KNIGHT RIDER
K.I.T.T. (MODEL KIT) PROJECT #416 BUILT/PAINTED: 2008 "It was Henry Ford who said, 'Any color, as long as it's black,' and I agree. Elegant, quiet, basic black." I'm a huge fan of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, and after I got the series on DVD, I realized that I didn't really own a good physical representation of K.I.T.T. (I had recently built a die-cast version of him, as this was before the official Hot Wheels version of him, but there's only so much detail you can cram into a 1/6 scale car) so I hunted down the AMT/Ertl model kit released in 2002. While many of the model kits that I've built as an adult were copies of ones I owned from my childhood, K.I.T.T. was an entirely new experience for me. I didn't know how accurate the kit was going to be when I bought it, so I was surprised at the level of detail. A lot of the things I thought I would have to add myself were already there, like the license plate and the little strut tower caps on the windshield. (To my utter shock, he even came with what I assume was K.I.T.T.'s undercarriage tow rig. The only reason this existed on the prop car was so they could tow the car and make it look like it was driving itself, so much like the zippers on the Ewoks, it's an element of the character we're supposed to pretend isn't "really" there.) It's likely that Ertl took an existing Trans Am model kit and swapped out some of the pieces for K.I.T.T.-specific parts, since there are a lot of parts included with the kit that you don't need for K.I.T.T. (you can add a turbocharger to the engine or optional side pipes, since K.I.T.T. doesn't have any of this stuff so it's all superfluous). I did have to make some minor modifications, since the words "KNIGHT 2000" were embossed on the front of the nose (a most unwelcome and erroneous detail, given the otherwise slavish attention to accuracy). I also shaved down the depth of the instrument panel, since it extended too far into the cabin. One special change I mad was to take a piece of translucent red sheet plastic and placed it over K.I.T.T.'s front scanner, painting tiny drops of red paint behind it to make it look like his scanner lights are visible. |
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