by Unknown
Quite frequently, people are shown hitting the car with various objects to attempt to damage the car. “The biggest problem we had,” Gill said,
“was keeping the car pristine all the time because it wasn’t supposed to dent. Even David sliding across the hood would put scratches in it. We were always careful in making sure that K.I.T.T. appeared indestructible on screen. When K.I.T.T. had to bang into other cars, I developed a polyurethane shell that could be dropped over the top of the original Trans Am frame. With the shell on, we could bang into other cars. It would dent the car underneath the shell, but was dent-free on the outside.” Although this innovative idea solved a lot of problems for the crew, it was not without its downfalls. Gill continues, “We had the car parked outside the San Fernando Valley one day and we shot a scene with a guy attacking the car with a baseball bat. We put the shell on and the guy began to hit it and everything was great. Once we had finished, we moved that car out and The Knight Behind the Wheel •
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put the hero car in its place, then walked away to do another shot. Some kids (who had seen that shot being filmed) came off a school bus and started kicking the car! They were so surprised that they were able to dent the car after seeing it hit with a bat! It was pretty disturbing to us because that was the only hero car we had at the time.” When the car was seen being shot at, the gun was actually empty; instead the special effects crew attached small explosive pellets to the car and detonated them from a control board off-camera. These charges released sparks that looked like bullets ricocheting off the car. Just how did David Hasselhoff “hear” K.I.T.T.’s voice? The answer is quite simple. When the car was not in motion, a stagehand positioned off screen read the lines to Hasselhoff. If the scene required Michael and K.I.T.T. to be in motion, the lines were read over the car’s radio. The voice of K.I.T.T., actor William Daniels, went to the studio at a later date to record his part. His lines were then added into the episode soundtrack. Hasselhoff later explained, “What I see is a mockup of the dashboard. I don’t even hear William Daniels’ voice. He doesn’t hear my voice, either. He adds his voice later, after we’ve finished shooting our scenes. What we do is put on a radio. The car is usually being towed, in scenes where I appear to be driving. Usually an assistant director on the tow truck reads K.I.T.T.’s lines, which will then come over the radio. In the beginning, it was difficult doing the lines that way, but now that’s the easiest part of the show for me.”
Jack Gill was also the man you actually saw when someone on the show jumped from a high platform. When asked about some of his leaps, such as “Knightmares” and “A Good Knight’s Work,” he confessed, “Doing it really terrifies me. I practiced from low heights and worked my way up. The worst thing about jumping off is that I know that once I’ve taken the plunge, that’s it! I’ve got to land on that air cushion below. But there’s always a crowd watching and they’re yelling like mad…and in my mind, as I’m dropping, I’m thinking, ‘what’s wrong?’ or ‘has someone moved the mattress?’ But I can’t hardly turn back, can I?”
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K.I.T.T. flies high in “The Topaz Connection” and “Knightmares.”
[Courtesy of Jack Gill]
Another difficult feat to perform was making the car appear to drive by itself. Jack Gill was responsible for performing this as well. “The blinddrive seat was probably the most innovative idea that we came up with. Up until Knight Rider, everyone was trying to drive with video cameras or cutting a portion of the grill away and laying down to drive. I had a car for blind-driving from the driver’s side and blind-driving from the passenger’s side.” Jack would extend his arms and legs through the seat while sitting out of sight behind it. “The other odd thing about K.I.T.T. was during the scenes when a young lady would be in the passenger side while I was blind-driving around town. It freaked so many people out!”
Robert Ewing, the show’s associate producer, adds, “In some scenes, K.I.T.T. is filmed so you can’t tell that the car is actually being towed by a truck. In other scenes, where a towing cable might be visible, K.I.T.T. has a backseat driver. The driver is hidden in the back seat behind dark glass. The glass acts as a kind of two-way mirror. The driver can see out, but the The Knight Behind the Wheel •
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camera—and the audience—can’t see in.” Because of its complexity, K.I.T.T. rarely drove by himself for any length of time.
Ski Mode became another fan favorite, a stunt in which K.I.T.T. was seen driving on two wheels. Buzz Bundy was world renowned for performing this stunt. “In order to ski the car,” Gill says, “we had to weld the spider gears so both wheels would turn to together instead of independently. That was the only modification needed to the car.”
In the episode “Return to Cadiz,” fans were treated to the sight of K.I.T.T. actually riding on top of water. Gill described how that was accomplished. “We used a submerged platform with an outboard motor on it. I have to admit that it looked pretty good.” Because it was so difficult to film, the idea of having K.I.T.T. ride the waves again was scrapped. Michael Knight can regularly be seen wildly spinning K.I.T.T. into the opposite direction. These 180 degree turns are yet another trademark of the series. David Hasselhoff himself performed most of them until he accidentally smashed into a palm tree, totaling the car. The producers worried that he would injure himself and banned him from doing his own u-turns thereafter. Before his unfortunate accident, Hasselhoff explained how he achieved the 180-degree turn. “I do the turns by going about 50 miles an hour as I drive on the far right-hand side of the road. I take the wheel and turn it as far as it will go. At the same time, I pull the emergency brake. That locks up the rear wheels and turns the car around and gets me facing in completely the opposite direction. Then I let go of the emergency brake and hit the gas.”
Patricia McPherson commented, “I’d rather be in [the car] with Jack Gill than David any day! No, David was actually quite good and he learned quite well from Jack. Jack’s ability was just amazing. Almost anytime that I was in there, whether it was David or Jack, I always had this strange sensation that I was about to lose my front teeth! It was pretty amazing that they could turn the car on a dime and have it land exactly on mark. It was pretty incredible stuff.”
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K.I.T.T. was labeled as “the car of the future,” and therefore must always be ahead of the technology found in cars of the day. David Hasselhoff commented, “Once you start believing in K.I.T.T. then anything is possible and you can accept it. Already there are cars in existence with up to thirty spoken phrases they can instruct a driver with. But obviously there is nothing on the market with the kind of range that K.I.T.T. has.” In the summer of 1984, the producers realized that current automobile technology was catching up with them, so they decided to overhaul K.I.T.T.’s interior. Producer Gino Grimaldi recalled,
“We suddenly became aware between filming the second and third series that cars were coming onto the market with dashboards which were not dissimilar to that of K.I.T.T. Already there are cars being made which have a talking computer built into them with a couple of dozen phrases. Things like reminding the driver that the doors aren’t locked, gas is running low and so on. There are also cars around with television screens, and microchip technology is now used to a great extent in the digital layouts. Since K.I.T.T. is something extra special and a car of the future, it was necessary to make certain changes to keep it that way. It seemed that the only solution was to have K.I.T.T. completely destroyed and for Bonnie to have to put the whole thing back together again but with more futuristic components!”
During the show’s run, NBC released two promotional brochures depicting K.I.T.T.’s various features. The first came in August of 1982 when NBC aired a commercial where the curious could write in to find out about the most exciting car on television. Those who did write in received a flyer entitled “The Competition is NO Competition,” with K.I
.T.T. parked alongside a car that resembled the General Lee (with a double zero on the door) from The Dukes of Hazzard, and offered a comparison of each vehicle.
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Parts of closeup photos of the two promotional flyers from the private collection of AJ Palmgren and Paul Sher Jr. respectfully. (Photo courtesy of Richie Levine) As a promotion for the season premiere “Goliath” in the fall of 1983, NBC created a commercial with David Hasselhoff saying, “On Sunday, October 2nd, K.I.T.T. and I face our greatest challenge in a spectacular two-hour movie. We’re hoping we can win with the secrets found in this, the K.I.T.T. Kit. To get your free copy, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to ‘K.I.T.T. Kit’, Box 80, Hollywood. Get your K.I.T.T. Kit, and 56
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be there.” Countless number of fans wrote in and later received detailed blueprints of K.I.T.T.’s interior and exterior. This kit also gave structural specifications on the car.
In the fall of 1985, an advertisement for the season premiere “Knight of the Juggernaut” was run in TV Guide. In it, an all new K.I.T.T. was shown complete with a listing of his new functions. Besides Super Pursuit Mode and Emergency Braking System, the ad also listed Satellite Scanner & Transponder, High Visibility Mode (Negative Roof), Ultra-High Frequency Degaussers, Reverse Polarity Destabilizers, Water-Cooled Cabrillo Accelerators, Re-Engineered Modular Suspension, Infrared Tracking & Intercept System, Zero-Gravity Induction System, and a High Performance Liquid Chromatography Work Station.
Although K.I.T.T. appeared on screen as one unique, indestructible, high-powered machine, it took many versions of the Trans Am off-screen, as well as many talented people like Jack Gill, to create an automotive legend that has only become more popular with time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DESIGNING K.I.T.T.
A Question and Answer Session with Michael Scheffe, K.I.T.T.’s designer. What (if any) toys that you worked on while at Mattel inspired your design of the dash?
The jobs I did for Mattel were really a bit unrelated to the Knight Rider project. That work involved helping to make the master patterns for toys like Hot Wheels cars and fighter plane kits. I was helping to make these, and doing other prototyping work at an industrial design shop. They contracted a lot of work for Mattel. Glen (Larson) remembered this element of my background because of an early conversation we had, when I offered to build the car. I had shown him my portfolio, and described my movie prop design and fabrication experience. I mentioned the work I did for Mattel and Revell because I hoped to add a little credibility to the idea that I really could get the car built in time for his pilot. Maybe I should talk a little about how I happened to be sitting in a cool, air-conditioned office, by a roaring fire, talking to Glen. He was full of ideas and enthusiasm, thoughtful, and easy to talk to. And he was talking about was making a talking car—in a few weeks, for a new show…based on a vehicle so new that “pilot” (pre-production) models were only beginning to trickle off the Van Nuys assembly line. 57
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I was crazy about cars, planes, bikes; generally, anything that moved. I had shop classes in high school, of course, and many of my friends raced motorcycles, so we were pulling engines apart, building minibikes, tuning motors and making things all the time. I also really loved drawing and designing. More than anything, I wanted to build vehicles. How things worked and how they looked both fascinated me, maybe because my Mom’s a painter, and my Dad was a mathematician. After high school, I went to Airframe and Powerplant school, because I wanted to build airplanes—and everything else! A&P college seemed like a great way to learn about how to build or work on things—from turbines to hydraulics; aluminum fabrication, welding, wood, dope and fabric construction, and so on.
Later, I went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, to major in transportation design. A lot of “carsick” guys like me were there. Some classmates included J Mays (presently head of Ford design), Chris Bangle (head of BMW design), Mark Jordan (designer of the Miata), Dave Robb (head of BMW motorcycle design), and Martin Manchester (head of Honda’s USA motorcycle design studios), all of whom have done very nicely for themselves…Others, like me, gravitated towards the variety (and relative freedom) of design work that the movies and TV offered. I had art directed and/or production designed about eight or ten lowbudget sci-fi movies by the time the Knight Rider job came up. Those shows required a lot of prop and set fabrication, since in futuristic environments, almost everything has to be specially built. I’d also been fortunate enough to work on a much bigger-budget show; doing some design concept work for Blade Runner.
The toy prototype and pattern-making work came my way between some movie and TV projects. I wanted to try it, because I liked the idea of a more evenly paced schedule, with the time to finish things really nicely. So I’m sure it helped me get the Knight Rider project to have been a designer with experience in both drawing and building things, but in a way, all of the things you do influence your work.
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Without a doubt, the most valuable part of all of these jobs was meeting so many people with so much talent and ability. There were people just starting their professional lives, with little mileage out in the “real”
world, but a lot of enthusiasm, who made me feel anything was possible. There were also those people farther along in their careers, who had so much knowledge and understanding to share, and a lot to teach to anyone who cared.
After receiving the general instructions for the “cockpit” design from Glen Larson, how long did it take you to build the prototype dash? First I went through a sketch program with Glen—back and forth over a few days. We talked about it in some detail, because I wanted to get a feel for what he liked. It’s true that K.I.T.T. was a prop for a TV show, and we only had a few days to hammer out the details, but the design process was the same as for other projects. Glen was the client, and the whole point was to develop the interior along the lines he found appealing. I had a lot of ideas about instrument panels (“IPs” in designer-speak), all the way back to the early days of being a little car-nut kid, of course. I wondered why controls were so far from the wheel in most cars. The advent of digital displays and illuminated bar-graphs offered a lot of possibilities for instrument design. And it seemed like such a natural idea to display RPM on a torque curve. Especially with a turbine engine…
Glen wanted to see a truly futuristic dash, but we agreed that at first glance it should look believable. That meant it should be based on what we know about information displays. To look attractive, it also needed a strong unifying design. A goofy checkerboard of flickering lights or flashing numbers would look pretty unbelievable. Right away, you would see how impossible it would be to read it.
It was clear to me that a digital readout would be a little worthless by itself. When you quickly scan your instruments, you want to know where in the operating envelope you are. You need to immediately see where a 60
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value is, between the limits of the scale. You should know that the engine is at operating temp, for example. You don’t want to take the time to figure out if 215 degrees is “hot” or not…I wanted to put bar graphs next to all digital readouts, or use them alone. The bar graph gives you an instant feel for where a value falls on the scale—a great feature of those old-fashioned needle pointers we were getting rid of. There was one variable display, on which different, less-critical information could be shown. The concept was to save panel space for the important things, and not to distract the driver. (Shades of the SAAB black-out feature, or the iDrive on the new BMWs.) With this display, you could toggle through different functions. Even if the overall idea for this car was a little incredible, I did at least try to rationally design its features. It was important that it not look silly, at least at the show’s inception. Were we successful? Sometimes I wonder, when I see the whole
thing lit up and blinking away like the Las Vegas Strip…
Many of the decisions about style had some amount of thought behind them, too. The two “shelves” of the design were to provide shade over the instruments, to help see the displays, despite sun and bright filming lights. The instrument faces themselves were designed to have a clean appearance when off, with the individual LEDs falling into the shadow of the panel’s thickness. This was before you could buy strips of LEDs in the right sizes, and I didn’t want a less-than-perfect line of hand-assembled lamps poking out! They all had to be mounted to board, wired, and supplied with current by drivers, which also needed to be designed and built. While Glen and I talked about the car, and the schedule, I asked who was going to build it. Because there was so little time, I felt that the experience and facilities of the fabricator should dictate the design. It seemed hard to imagine that a project like that could be run through the conventional channels. I made some estimates, and talked to some very talented friends, to see who had time to help out. The design studio where I had been working (in Beverly Hills) with its pattern-making shop, was perfect to run a job Designing K.I.T.T. •
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that size. The owner also felt there was room to accommodate the work. He was willing to rent Universal the facilities for a couple weeks. Would the Universal’s own prop shop elect to take a “pass” on the work? They had the right of first refusal, since this was a union show, but there was so little time and so much work involved. I told Glen that if they passed, I thought I could do the job in time for their pilot shooting.
Although it seemed a little crazy to take such a risk, everything came together. The low-budget shows had given me some mileage in running projects with little time to spare. For those movies, the props had to look wonderful, and be pretty tough, too, with guts that wouldn’t come apart in the hands of the “talent” (actors). The schedule was familiar enough—
