KITT Sells More Fords

More news on the cool, hip, "now" Knight Rider rejigger that Ford and NBC are going to attempt to shove down our throats in the shape of a stupidly large 2009 Ford F-150 FX-4 that apparently KITT can transform into.

As seen in this preview clip KITT does a drive-through pickup of the telly show's heroes by allowing them to jump into his F-150 tray. He then transforms back into his usual 2008 Shelby GT500KR Mustang form magically getting said heroes from the tray into their seats without chopping them in to mince meat.

Autoblog has a write-up on the "thinking" behind this seemingly rediculous transformation with Executive Producer Gary Scott Thompson explaining. To quote Autoblog "the idea for having KITT morph into a truck came to Thompson when he needed his main character and that week's damsel in distress to make a quick getaway without KITT having to stop for them to get in, so he imagined the car as a pickup." Riiiight, apparently he hasn't heard of convertibles.

Thompson also went on to say that the GT500KR is "about the same mass" as the F-150. Huh? The Mustang has a 3,800 lb (1,700 kg) curb weight and the F-150's curb weight is between 4,881 lb (2,213 kg) and 5,411 lb (2,454 kg).

KITT's A Transformer Now?

We all know that the last Knight Rider outing was an abomination and should never have seen the light of day no matter how cool the Mustang was. After such a dismal failure I've had high hopes for the reinvention of the reinvention but what I'm hearing out of ComicCon is not good.

First we have the new Attack Mode KITT (hit up Shadowy Flight for more pics) which looks plain ridiculous and is far from an improvement over the previous attack mode KITT.

Then we have the preview clip (below) where it looks like the director wanted less cowbell and more Fast and Furious neon lighting, more lasers and a chick that looks like whatshername from Transformers... and they STILL have Val Kilmer doing a bad job of KITT's voice! Oh, and KITT doesn't just make a minor change to his appearance to avoid the bad guys (in the telemovie he turned into a white Mustang) he can actually transform into a totally different vehicle, one that Ford is having trouble selling at the moment and needs some extra marketing (and a drop in fuel prices) for people to consider purchasing.

With this news I have to say that my interest in the remake of a remake of a remake is making me sad and unhappy. I'll give the pilot a go but I'll have my thumb hovering over the delete button while watching.

KITT Speaks

Further to my post the other day about a Knight Rider themed GPS Autoblog have posted a video from Knight Rider Online of the device in action.

I think hearing the original KITT after all these years has lessened my enthusiasm for such a device, not that I was going to get one.

On a side note, William Daniels and Anthony Daniels are not related even though they were both responsible for effeminate robotic voices.