KITT, a famous talking car from an iconic 80s television series, was issued a citation for speeding in New York City despite being on display in the Volo Museum, which said they thought it was a joke at first.
The Volo Museum said they recently opened their mail to find a speeding citation from a New York City traffic camera accusing KITT, the famous talking car from the iconic 1980s television series Knight Rider, of speeding through a school zone.
The museum, known for its collection of famous television and movie cars, is located in Illinois and nowhere near New York.
The KITT vehicle owned by the museum has not been in New York and has remained on display for more than a decade.
The car caught speeding through the school zone was using KITT’s novelty television prop California license plate that reads “KNIGHT,” a decorative plate never intended to be a real registered license plate.
“We honestly thought it was a joke at first,” Volo Museum Marketing Director Jim Wojdyla said. “Then we checked the violation on the official New York City website, and it’s legit.”
The museum said they are questioning how a fake television show license plate ended up in an official license plate registry and how Volo Museum became associated with it.
Museum Director Brian Grams said that the museum will be formally requesting a hearing instead of paying the fine.
“The fine is only $50,” Grams said. “But we decided to request a hearing partly for clarification and partly because the entire situation is too bizarre not to pursue answers.”
The Volo Museum said they posted a photo of the violation online and the story quickly went viral across social media, generating more than 1.5 million interactions in a single day and thousands of comments from amused fans of the classic television series.
“I can’t imagine there are many KITT cars driving around the streets, so I’m very curious who that vehicle belongs to,” Wojdyla said.
“I heard there may be a Knight Rider reboot coming out soon, so maybe David Hasselhoff is fighting bad guys again. If he is, he owes us 50 bucks,” Wojdyla said.
The vehicle caught speeding was clocked traveling 36 mph in a 25 mph school zone on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn.
The citation included photographs of the vehicle, a $50 fine and a matching online violation record on New York City’s official violations website.
K.I.T.T., short for Knight Industries Two Thousand, starred alongside Hasselhoff in the NBC series Knight Rider from 1982 to 1986 and remains one of the most recognizable television cars of all time.