Pontiac’s knight rider edition trans am concept

[michelle]

Pontiac had plans to make a KNIGHT RIDER edition Trans am they made a concept car for photos to show to higher ups but it never happened the car reappeared several years ago up for auction on ebay and was bought and has not been seen since I could not find a model kit of correct year of Trans am for this but did find a mpc 84 Trans am rebuilder and traded a amt 67 mustang rebuilder for it and I decided to make my replica of this car with the 84 I did have to swap the rims and the rear spoiler and had to add the side mirrors I soaked the model in cold water both to clean all the dust off the parts but it also was cold enough to safely pop it all apart without out breaking any parts I then repainted the parts

Glenn a Larson and Stu Philips originally wanted to use Harry thumann’s Synth pop song sphinx for the opening theme music for knight rider but could not get the rights to use it so they had to create a new piece of synth pop music based on it but they did want to add a prominent hook to it so they used a section from a piece of classical music called the procession of Bacchus as the hook 
I found a edit of the song sphinx with richard basehart’s opening monologue and sound effects from the knight rider opening theme mixed together and have it playing in the background of this video 
 

I have also included photos of the actual concept car that came from that eBay listing and the original photo layout Pontiac did to try and get it greenlit

Edited October 18, 2023 by michelle

[karbuildr]

I was a huge Pontiac fan back then and never knew they had this concept. Interesting. Maybe because at this point, sales of the Trans Am were falling because of increasingly restrictive pollution regulations. Hard to say and I'm no expert. I think the actual concept is very interesting, too bad it wasn't approved.

[NOBLNG]

Nice rebuild, looks like the real deal.?

[michelle]

4 hours ago, karbuildr said:

I was a huge Pontiac fan back then and never knew they had this concept. Interesting. Maybe because at this point, sales of the Trans Am were falling because of increasingly restrictive pollution regulations. Hard to say and I'm no expert. I think the actual concept is very interesting, too bad it wasn't approved.

It is cool concept 
the main reason Pontiac was gave new 82 trans ams to the production in the early first season was hoping it would boost sales well they were right but also wrong as people were coming into Pontiac dealers wanting to buy trans ams but not normal trans ams they wanted KITT and they could not sell them a trans am that looked like KITT sure they could sell them a jet black trans am with tan interior but that’s not what these new sale wanted they wanted it to look like it does in the show which they could not do so they had the production stop referring to KITT as a Pontiac trans am so they had to start using more basic descriptions like black t-top or black car in the later half of season 1 through the rest of the series 
And it is why they could not get the 88  Pontiac banshee concept car or use it’s likeness for the 1991 tv movie knight rider 2000 cause Pontiac did not want to deal with that situation again 

[michelle]

3 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

Nice rebuild, looks like the real deal.?

Thank you 

[karbuildr]

6 hours ago, michelle said:

It is cool concept 
the main reason Pontiac was gave new 82 trans ams to the production in the early first season was hoping it would boost sales well they were right but also wrong as people were coming into Pontiac dealers wanting to buy trans ams but not normal trans ams they wanted KITT and they could not sell them a trans am that looked like KITT sure they could sell them a jet black trans am with tan interior but that’s not what these new sale wanted they wanted it to look like it does in the show which they could not do so they had the production stop referring to KITT as a Pontiac trans am so they had to start using more basic descriptions like black t-top or black car in the later half of season 1 through the rest of the series 
And it is why they could not get the 88  Pontiac banshee concept car or use it’s likeness for the 1991 tv movie knight rider 2000 cause Pontiac did not want to deal with that situation again 

The last Trans Am I bought was a gold special edition in 1979. And that one no longer used the actual Pontiac 400 engine. It used an Oldsmobile 403 cu. in. automatic only engine. While the gold car was nice, I could see the end was near for that car until the mid 90's when the LT-1 engine was available for that car and the Z/28 Camaro. I bought a 1997 Z/28 and I should have got the Trans Am instead, it was a better car than the Z. Still and all, I really like this concept and your build of it too.

[slusher]

Very nice Michelle!

[Street Rod]

Very good work!

[michelle]

17 hours ago, Street Rod said:

Very good work!

Thank you 

[michelle]

18 hours ago, slusher said:

Very nice Michelle!

Thank you 

[Rattlecan Dan]

Informative and nice work.

[michelle]

15 minutes ago, Rattlecan Dan said:

Informative and nice work.

Thank you it was a fun build