LAST EDITED ON Jul-13-16 AT 01:56 AM (EDT)
 
Y'know, apropos of nothing, it occurred to me just now the thing all these attempted remakes of Knight Rider have gotten wrong. Well, I mean, they've gotten a lot of things wrong, but the big one—particularly with the big-ticket network revival from a few years ago—is pretty simple. They keep trying to update the car.

See, the thing is, it's pretty obvious from the context of the original show that the Knight 2000 was not actually supposed to be a modified Pontiac Firebird within the story; characters routinely react to it as something completely unique, that they've never seen the likes of before and cannot identify. So why change it for a present-day, or even near-future, remake? I may be biased, but I don't think the '82 Firebird's styling has dated particularly hard, not compared with almost any other non-supercar from the 1980s you might care to name. If anything, the cleanness of the prop car's lines, with all the badging and trim shaved off, still looks a bit futuristic. That generation of the GM F-body was far enough ahead of its time, styling-wise, that it went almost immediately timeless.

Now, sure, I understand that in commercial terms you're not going to be pulling in the big product placement dollars from Pontiac nowadays if you use a hero car based on the shape of a 1982 Firebird, particularly on account of Pontiac no longer exists. But speaking strictly in terms of the art design of the series, why would you make KITT in a remake anything else? Update the electronics package in the cockpit, sure, ordinary cars have better displays in them now than the prop car had in the '80s (although not anywhere near as many cool-ass buttons and readouts, keep those). And maybe 86 the beige interior, but that's just me. But the body style? Those awesome disc wheels? You're never going to come up with a hero car that looks any slicker or more understatedly mysterious than the original. It's just not going to happen. Especially if it also transforms into a pickup truck.

That said, I'm really sad that Pontiac is gone, because it means we'll never have the Firebird version of the new Camaro (or the new new Camaro, which is hot), and that's a real shame. I had a Camaro in high school and I loved it, which you would think would make me Brand Loyal, but I always thought the Firebird was the better-looking of the two—very slightly some years, by a wide margin in others.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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