A car that hasn't moved from its display pedestal in years somehow got busted speeding through Brooklyn. The Volo Museum in Illinois says it received a $50 traffic citation from New York City for its replica of KITT, the talking black Trans Am from Knight Rider, even though the car never left the building.
According to the Miami Herald, the museum says it got the citation on May 11 from New York City's camera violations unit. The notice accused the car of speeding through Brooklyn on April 22. A traffic camera on Ocean Parkway recorded a vehicle with a California plate reading KNIGHT traveling 36 mph in a 25 mph zone at about 1:02 p.m., according to ABC7 New York. Reports differ on how far over the limit the car was allegedly going — CBS News put it at 11 mph above the limit, while The Guardian reported 9 mph over.
The Volo Museum owns a black 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am built as a replica of KITT, the artificially intelligent car with a distinctive voice and personality from the NBC series, and displays it in its Hollywood vehicle collection. Jim Wojdyla, the museum's marketing director, said the replica had not been moved from its exhibit space in more than a decade, per the Miami Herald's reporting. CBS News separately reported that the museum shared security footage from the time of the alleged violation showing the car simply parked.
A Novelty Plate That Was Never Meant to Be Real
The KITT replica bears a novelty California plate reading KNIGHT, which the museum sells as a souvenir in its gift shop, according to the Miami Herald. Museum marketing director Wojdyla told Shaw Local the plate was “never intended to be a real registered license plate.” The museum believes New York City's automated system somehow connected that prop plate, visible in the camera photo, to the car on display in Illinois — though CBS News reports the museum still is not sure exactly how that link was made.
Wojdyla said museum staff initially thought the notice might be a joke, according to the Miami Herald, but concluded it was legitimate after checking the official New York City website. He said the museum had not found an explanation for how a New York violation ended up legally registered to the Illinois museum. The museum has requested a hearing to challenge the citation and posted a Facebook update about the situation, which Shaw Local reported drew more than 1.5 million interactions in a single day.
Conflicting Accounts and an Open Case
Coverage of the car's display history has not lined up either. Shaw Local reported the KITT replica has remained on display at the museum for more than a decade, while ABC7 New York reported the car has been on display for the past three years. Both the New York City Department of Finance and the New York City Department of Transportation said they were looking into the matter, Wojdyla told the Miami Herald. The city's own speed-camera guidance, published by the New York City Department of Transportation, states that recipients of a Notice of Liability generally have 30 days to respond, though it is not clear how that timeline applies to the museum's case.
Knight Rider, starring David Hasselhoff as a crime-fighting driver paired with his sentient car, aired on NBC from 1982 to 1986. Four decades later, the show's most famous vehicle — or at least a replica of it — is now at the center of a bureaucratic puzzle neither the museum nor city officials have fully untangled. Whether the $50 fine gets dismissed, and whether anyone figures out how a parked show car in Illinois picked up a ticket in Brooklyn, remains to be seen.
