Managed to catch the 15 second new Knight Rider series clip on TV yesterday. It’ll be a 2 hour first episode — testing the waters so to speak. If it is well received, we’ll see a whole season of it.

As a huge [1] Knight Rider fan, I’ll be anxiously waiting for the NBC premiere on February 17th. My first thoughts… they should not have chosen a 2007 GT 500 Mustang to replace the KITT Trans Am of old but instead something more unique (and flashy) like a [2] Lamborghini Reventón, [3] Pagani Zonda, [4] McLaren F1 or [5] Bugatti Veyron. Maybe it wasn’t in their budget to use those expensive cars and the producers wanted to keep it within an American brand (i.e. Ford) but why a Mustang??

Executive Producer Doug Liman (’The Bourne Identity’ Franchise and ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’) and Executive Producer David Bartis (’The O.C’ and NBC’s ‘Heist’) have joined together to bring back the 1980’s television classic “Knight Rider.” The two-hour movie event brings KITT and a talented cast of young and seasoned actors into the 21st century with speed, drama, love and triumph. David Hasselhoff as a special guest star returns as Michael Knight.

From NBC’s description above, I can only assume that we will see a next generation Knight Rider crew with Michael Knight stepping aside for a younger crime fighting guy that drives KITT. KITT (from the pictures below) has a makeover similar to the GT Mustang in the Transformers movie and body style reminiscent of a [6] Fast and Furious movie car. The trademark red moving light in the front of the car is still there but not as distinct as in the old TV series.

KITT will be voiced by [7] Will Arnett, husband of SNL’s Amy Poehler. The rest of the cast include [8] Justin Bruening (Michael Knight’s replacement named Mike Traceur), [9] Deanna Russo, [10] Sydney Tamiia Poitier and [11] Bruce Davison.

Update (12/31): [8] Justin Bruening will play Michael Knight’s son

It remains to be seen how many episodes the aging Michael Knight will be written into the script (personally the less we see of “The Hoff” the better!). It’ll be great to have a different take on Knight Rider and hope the producers can take it to new levels in the way the new Bionic Woman and Battlestar Galactica TV series has.

Here is a look at the new Knight Rider car:

(Photos courtesy of [13] Autoblog)

They really could have done a better job in choosing the car manufacturer and model to be the *new* Knight Rider (like the cars below).

(clockwise L to R: [2] Lamborghini Reventón, [4] McLaren F1, [5] Bugatti Veyron and [3] Pagani Zonda)

Here is the [18] 15 second trailer if you haven’t seen it yet.