Pickuptrucks.com have a cool first-look article at K.I.T.T.’s new 4×4 disguise.
“K.I.T.T.’s got a lot more capabilities than before,” said executive producer Gary Scott Thompson. “Twenty-five years ago a talking car was cool. Now everybody’s car talks with GPS. Speeds have increased, too. The advances have been astronomical. All these things added up to, ‘What would [K.I.T.T.] do now?'”
This was the starting point of an idea that evolved into the transformation sequence that proved so popular at the Comic Con. “The main characters get themselves in a predicament and I was trying to figure out how to get them out,” he said. “They were running from bad guys, who are shooting at them. How could I get them into the car without stopping it? I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they just jumped in the back of a pickup truck?'”
Thompson also said NBC execs told him that Knight Rider fans didn’t think the movie pushed K.I.T.T.’s capabilities far enough.
“It wasn’t enough that the car could morph and change colors, I said it had to change itself into another vehicle,” he said. “They responded, ‘Yeah! That’s what we need to do. Go do that!'”
The result was the K.I.T.T. F-150, which was designed with a look similar to the GT500KR. In one early rendering, K.I.T.T.’s scanner is embedded in a custom power-dome hood, but production practicalities won out, forcing them to move the red light above and behind the top bar of the FX4’s tall grille. The rest of the truck remains near stock, in contrast to K.I.T.T.’s modified GT500KR’s body.
While preparing for the new series, Thompson and the Knight Rider production team talked to futurists at Microsoft to find some grounding in reality. Their meetings covered what cars and trucks might be like in 2030.
“They talked about vehicles being able to maneuver between smaller spaces, meaning it would have to squeeze itself, or it would grow larger or grow bigger wheels to get over a large obstacle,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, if these guys are already thinking about this now, then we need to be looking at this.'”
Thompson went on the record to say that the K.I.T.T. F-150 will appear in two of the first four episodes. There might be other modes on the horizon, too.
“As long as we stay within about the same mass, you might see other versions of K.I.T.T.,” Thompson said. “You’re not, however, going to see it turn into a huge spaceship.”
Pickuptrucks.com – Knight Rider 4×4: First Look
