PT KONTAK PERKASA - There’s no sign announcing Don Colie’s shop just south of Roanoke, Virginia. He doesn’t need one. The driveway’s full of third-generation Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams, all black, all unusually clean, all with a telltale scanner illuminated in the front valance, the red lights sweeping back and forth. The scanner’s swishing sound calls up a hundred Friday evenings watching Michael Knight battle bad guys with his intelligent self-driving car. If you lived through the 1980s, you immediately know what you’re seeing. This is this house of KITT. PT KONTAK PERKASA - Colie’s been building “Knight Rider” replica parts and vehicles for 20 years, fabricating everything you need to turn a 1982-1992 Firebird into the Knight Industries Two Thousand. It’s too simple to say that’s the only thing his company, Advanced Designs in Automotive Technology, does. The one-bay shop off a country two-lane is a full restoration and prop production house, all helmed by one man; fiberglass, electronics, paint, and interior work fall under his domain. PT KONTAK PERKASA - It’s hard to pin down exactly where Colie got started. He mocked up his first KITT dash in high school for a project, assembling an instrument panel from 2-inch furring strips, bits of wood paneling, and poster board. After graduation, he bought a 1982 Firebird Trans Am of his own and set about building the real thing, or as close as he could come. “The very first dash I built was kind of my interpretation,” he said. “I was pulling everything off of a VCR, freeze-framing it. I located what type of LED they used, got the measurements for it, and then multiplied that so I’d know how long each bar graph was. Then I would take that measurement of a single LED and see how many I could fit between the rows so I would know how to space them. That gave me a general description of how big to make the overall display board.” Years later, Colie met a friend who was close with original KITT designer Michael Scheffe, who generously lent him a set of schematics. Scheffe was the mind behind a number of famous vehicles from TV and film, including Doc Brown’s time-traveling DeLorean from the “Back to the Future” saga. “I took the one-sixteenth plastic Ertl model and measured everything out in millimeters, then I scaled it up 1:1 and sculpted it on a car.” Colie spent his early 20s working first in sales then in production at a prosthetics company, all the while modifying his own car. It wasn’t until he made his first bumper that he realized he might be able to make a full-time go of building “Knight Rider” replica parts. “I took the one-sixteenth plastic Ertl model and measured everything out in millimeters,” he said. “Then I scaled it up 1:1 and sculpted it on a car.”
He says this was the first truly accurate, show-quality reproduction bumper. Although there were other pieces floating around, some of which had been made from original molds, they were rough. These were props designed to look great whipping through an action shot, not sitting at a car show. This was in the late ’90s, years after the last “Knight Rider” episode and in the early days of the internet. When Colie began sharing photos of his car on a replica enthusiast website, he received a flood of requests asking him to build individual pieces. A business was born. Now 48, Colie has perfected his craft. He does everything in-house, forming fiberglass bumpers, dashes, consoles, and switch pods for both the first version of the car and the final version used in season four. He also builds KITT’s unique steering wheel from scratch using a two-part urethane foam. Like all great fandom, the “Knight Rider” universe has its own language. Early cars are “Two-TV” models, so named for the two screens mounted in the dash. They also feature six foglights mounted in the lower valance. Later cars use four foglights and only have one screen in the dash. They are predictably referred to as “One-TVs,” which Colie favors for the cleaner design. Source : automobilemag.com
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February 2022
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