KITT Trans Am Gets Hellcat HEMI Superpowers; Justice Is Served in the Virtual World

The universe of spinning wheels knows many fantastic cars, but one is the absolute coolest machine ever devised. No, it’s not a Batmobile – that would come a close second – and it’s not one of James Bond’s Astons or Bentleys, either (I’ll explain the confusion in a moment).

It’s the Knight Industries Two Thousand (better known as KITT), the car that embodies every single thing we could possibly want from a car. Speed, stealth, artificial intelligence, more speed, gadgetry, killer looks, and a perfect record sheet of crime-fighting adventures. And don’t forget bullet-like acceleration (how’s 4.4 seconds for the quarter-mile?)

Based on a third-gen Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, the villain-hunting hypercar (yup, that’s precisely what KITT is) dressed as the most unassuming sleeper of them all. 300 mph is the sword in the stone King Chiron of the Bugatti Clan has left as a legacy for all his hyper-fast heirs.

But KITT did that in the land of fantasy some 35 years before it became reality. Granted, its hydrogen turbine remains a fantasy (but I wouldn’t be surprised if one day it would be common-place), and that’s a bit of a turn-off for some fans of the Knight Rider Series, who still wait for their four-wheeled hero to spawn into reality. For those who want to refresh their memories about the childhood dream car: just play the video.

Here's the good news: it has – albeit in the vast reservation of virtual reality – and I feel that KITT’s loyalists might be a little triggered by one minor detail about this digital interpretation of the movie star car. The pixel tamer Abimelec Arellano from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico (known by his social media persona Abimelec design) added the piece de resistance.

Instead of the turbojet engine with its complimentary afterburners, the imaginative respawn of the Knight errant is powered by a modern superhero of the piston realm: a Hellcat crate engine. Mopar loyalists, crossing universes is allowed in the virtual world, so don’t be surprised by this team-up of unlikely superpowers.

While the hydrogen-burning powerplant was absolutely in line with the rest of the hyper-tech platform, it’s not inappropriate to graft it with one of the most powerful force-fed HEMIs ever. The legendary V8 bears the four-letter acronym of immortality and is one of the most recognizable engines of the combustion era that’s dawning into the piston-less age.

With its standard 707 hp and 650 lb-ft (717 PS / 881 Nm), the 6.2-liter supercharged volcano, sure as Hellcat wouldn’t disappoint in the streamlined KITT. If you take a close look at the original KITT, you’ll notice that the artist didn’t limit their imagination to just the engine bay and tweaked the formidable machine with a sleeker body.

When it was introduced, the third-generation Trans Am was one of the most fluid-profiled cars from General Motors, with an air friction index of 0.32. By 1985, the engineers improved drag to 0.29, making the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am the most aerodynamic vehicle ever to come out of the corporation’s assembly plants.

The car visualist put a widebody kit of the KITT with massive flares over the fatty tires, and the reinterpreted four-wheeled superhero is a lot closer to the ground than the original. The signature trait of KITT – its Anamorphic Equalizer front scanner bar – is intact and righteously in its place.

The retractable rear wing is a nostalgic nod to the fictitious vehicle’s physics bending top speed. While the Hellcat V8 won’t push the Trans Am (or anything else, for that matter) to 500 mph (804 kph), it would probably sound a lot more menacing than the 1982 black vigilante.

All the more reasons for the bad guys to try and make a run for it since they’ll hear it coming a quarter-mile away. Oh, and about that Bond-Bentley reference: Ian Flemming let the famous 007 use Aston Martin products as his company vehicle. However, the cynical spy preferred a Bentley Blower from the 30s as his off-duty sidekick.

For the sake of real-world piston addiction, let's take a moment and remember the Pontiac Firebird upon which KITT is based. The revised model followed in the wake of a 12-year-long production run for the second-generation car, and it proved to be a popular switch to the 80s styling and engineering standards.

One of the most notable novelties was the 1982 introduction of the 305 cu in (5.0 L) Chevrolet Cross-Fire Injection V8 as an option for the top-end performance model. It was the debut of fuel injection in Trans Ams, but it didn't prove reliable enough to do the nameplate justice. Over its decade-long production, the third-gen Firebird amassed over 840,000 units, with almost 275,000 sporting the famous Trans Am moniker.

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