This Flawless $50,000 KITT Replica Is 1980s Homage Perfection

The world of building car replicas is as dark and murky as a mole’s basement. It’s full of horrors; of terrifying attempts to mimic Bugatti Veyrons and Ferrari F50s. All of these should be killed with fire to make way for this: the most perfect replica car we’ve ever seen.

This is, of course, a replica of KITT, the Knight Industries Two Thousand from the iconic 1980s action series Knight Rider. Built by childhood super-fan Chris Blasius, from Homestead Falls in Ohio, the lengths taken to turn a regular 1982 Pontiac Trans Am into a perfect replica – including an ‘intelligent’ KITT talking computer – are insane.

Born of his younger self’s need to own this car, Blasius has spent two and a half years, 2000 man-hours and $50,000 to make it what it is, sourcing parts and expertise from all around the world. It’s an incredible, astonishing build.

Starting with a hard-top 1982 Trans Am, he converted it into a T-top as per KITT’s proper spec, using the bar from a 1987 Trans Am. Apparently, all the actual T-top cars he could find had rusted badly through the floor, owing to design flaws that allowed water into the bodywork pretty much from day one.

KITT’s unique front bumper, which is usually wrong in one way or another on replicas, was painstakingly reproduced from freeze-frames from the show, mapped into Photoshop and then turned into a 3D model from which a bodywork specialist could produce an exact copy.

The steering wheel, dashboard trim, completely functional interior electronics, wheels and $12,000 paint job are all correct and perfect. Even the seat fabric, having long since gone out of production, was recreated from scratch. The story of this car’s creation makes for a fascinating 11 minutes of video. Tuck in.

Source: CarScoops