My K.I.T.T. at "Alarm für Cobra 11"

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Video from the filming

As featured in press articles before, David Hasselhoff should have had a cameo role in the 16th season's pilot "72 Stunden Angst" of German TV action series "Alarm für Cobra 11"...
The first shooting should have been done on 3rd April 2011, because David was in Germany at that time to perform at some TV shows in Cologne. Unfortunately he did not sign up in time, so the new date was sheduled for 10th May... Shortly before this day came up, I was informed that David still had not signed, so they decided to film without him, because they ran out of time and the filming for the series had already continued for later episodes...
They made 3 Firebirds for the show to look a little bit like K.I.T.T. - sure, not 100% accurate, but likely to be recognized by standard audience. So my car was too detailed - so they only used it for interior shots (dashboard, voicebox, consoles and Turbo Boost button). All exterior shots were done with the stunt cars. At least two of them did not survive the shooting, because they was used to perform a Turbo Boost stunt ;)
Shooting the interior has finally been sheduled for 12th June 2011 with my K.I.T.T. replica... It was a post production shooting for the pilot, which had already been finished weeks ago. So I went to Cologne to join the filming of later episode "Familienangelegenheiten" and visit the set myself. I'm watching the show since the very first episode aired in 1996 and I only missed a couple of episodes. The shooting with K.I.T.T. was done at noon and lasted about 30-45 minutes. The main actors, Erdogan Atalay and Tom Beck were not in the car. You can only see legs and hands, so they used stand-ins for filming the scenes. But the production company organized a little meeting with the stars for me and the car, to take some pictures. They also signed the interior cover of my trunk - as a little souvenir...
Altogether a very nice day - also without Hasselhoff.
The show first aired on September 15th 2011 on German TV channel RTL (8.15 PM). The show had 4.98 million viewers in Germany, 16.7% market share. There were reruns on January 3rd 2013 with 3.61 million viewers and 10.7% market share and on 20th August 2015 with 2.16 million viewers and 7.9% market share.
After just 5 minutes, the guys confiscate a "K.I.T.T. replica" for a pursuit on German Autobahn. In 8 detail shots (tachometer, display, steering wheel, gear shift, lower console, voicebox, Turbo Boost button and steering wheel breaking off) you can see the interior of my K.I.T.T. (altogether just a few seconds). If you only want to see K.I.T.T., you only need to watch the first 10 minutes of the show. They used old samples of the original German voice of K.I.T.T. (Gottfried Kramer) and accentuated the 4 minute sequence with the music of the original and new Knight Rider series plus a remix of the original theme.
The episode "72 Stunden Angst" is available on DVD!

Screenshots from the show