I Met My Hero

They say you should never meet your heroes. I say that as long as you go in with reasonable expectations, it’s worth doing. I’ve met a few celebrities in my travels as a journalist and a stage rally volunteer. They’re just people, not superheroes, and if you don’t put them on a pedestal to begin with, you probably won’t be disappointed. While this particular hero of mine is not a person, as long as I didn’t expect him to turbo boost over a train or even talk, it was going to go well.

I grew up during the heyday of cheesy 1980s action movies and TV shows, and I loved them. My particular favorite was Knight Rider. Imagine a car that could drive itself, navigate, and carry on a conversation with you. One thing I love about science fiction is that it drives what later becomes science fact. Some of today’s cars can drive themselves (sort of), have onboard navigation, and any iPhone with Siri can chat with you, though perhaps not as sarcastically as William Daniels’ voice of KITT. Of course, KITT could drive 300 mph and famously turbo boost to jump over anything. All that was movie magic. It doesn’t make it any less cool.

For Mother’s Day, my wife, her kids, and I went to Branson, MO, for lunch and to drive go-karts. One of her sons suggested visiting the Celebrity Car Museum, and she was all over it. (I promise, these were all HER decisions, NOT mine! Though I certainly wasn’t complaining, either.) As soon as we walked in, I heard the familiar “swoosh-swoosh, swoosh-swoosh” sound of KITT’s scanner. Around the first turn, there he was, a third-generation Pontiac Trans Am that was a perfect replica of my favorite car from my childhood.

This was actually not my first meeting with KITT. That was at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, where they had one of the few surviving screen-used cars on display. This particular one was a stunt car, so while it looked perfect from the outside, it was missing the full electronic dashboard, which they only put in the hero cars that wouldn’t be destroyed in stunt driving.

While not a car originally appearing in the show, this replica had the full interior, all the bells and whistles, right down to the Atari joystick that Michael Knight could be seen using to play a game while KITT drove during an early episode. Thanks to technological advances, this dashboard is of better quality than anything they would’ve had when filming the show in the 1980s. Even in the hero car, the dash lit up, but it didn’t really do anything, since TVs back then weren’t high enough resolution that you could tell (or care). All those close-up shots of the dashboard were of a studio prop that wasn’t even installed inside a car. This one was, and worked perfectly–at least, for a prop. I could not resist the temptation to press the Turbo Boost button. The LED on the button lit up properly, but we did not spontaneously jump out of the museum. That’s just as well. I can’t afford that repair bill.

Sitting behind the wheel of KITT (I can’t even believe I just typed that), the main thing I noticed was just how cramped it is. I’ve ridden in a Camaro or two (same platform as the Firebird/Trans Am), and they aren’t roomy to begin with. The button pods sticking out from either side of the steering column, while within easy reach while driving, also cut into my leg room, making me wonder how much my knees would bang into them while driving fast, like on the show. The distinctive steering wheel is much larger than I expected it to be. I’ve read reports of drivers of both replicas and cars on the show being afraid of hurting themselves in a rather sensitive area of their laps while going around corners because of it. While I didn’t drive KITT myself, I completely understand their concern. There are reasons why the stunt cars had no button pods and normal round steering wheels.

The other burning question you may have is, if this were a car on display in the museum, how did I get to sit inside it? The answer is simple: we paid an extra $10. That’s all it takes for them to take you behind the ropes to get pictures taken inside any car in the museum. One of my wife’s sons had a similar experience to the one I had with an original Bumblebee 1977 Chevy Camaro from the first Transformers movie. It appeared to be a screen-used stunt car with a stripped-out interior and a few extra things. It looked “perfect” on the outside, with the painted-on patina in all the right places. Her other son took a ride in a Halo drop pod simulator, being a huge fan of the game.

If you’re a car nut and ever in the Branson area, I highly recommend the Celebrity Car Museum. Whatever your taste in entertainment, there’s a good chance they have something up your alley. I also took and shared pictures of vehicles from Supernatural for a friend who loves the show and the Twister movies for my meteorologist friend. If you’re a fan of the Fast and Furious movies, they have many cars from them on display. They even have a replica of the 1960s Batmobile (though pictures in it cost $20 instead of $10). Even if you don’t sit inside any cars, seeing them up close and personal is fun.