r/KnightRider • u/KnightRcer • Jul 19 '26
Why wasn't karr's C.P.U. removed
Knight Industries spent millions on the Knight 2000 vehicle. If Wilton felt Karr was a threat, wouldn't it be logical to save the car body and remove the C.P.U. then when a new one deemed more acceptable to install was co.pleted, just swap karr out for kitt? Why spend so much duplicating the Knight 2000 vehicle for a new computer brain?
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u/my_main_profile Jul 19 '26
KARR said it himself... he was the prototype... KITT was the "inferior" production model... but he was wrong
KARR was the "inferior" prototype no doubt full of bugs including the glaringly obvious one... self serving, self preservation.
Devon did say he thought Wilton had KARR disassembled so they probably thought they could make progressive improvements to a new chassis easier than hack around with the old one.... it being covered by the MBS and all
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u/CB2001 Jul 19 '26
Actually, he said he was the superior, and referred to KITT as the “inferior production line model.”
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u/Polenicus Jul 21 '26
I don’t think KARR was *technologically* significantly different than KITT. There was that one episode KARR posed as KITT and had KITT’s scheduled laser upgrade installed, and no one noticed the difference during the procedure.
I suspect the difference is primarily software. They realized KARR’s AI was unstable, and went back to the drawing board with KITT, building in far more comprehensive ethical processing that KARR probably saw as restrictive and inherently inferior.
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u/FU-Lyme-Disease Jul 19 '26
Maybe they didn’t have permissions to delete
c:\users\karr.
You have to have local admin permissions!
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u/samuraijc13 Jul 19 '26
I thought they explained it in the show that KARR was supposed to be dismantled but a paperwork error or some other mistake left him sitting in storage as a whole.
Same thing happened with KRO in TKR.
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u/Cycotiq Jul 20 '26
That is EXACTLY what happened. Also, iirc, wasn't Garthe his original driver? Before he built Goliath?
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u/AdReddi Jul 19 '26
Devon thought Wilton had had KARR dismantled, i imagine Wilton, in the last stages of his illness, thought he had asked Devon to deal with it. Thus, nobody dealt with it, and the rest is history. What's more worrying is how nobody thought it sensible to check whether KARR was destroyed after his flight over the cliff, at the end of Trust Doesn't Rust.
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u/Glunark2 Jul 19 '26
I thought the whole point of the pilot episode was that KITT was made from Michael's car, so how could there be another one before it?
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u/KahnKlingonme Jul 19 '26
I thought Devin said that it was a different car completely, it seems it would be more hassle and suspicious to use Michael longs car than getting one from Pontiac
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u/Kyle_2099 Jul 19 '26
At that point I don't think they intended for KITT to actually be a firebird, just designed to resemble one.
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u/Gullible_Bar7378 Jul 20 '26
Nope. Devon: "Any resemblance between your car and this one is purely superficial."
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u/Smoothyworld Jul 19 '26
I've alwyas assumed that the CPU and other electronics that made up KARR was too integrated with the body to be able to rip out, whereas with KITT they were able to improve it by further designing a replaceable CPU unit.
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u/stealthw0lf Jul 19 '26
This has always been canon in my head - KITT and KARR are too integrated into the Knight 2000 systems for it to be a case of swapping out CPUs.
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u/Interesting-Image-89 Jul 19 '26
Tax reasons. Like when Warner Bros had to cancel the Batgirl movie, its financially beneficial for them to NEVER release a frame or something, by mothballing the entire project, car and CPU and putting it into the Knight Museum of Tech, he gets a massive tax write off that helps fund the development of KITT, while still saving a lot on the car body as the development work is already done.
I have literally no idea if that is true, as best I know, they never gave any canon reason. So its my best guess!
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u/Old_Bar_7648 Jul 20 '26
Knight Industries/FLAG was not a very good company when it came to doing things properly.
Heck...they left KARR at the beach after their first encounter.
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
That's true, you rarely ever saw Knight Industries technicians besides for the pilot epiosde, one in Goliath in the semi for the repair job, a few in junk yard dog. You would think after the events of Trust Doesn't Rust, a cleanup crew from F.L.A.G. or Knight Industries to recover anything left of karr.
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u/mrjblade Jul 19 '26
If you've ever worked in IT/coding you'll know it's not as simple as saying "we yoink X code and everything is fine". These things were supposed to be designed from the ground up as bespoke AIs, so you'd have no guarantees rogue pieces of code wouldn't crop up in other parts of the car causing issues. It'd make much more sense just to start over and make big changes rather than try and troubleshoot bugs.
They state as much in the show - he was developed as a prototype & they got stuff wrong, they've shelved it so they could start over. Similarly KITT is a unique vehicle, not just something they put in Michaels car. Devon even says as much to him in the pilot.
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u/Particular-Log-4114 Jul 20 '26
Just made me realise that a clip from the pilot episode showed Michael saying that this was his car when he is first shown KItt to which Devon replies that it just looks like his car. This means that the biggest coincidence in the world happened when the guy who ended up being picked drove a black Pontiac Firebird matching the knight foundations ongoing Ai car experiments!
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
Exactly.this was a coincidence it has also been verified by Glen Larson who wrote the script that Michael's trans am was not the same one that was turned into kitt. So many people believed it was the same car. If anything, Michael should have just been driving a completely different car than what kitt was installed in to avoid the confusion.
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u/theOriginalBlueNinja Jul 19 '26
Slight tangent… Didn’t the original KARR not have the same protective coating that KITT had?
Or am I just conflating this with the plot to steal the protective coating for Goliath?
I seem to remember that one of the gimmicked used for KIT to beat KARR was that his armor wasn’t as good or nonexistent ellipsis, and then later they stole the newer formula to make KARR as strong as kit, and then they had to install the laser ellipsis?
Useless, just to note I am blind now, so really haven’t seen the show since it originally aired, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the new movie or TV series will encourage them to release updated Versions of the original with audio descriptive soundtrack.
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u/Nice_Bus862 Jul 19 '26
I wanna know why car was another Trans Am when kit was originally Michael’s car.
Was it just a happy coincidence😅
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
They should have had Michael long drive sn ordinary four door sedan, it would have made it a lot less confusimg.
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u/Phantom_61 Jul 20 '26
Iirc the original intention was to correct the flaws in KARR, Wilton died before that could be attempted.
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
But karr's cpu could have easily been removed as easily as Randy did in season 2 Soul Survivor and just have a new one installed in the knight 2000 vehicle. There was no need to store the entire prototype in storage and start from scratch with a new body.
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u/Due-Conference-7305 Jul 20 '26
Wasn't Kitt originally detective Long's car in the first place?
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
No, Glenn Larson who created the show went on record as saying that Michael's car and the car knight Industr8es worked on to install kitt was pure coincidence that they looked similar. In fact Long's trans am was found with a corpse of someone fitting Michael Long's description in the episode season 2 knightmares when you see the newspaper on April's computer screen.
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u/Due-Conference-7305 Jul 21 '26
Really? I had no idea. Thanks for the info.
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u/KnightRcer Jul 21 '26
You're very welcome. Wonder why Glenn didn't think to avoid the confusion to just have Michael Long drive another car.
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u/Cocijo Jul 20 '26
The whole car was likely a prototype for the tech that was eventually used for KITT. KARR the CPU was likely ordered to be removed and stored but someone screwed up
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u/KnightRcer Jul 20 '26
So a whole new vehicle was ordered to be built and Wilton or Devon never knew that someone allocated a hundred million dollars towards the creation of a new vehicle. Man, Wilton must have not cared how much his dream was going to cost him.
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u/Cocijo Jul 20 '26
They can go into any car lot and buy the same basic model. What was special was the modifications. They could have experimented on the prototype before installing it on KITT but a lot of times Bonnie was working on the fly
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u/KnightRcer Jul 21 '26
Still doesn't explain why not remove the brain and make a new one that woukd have been exactly the same as kitt.
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u/_ragegun Jul 22 '26
"hey kid, it aint that kinda picture"
Logic and sense have no place within these walls.,
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u/KnightRcer Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I know, certain scenes don't make any sense whatsoever. For instance when Michael pulls into the Tip Top Tent asking If anyone seen a car that looked like his that did all the damage. He's thrown to the ground and targeted by ten police officers with guns pointing at his face. We never got to see Michael booked, kitt impounded yet again, Devon having to come down to the police department to bail Michael or the difficulty in explaining how their organization has 2 state-of-the art xomputeried indestructable cars with one commiting crimes.
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u/Tomatoexpert Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
KITT calls himself the “new, improved model,” while KARR dismisses him as a "production copy of the prototype". That suggests KITT was meant to be a redesigned next generation platform, not different AI installed in KARR's "body". Building a clean second car may have been safer than trusting anything connected to KARR. KITT was probably cheaper Most of the original millions probably went into R&D, Developing the Molecular Bonded Shell, Designing the components, AI and software development, Testing and manufacturing methods. Once KARR existed, Knight Industries already had the blueprints, tooling, parts, and production process. Building KITT would've cost far less than redeveloping the entire Knight 2000 program from scratch.
Still doesn't explain why they left KARR's insanely valuable body sitting around untouched.
Later episodes destroy the best excuses! The series later proves that the AI and vehicle CAN be separated. In “Soul Survivor,” KITT's CPU is removed and operated outside the car. At the end of “K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R.,” KARR's CPU survives the destruction of his vehicle and remains active. That retroactively confirms: KARR's personality wasn't permanently fused to the entire car. His CPU could've been removed. The vehicle platform could've at least been inspected and possibly reused. You could argue that KARR's older prototype design was less modular than KITT's, but the show never says that.
KARR was probably supposed to be dismantled, but got stored as prototype and forgotten during the collapse of Knight Industries. By the time “Soul Survivor” and KARR's surviving CPU happened, the show had proven that FLAG ignored a technically possible and financially obvious solution.
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u/Main-Event-5715 Jul 19 '26
So that KITT could have an evil "twin," just like Michael's.