Kitt. Being able to auto drive me around, turbo boost over anything I wanted and being able to drive an almost indestructible car was a little boys dream! See you again next week for another Iconic Movie car!