Knight Rider Car "KITT" Stolen and Caught on Camera?
An unconfirmed tip we just received suggests that KITT from the TV series Knight Rider was stolen during a publicity event outside of Union Station in Toronto. KITT has been in town this week promoting the new television series on E!
In the video, someone appears to hop into the idling vehicle and speed off, and some panic ensues.
The tipsters themselves suggest that it might be a publicity stunt, so take this with a grain of salt until we can get confirmation.
Updates follow...
Update (3:40pm):
Police Constable Dixon at 52 Division could not confirm that a theft report was filed without a license plate number, and is unaware of any reports of the above incident.
Update (4pm):
Calls to Canwest and Global TV to confirm the incident have so far proved fruitless, but I have left a voicemail with the director of publicity for Global Networks and E!
An employee at media relations at Global Toronto (who wishes to remain anonymous) has told me that she has received a number of calls from the media, and that Canwest currently "doesn't know where the car is," and is "trying to figure out what has happened."
Update (4:45pm):
Photos of the incident have appeared on the Myspace page of local electro hip-hop group The Royal Society.
Update (5:01pm):
A nameless poster posted about the supposed incident on the E! blog at 4:48pm.
Update (5:10pm):
Repeated phone calls to the director of publicity for Global Networks and E! have gone unanswered. She's either loving this (if it was a planned stunt) or hating this (if the car was actually stolen).
Update (5:32pm):
My 7-year old nephew says "if that really happened, or even if they're pretending, the TV show is terrible and not worth watching." And I concur.
Update (6:00pm):
I just chatted with a news tip screener at 680news, and they aren't running the story because they too haven't been able to confirm it.
The likelihood that this was a real theft is near none.
Update: (9:00pm):
I've had a chance to speak with members of local electro hip-hop group The Royal Society about a fortunate side-effect of the stunt - their Myspace traffic went through the roof today.
Update: (6 days later)
Canwest is now admitting that it was a PR stunt, which explains why Global
and E! haven't returned any of my phone calls for a week. Lame.
Photo courtesy of The Royal Society.
Comments (32)
People should be taxed for watching shows that glamourize automobile use. It would help to pay for the external costs incurred by the plague of car accidents in this country.
when I get home I hope I see a high speed chase down the DVP with someone with the acronym DH in the backseat.
The Royal Society was there and reported it on their MySpace page
http://www.myspace.com/theroyalsocietyx
Guess that guy isn't from around here. He'll be stuck in traffic on the DVP, Gardiner or Lakeshore. Take your pick.
(In any case, this is total "viral" crap)
Given that it's a promotion by CanWest Global et al., I should imagine it's staged. Even if it isn't, it still looks stagey and inept--attributes I give to CanWest
Global et al.
If this was staged, the police should charge the jackasses that planned this with public mischief.
@Ben: Yeesh... Glamourizing cars? So what? You should be more concerned with the massive use and discarding of material (like wood and plastic) production companies do.
Total viral publicity stunt:
1. They wouldn't leave a vehicle like that idling and unmanned
2. Everyone is behind a barrier except that guy?
3. They closed down all of Front St by Union station, if it wasn't planned, only half of it would be closed
4. Bad acting
Worse video ever. Even for a cell phone.
I'm getting to hate all this viral crap more and more.
You're all wrong. No one stole the car. KITT drove himself away. He's soooo ashamed of his crappy new show that he need to get some "me" time.
Yes, check the story on our Blog -- you can see the cameraphone girl run past breezy from The Royals as she's running toward the delivery girl. We also have pictures of the guy who TOOK the car...
www.myspace.com/theroyalsocietyx
friend add us,
x
Who cares? Kit's past his prime now anyways.
Resuscitating the show with a crappy Ford Mustang just doesn't do it for me. The Pontiac Trans Am at least looked cool in the early '80s. They could at least have found a cooler looking car. Something like the Audi R8 or even the Dodge Viper.
Yep, another stupid viral stunt. Who's behind this one? Matchstick?
@ Ben: dude, you mean well, but sheesh.
I'm getting sick of telling people this.. and everyone is so quick to jump on the 'stunt' wagon these days. Guy gets shot on 401 and pushed out of car... STUNT right? shit happens, specially in toronto :|
Anyways, I don't think it was a fake and here is why.
I was going for lunch (I work on Front street) andsaw the E!tent. Being the greedy bugger I am, I thought DING! Free merchandise
Anyways, they just had some cards and wanted me to wait to get my picture taken with.. KITT :| la di da. Anyways, not gonna waste my 1 hour lunch waiting for a damn car. So I walk back and notice that one of the offduty cops is a former classmate. I asked him why they're closing both sides of the street, since Front is always so damn busy.
Apprently they were going to close traffic just a few min, during which the car would do burn-outs and loop around the median, which ends at Bay street, then come back around, in the westbound lane, and end up in front of the E! tent again. Hence the pylons and fences!
I was too far to see it getting jacked (already at Bay), but my cop friend thought it was part of the gig, except the car didn't turn back at BAY!!! around the median.. but just kept going. So the cops weren't in on it.
Or they wouln't allow it to scream past Bay, since there were no barriers and it was lunch time and everyone jaywalking downtown.
I guess the promo company messed up, or their driver went bananas and took the car, or it was an actual theft. hm Global must not be commenting since they're trying to figure out what happened internally or they're embarrassed to admit it, and are going with the flow.
hm the original KITT must be rolling in its grav.. em I mean scrapyard.
OK, enough about Knight Rider. Let's talk about the new 90210 now: I hear Brenda's coming back....
I was there - it was clearly a publicity stunt. Didn't anybody else find it ODD that it was driven on a flat-bed from across the street? Why didn't they just drive it over? Then she parks it on a diagonal in the middle of the road, while a cop holds the traffic at bay? The whole thing was so fake.
Yup, the part that is very questionable for me is that she leaves it in the middle of the road at an angle so that nice pics can be taken of it and everyone has a good perspective of it. If they had put it closer to the lineup the "carjacker" has a farther distance to run and being closer to the lineup risks some hero attempting to take him down.
But then again it is a woman driver--do you see how they park in the malls?
People are now betting on whether the car will be returned on Wednesday.
http://www.hubdub.com/m16073/Will_KITT_the_car_from_the_new_Knight_Rider_be_recovered_before_Wednesday
Have to agree though this is just a fake and sad stunt for a crap show!
I just checked on another aspect and it seems this one only comes in a 6-speed manual...and has a GPS unit :-/ --I don't know how those work but I suspect they could track the car. Driving stick is probably not exactly a rare skill, but I'd wager the chances are slim some bum off the street could just jump into this car and get a split-second feel for the clutch--and drive it so well down the road.
The whole problem with the popularity of viral marketing stunts is the fact that nobody knows whether they should act on a crime (ie, report it) or simply assume it's marketing.
Besides, Knight Rider sucked back then, and it's going to suck now.
Canwest is now admitting that it was a PR stunt, which explains why Global and E! haven't returned any of my phone calls for a week. Lame.
Check out the season premier.
http://gusteez.blogspot.com/2008/09/check-out-this-sneek-peak-of-knight.html
View More Events
Suggest an Event
Join the blogTO Flickr group
Join the blogTO YouTube Group
RSS
