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Knight Rider "Hell-KITT" Is Mopar Madness in Powerful Rendering

Earlier this month, David Hasselhoff auctioned off his personal K.I.T.T. vehicle from the Knight Rider 1980s TV show, with the Hollywood-famous Pontiac Trans Am fetching a solid $300,000. Now, while digital artist Abimelec Arellano wasn't among the 31 aficionados fortunate enough to engage in the bidding race, the enthusiast came up with the next best thing: a wicked rendering showcasing a custom incarnation of the talking car.
Knight Rider "Hell-KITT" rendering 9 photos
Photo: abimelecdesign/instagram
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This Hellcat swap is the type of imagination exercise that can easily trigger purists, with the photorealistic nature of the work only amplifying this potential. Then again, it makes for a brilliant example of a virtual build since the digital world knows no borders.

Besides, the series had already portrayed the 1982 Trans Am with one hell of a swap (pun intended); in the real world, the Poncho featured a Chevy V8, but K.I.T.T. was shown with a turbojet engine featuring custom afterburners and a computerized 8-speed turbodrive transmission. And if the tranny sounds ahead of its time, we'll have to remind you that the machine had full autonomous driving capabilities, with that being just one of the assets delivered by its artificial intelligence.

And the story is the same with those flared fenders - the original series had already accustomed us to a body kit for the Pontiac. In Super Pursuit mode, the vehicle featured a body kit featuring extreme aero pieces, so the transformation that now sits on our screens, wheels included, is considerably closer to the factory design of the muscle car.


This week, we have a particular reason to think of K.I.T.T., as the Model S and Model X refresh Tesla introduced yesterday shows the EVs sporting a steering wheel that easily reminds one of the hardware used by Michael Knight, Hasselhoff's character.

Then again, those who follow Elon Musk's Twitter activity might've seen this coming after the CEO replied in 2018 to a platform user asking if we'd see K.I.T.T.-like artificial intelligence in future Teslas. His answer was a simple "yes" (the background of the discussion involved Musk tweeting an article showcasing the most important AI advances of 2017).

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About the author: Andrei Tutu
Andrei Tutu profile photo

In his quest to bring you the most impressive automotive creations, Andrei relies on learning as a superpower. There's quite a bit of room in the garage that is this aficionado's heart, so factory-condition classics and widebody contraptions with turbos poking through the hood can peacefully coexist.
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