Battle of the 80s Supercars

My love for Knight Rider is well known (and if not, it is now)  KITT (the Knight Industries Two Thousand) was a car ahead of it's time nearly forty years later we still haven't got everything that car could do.

The Battle of the 80s Supercars was in effect two specials in one.

The first part was David Hasselhoff driving around in KITT looking at the new wave of cars that were influenced by KITT and Knight Rider -  bulletproof cars, self driving cars, a self sufficent survival car, smart cars that you open through your watch as well as very fast cars.

In most cases, The Hoff drives the cars - there's part of me that imagines the creators of these vehicles were doing the "Knight Rider is driving my car" happy dance.  And it was fascinating to see what was currently being done.

There's a cool bit where the Hoff visits the desginer of KITT for the TV series and we see his design sketches for KITT.

The second part which was woven through the special was an 80s super car race -  now this was a great idea as a young boy in the 80s we had a number of supervehicles aside from KITT on TV:

• Blue Thunder (the one season spinoff from the movie), 
• Airwolf (helicopter), 
• Streethawk (motorcycle), 
• Automan's car, 
• the Coyote X from Hardcastle and McCormick, 
• The Highwayman's truck, 
• The A-Team van, 

and that is just off the top of my head.  (I was going to include Viper but that was in the 90s and we're not going into the Knight Rider spinoff TV Movies and series which would double the list alone.)

Okay we aren't doing the helicopters but that's an impressive list of vehicles and the producers got Dirk Bendict to drive the A Team Van - yes!  and Erik Estrada on his CHiPs bike - ah what now?

Now don't get me wrong CHiPs was a fine series and I have a feeling that my cousin Michael and I had CHiPs action figures but a) they were regular police motorcycles not super vehicles and b) CHiPs started in 1977.

A good chunk of the special had Erik Estrada hunting for his bike (which he did after accepting the challenge of the race) and Benedict getting the van serviced (at least he was spared running around looking for the van).

Really all they needed to do was what they did with Hasselhoff - make out that these guys were just driving around all the time in these vehicles.  I'm sure that most of us assume that to be the case anyway.

Partway through Hasselhoff runs into Morgan Fairchild who basically tells the Hoff  that she wishes he come last.  Morgan Freeman wasn't in any show even vaguely super car related, yeah she was in flashy soaps like Falcon Crest and Paper Dolls but why was she here?

We get to raceday and they get Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke from the Duke of Hazzard) as the race offical and starter which was a great idea, I suspect that instead of the four wheel drive she turned up in she was supposed to drive up in the General Lee, but given the sensitivity to the Confederate Flag these days that was sqashed,.  

The idea was first to win two races was the overall winner and I'm sure since this was Hasselhoff's special we can all guess who won.

The show ends with the Hoff talking a possible sequel with races with other super vehicles - that brought a huge grin to my face.

(I should mention that KITT brought the