Michael Knight and KITT — a man and a machine, bonded in an alliance dedicated to the righting of wrongs. Not that they're necessarily always happy about it: KITT has a mind and voice of its own, and the interplay between maverick Michael (David Hasselhoff) and by-the-book KITT (voice of William Daniels) gives rise to one of the most oddly endearing buddy team-ups on television.

The knight hadn't always been a Knight. Michael Knight had been undercover police detective Michael Arthur Long — shot in the face and presumed killed in the line of duty, but revived and rehabilitated by the Foundation for Law And Government and charged with the task of fighting for justice. Knight Industries, the legacy of dying industrialist Wilton Knight, provided Michael with KITT — the Knight Industries Two Thousand, a souped-up Pontiac Trans-Am with speech and artificial intelligence, the most advanced car ever built: bulletproof, fireproof, armed with everything from flamethrowers to electromagnetic-field generators, equipped with mobile-laboratory gear like spectrographs and chemical analyzers, capable of speeds of 300 miles per hour, able to leap 50 feet into the air ... and, among other things, devilishly witty as well!

With the death of Wilton Knight, trusted associate Devon Miles (Edward Mulhare) took over Knight Industries and FLAG. Together with KITT chief engineer Bonnie Barstow (Patricia McPherson) and her second-year substitute, April Curtis (Rebecca Holden), and eventual sidekick Reginald Cornelius III, or RC3, Michael Knight fought everything from terrorist saboteurs to corrupt officials. His most deadly battles came against the vicious, survival-at-all-costs prototype KARR (Knight Automated Roving Robot) and Wilton Knight's own criminal son, Garthe Knight, who piloted the car-crushing truck Goliath and despised the fact that Michael's face had been remade to resemble Garthe's own.

Knight Rider premiered with the two-hour pilot Knight of the Phoenix on Sept. 26, 1982, and aired on NBC through August 1986 — thereafter spawning a cottage industry of sequels and spinoffs, including the TV-movies Knight Rider 2000 (1991) and Knight Rider 2010 (1994), the series Team Knight Rider (ABC, 1997-98) and the planned Universal motion picture Super Knight Rider 3000. Clearly, Knight Rider had the drive to succeed.