Chicago Knight Rider car framed for speeding in New York City

A replica of the talking car Kitt from the 1980s US television action series Knight Rider for years has been parked in a museum about an hour’s drive north of Chicago, so how did it get a speeding ticket in New York City?

That is the question the Volo Museum is asking after it says it was recently mailed a $50 fine by New York City for a violation caught by traffic camera, alleging that its Knight Industries Two Thousand – Kitt for short and a black Pontiac Trans Am– got busted going 9mph over the speed limit in a 25mph zone on 22 April.

The museum, named after the Illinois village where it is located, published a copy of the citation on a 7 May social media post. It contained two images of a black car resembling Kitt, which was driven by Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff throughout the show’s four-season run beginning in 1982, while going southbound on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn.

According to the Volo Museum’s post, the camera captured the vehicle’s customized California license plate which read KNIGHT. The city’s system then evidently tied that car to the museum and sent it the fine, even though the institution maintained the imitation Kitt it has on display “hasn’t moved … in years!”

“Well, this is a new one,” the museum marveled in its post, which went viral online and in the news media. “This is 100% legit … You can’t make this up!”

It continued: “Does anyone have Hasselhoff’s number? He owes us $50!”

New York City officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Museum officials, meanwhile, have said they are seeking a hearing to dispute the citation.

The Volo Museum says on its website that it opened in 1960, and it touts its collection of vintage, sports and Hollywood cars.

While its Kitt wasn’t used in the Knight Rider series, the museum maintains “it’s still a piece of automotive history”, having been created in 1991 from original show production designs. Its creator, Mark Scricani of Mark’s Custom Kits, built the car to promote his reproduction Kitt accessories business, the museum said.

It once belonged to the designer of the Batmobile for the 1960s Batman television series, George Barris. The late Barris, who worked on the production side of Knight Rider in its later seasons, even autographed the museum’s Kitt facsimile, which the institution hailed as a “true masterpiece of automotive engineering and technology”.

Knight Rider is generally about a former police officer – Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight – who, after being shot and left for dead, teams up with the supposedly sentient and talking Kitt to combat criminals. Though the Guardian in 2020 described the action series as “daft”, it proved to be a global hit before Hasselhoff went on to star on Baywatch.