Knight Rider 2007

After mentioning the hotly anticipated return of The Saint television series, it's worth thinking about another favourite making a comeback - Knight Rider.

I used to love that show when I was a kid - and was incredibly excited in 2003 when I bought myself a bright red, KITT-style Pontiac Trans-Am. I absolutely adored that car - it looked great, drove beautifully and was reliable and practical.

To me, Knight Rider will always be about the eighties-vintage Firebird / Trans Am.


However, much discussion has been undertaken regarding the new 'KITT' in the upcoming television remake of Knight Rider. Internet pundits have even made their own attempts at guessing what the next-generation Knight Industries Two Thousand will look like.













But the KITT's out of the bag now. Knight Rider will return behind the wheel of a fearsome Ford Shelby GT500KR Mustang.

Which is absolutely stupid, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The Shelby Mustang is a beautiful bit of automobile. It hits all my buttons in terms of that retro look and muscular, aggressive stance. But it's not Knight Rider.

When Glen Larson, the inventor of Knight Rider, was looking to make his 'Lone Ranger with a car' TV series, he chose the 1982 Pontaic Trans Am because it was a breathtakingly exciting new car. Sleek and powerful, it represented the future. The car itself was designed by computer, with breathtaking aerodynamics proven up to a whopping 300mph.

Triumph TR7's and Datsuns aside, there was nothing like the third generation Pontiac Firebird on the roads and it captured the heart of a generation of television viewers in the guise of KITT.

Unlike the Firebird, however, the Shelby Mustang isn't looking to the future. It's looking firmly back at Mustang's epic legacy. The design and execution of this beautiful car takes it's nods from the original Shelby Mustangs of the late 1960's.

It's a retro-styled tribute to days gone by. Knight Rider, by it's very definition, should be automobile's future on today's roads. In ignoring that essential concept, the makers of this new TV show have made an enormous mistake in the car they chose.

Which is a pity, since the car's the co-star of the whole series. Falling at this first hurdle is like trying to remake The Dukes of Hazzard with anything but a '69 Dodge Charger.

Although in their defence, there isn't really a car on the roads today that's comparable to the '82 Pontiac Trans Am. Everything Detroit churns out these days seems to be a 'tribute' - like the watered down Dodge Charger, good looking but unexciting Chrylser 300 or Cheverolet's overpriced re imagining of the first generation Camaro.

American motor manufacturers used to be on the leading edge, driving the industry forward. Now they're constantly trying to recapture their glory days.

Which might explain why the motor industry is swishing around the plughole, loosing a greater and greater market share to foreign motor innovators.

Thrill Proof

Death Proof is anything but.

The Tarantino half of the Grindhouse experience - a cheesy project to return the B-movie double feature to America's cinema screens - falls foul of it's own cleverness.

Tarantino perfectly recreates the sleazy soundtrack, grainy camerawork and amateurish scripts that made the old seventies slasher flicks such trashy classics. In doing so, however, all he manages to do is make his own crappy horror movie.

Death Proof tells two tedious tales featuring trashy looking girls. In the first half of the movie, DJ Jungle Julia and her pals have a tequila-sozzled night out which climaxes in Julia's friend, Butterfly, giving a lapdance to crazy-eyed barfly 'Stuntman Mike.' The scar-faced stuntman then stalks the girls as they DUI their way home, killing all four of them in a grisly head-on car crash.

Stuntman Mike, you see, is a serial killer. His weapon of choice? A classic hot-rod specially reinforced to be 'Death Proof.' As Mike explains: "You could hit a brick wall at 125mph and walk away." He then goes on to test this theory by demolishing the girl's car.

Flash forward a year. Stuntman Mike is back - his '70 Chevy Nova replaced by a mean looking '69 Dodge Charger. He spots four likely looking girls driving through the Tennessee backwoods and decides to give them a taste of his Death Proof car.

But Mike has made a mistake. These girls are stunt-bunnies, on the set of a 'cheerleader movie' being filmed nearby (the best line of the movie is: "What's a cheerleader movie?" to which one of the girls replies: "It's a movie. About cheerleaders.")

These girls are taking a '70 Dodge Challenger for a test drive (one of the crazy girls actually strapping herself to the bonnet.) When Stuntman Mike tries to drive them off the road, the spunky stunt women turn the tables and chase the villainous murderer down in a breathtaking high-speed chase. He dies with a stiletto heel through the skull, after crashing his car into a hillside.

And that's the plot, pretty much.

It all sounds much more exciting then it is. Aside from the breathtaking 18 minute car chase, the entire movie seems to be made up of dreary dialogue between the bitchy girls. Sadly, Tarantino's scripts don't match his quick-fire dialogue from the Pulp Fiction days and as the girls rabbit on-and-on, you can't help but wish they'd just shut up and get on with it.

It does have it's highlights. As crazy Stuntman Mike, veteran actor Kurt Russell has a field day. He's a seriously bad-ass badguy. The cars are stars in their own right, too. The chase at the climax of the movie is worth the admission price - just not the time spent trudging through the dreary dialogue to get there.

The girls are good looking. None of your skinny, polished Hollywood stuff here. They have curvy figures, dirty mouths and tons of attitude. If Quentin had just skimmed half their dialogue, this film would have been a lot more entertaining.

Sadly, though, it all comes to naught. Just like the movie, actually. The ending is an anticlimax, with Tarantino throwing up 'The End' despite there being some glaring loose ends.

Quentin Tarantino! Please, answer these questions!

• Whatever happened to the pretty cheerleader? Last we saw, she'd been left at the mercy of 'Jasper' the redneck, who'd been informed that she was a porn star and 'sexually available.'
• What will Jasper say when the girls return with his precious '70 Challenger in pieces?
• During the climactic car chase, the girls killed a motorcyclist and drove three cars off the road. Then they kerb-stomped the baddy. What exactly will the police say about this?
• And sorry to repeat myself, but seriously. What happened to the cute-but-helpless cheerleader?

No matter how much of a Quentin Tarantino fan you are, you will be deeply disappointed by Death Proof. It's a rare miss for this talented writer/director. If you are determined to watch a sleazy seventies exploitation film, rent the real thing instead.

Little Known Fact...

I've always been one for naming my cars. My first car, a beautiful red Triumph TR7, I called 'Tiffany.'

My other big, red car - a Pontiac Firebird - was called Tiffany II. Hardly original.


Actually, there's a long and sordid history behind naming cars. One of the first was Traveler [sic], a '58 Chrylser 300D which was used by real-life Moonshine runner Jerry Rushing, whose exploits later inspired The Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit.


The real Traveller (Rushing misspelled his car's name) was actually General Lee's horse during the American Civil War. This beast was apparently one of the fastest horses in the world - and General Lee was buried next to his beloved mount when he was laid to rest.

Traveler was a worthy name indeed, then, for a mighty steel steed that could get up to 140mph with a trunk full of shine!

Jerry Rushing's biography inspired the 1974 movie Moonrunners and the hit TV classic The Dukes of Hazzard, both of which shared several characters and plot devices. Instead of Traveler, however, the Duke boys drove in a souped-up '69 Dodge Charger called the General Lee.


A car nearly as famous as The General was the '77 Pontiac Trans Am driven by Burt Reynolds in the awesome movie Smokey and the Bandit. Not many people know that this brutal muscle car was actually christened 'Trigger' in the second movie, after Roy Roger's trusted steed.


In the 1980 sequel, therefore, co-star Jerry Reed christens the replacement Trans Am 'Son of Trigger' although while evading Sheriff Justice's 'howd purswud' Burt Reynolds pats the dashboard and murmers the original name: "Come on, Trigger."


And the third Bandit car? Well, there's no Burt Reynolds this time around, but Jerry Reed (disguised as The Bandit) does refer to it as the "Banditmobile."


Not quite as catchy, is it?

One thing's for sure. Old cars have a lot more character than the generic boxes churned out in Japan and Korea. Giving an old muscle car or a vintage sportster a name seems to make sense. Call a Hyundai anything other than 'a car' and it seems somewhat unseamly.