The Volo Museum, which operates a collection of Hollywood movie and TV cars near Chicago, was baffled this week when it opened a New York City traffic ticket accusing its replica of KITT — the talking, self-aware Pontiac Trans Am from the 1980s series “Knight Rider” — of speeding through a Brooklyn neighborhood. The car, officials say, hasn’t budged from its display in years.
The ticket, issued April 22 and mailed to the museum in Illinois, carried a $50 fine and a pair of traffic-camera photographs showing a black Trans Am with the iconic California license plate “KNIGHT.” The vehicle was allegedly traveling 36 mph in a 25 mph zone. How New York City’s Department of Transportation linked the plate to the Volo Museum’s unregistered display prop remains unclear; city officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
The KNIGHT plate, according to city records, is also tied to five other unpaid speeding and red-light violations in New York dating to late 2024. The California Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed that an individual with the last name Knight renewed a registration for the state plate KNIGHT in March.
“The fact that we’re legally tied to a movie prop is interesting,” said Jim Wojdyla, the museum’s marketing director. “We’re known for having our Hollywood cars from TV and movies, but I have no idea how we got registered from a ticket in New York to the plates in California to the Volo Museum in Illinois. We’re still trying to figure it out.”
The museum has requested a hearing to contest the ticket. Wojdyla characterized the episode as a lighthearted mystery. “It’s really amusing,” he said. “We want to find out who this Knight Rider guy is because, birds of a feather. We just want to know is this from a museum, is this just a guy that built this car as a hobby? And it looks pretty damn accurate. We’d like to meet those guys.”
“Knight Rider,” starring David Hasselhoff as crime-fighter Michael Knight, aired on NBC from 1982 to 1986 and featured KITT — the Knight Industries Two Thousand — as a sentient vehicle with a sardonic personality. About 20 KITTs were built for the show, but only five originals survive, according to Road & Track. Countless fan replicas exist worldwide, including the Volo Museum’s version, and a Facebook group for KITT owners boasts nearly 19,000 members.
New York City is authorized to deploy up to 750 speed cameras. When a camera records a vehicle exceeding the limit by more than 10 mph, staff at the transportation department review the images and mail tickets to the registered owner, according to the city’s website. How the department connected the California plate to a museum in Illinois, which does not register its exhibit vehicles for road use, is the central riddle.
The museum has leaned into the absurdity. It changed its Facebook header to read: “Home of the Knight Rider KITT that famously got a speeding ticket in New York City without ever leaving its exhibit in Illinois!” A separate post joked, “Does anyone have Hasselhoff’s number? He owes us $50!!!!”
Wojdyla said the museum hopes to solve the puzzle when the hearing occurs. Meanwhile, somewhere in New York, a black Trans Am with a KNIGHT plate remains at large.