There's no more Trans Am goodness for Michael Knight or rather, the next generation -- Mike Tracer. (Every time I hear his name, I think of the Chasing Amy tracer rant.) The first KITT was a Pontiac Trans Am T-top, but this time around, the Knight Rider back-door pilot/television special is getting some Ford power. Jalopnik scored pictures of the new generation KITT, and it's a 550 HP Ford Shelby GT500KR Mustang, which you can see above.

Never being a Trans Am fan, I'm pretty happy with the auto choice. It's modernized, but it still has the lights and KITT feel to it. (The site mentions that the lights were photoshopped in for the picture, because they weren't working when it was taken; but otherwise, that's the car in all its real glory.) Before, I just liked the idea of a car you could chat with -- it makes long trips alone all the more fun. (I wonder if KITT would sing along to the radio?) But now, I would love to take that out for a test-drive. How about you?

[via Coming Soon]

If anything could really hurt the feature film for Knight Rider, the one that series creator Glen A. Larson has been working on for a while, I would guess that it would be the Hoff. As you might remember, NBC wanted to get in on the KITT action, so they started to make a 2-hour movie/back-door pilot to come out before the movie and steal its thunder. Justin Bruening joined the cast earlier this month, and now the NBC project might have scored the big cheese -- David Hasselhoff. Reuters has reported that he's in talks to reprise his role as Michael Knight for the project.

If he signs on the dotted line, he'll join Bruening and another soap opera alum, Deanna Russo -- who will follow in Hoff's footsteps, by getting into the Rider via The Young & the Restless. And here's the story: Mike Tracer (Bruening) is Michael Knight's son, but he never knew his dad. "Burned by his love for childhood best friend and one-time girlfriend Sarah Karmen (Russo), Mike is wasting away in Las Vegas when Sarah reappears and is willing to pay off Mike's gambling debt in exchange for help." You see, Sarah's dad is KITT inventer Charles Kamen, and she works in the engineering department of Stanford. KITT tells her that her father is missing, so she recruits the kid. How Hoff fits in, oh, I imagine he'll give his son some tips or something. Oh yeah -- and Sydney Poitier, of Grindhouse fame, is also involved.

Could Hasselhoff be involved in both projects? Or, if he signs onto one, will that mean the end of the other? What are your thoughts?

One KITT driver has been named in this dueling Knight Rider kerfuffle. If you remember from last month, as series creator Glen A. Larsen has been slowly forming a feature film based on the series, NBC decided to zip in and create a 2-hour movie/back-door pilot to steal the spotlight. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it's one step closer to being the first one out there -- taking a cue, it seems, from David Hasselhoff's previous hunt for Michael Knight's son. NBC has picked soap star Justin Bruening to star as Knight's offspring.

Just like The Hoff years before, who joined the classic show after a stint on The Young and the Restless, Bruening will make the jump into KITT from soap operas -- for the last four years, he's played Jamie Martin on All My Children. Personally, I'm more interested to see if he follows Hasselhoff's path and dips into bikini babe television and international singing superstardom after the role, rather than what he does with this questionable project. With a star in place, the network, so far, is beating Larsen's movie project to the punch. So, onto the questions. Can this actor pull it off and draw KITT fans in? Will this steal the thunder and end/hurt the film? Do you care? When did Knight Rider become such tasty subject matter that people would battle each other for it?