Quick Stats: David Hasselhoff, actor/singer/producer
Daily Driver: 2016 BMW Alpina B6 Gran Coupe (David’s rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Other cars: see below
Favorite road trip: Gumball Rally
Car he learned to drive in: Ford Falcon
First car bought: 1960 Mercedes-Benz 190SL
It turns out, in real life, Michael Knight is like the rest of us when it comes to cars and exclusivity. Only it’s not KITT. For David Hasselhoff, his 2016 BMW Alpina B6 Gran Coupe is what makes him smile every time he looks at it.
“I have a relationship with BMW UK,” he says. “I’ve been using their SUVs, driving pretty much all over the UK and fell in love with the Alpina because it’s got massive horsepower and it’s a two-tone interior and the paint is incredible, a gold metallic paint. I’ve never seen another one on the road, which makes me extremely happy that I have a one of a kind car.”
When asked how he’d rate his Alpina, Hasselhoff stops to think before giving it a perfect 10: “It’s so fast, and I just had some fun the other day doing all the corners in a parking lot which was empty. I wanted to see if it would spin out. And it didn’t. I was going pretty fast,” he says, referring to a parking lot somewhere in Los Angeles. “Parking was on the ninth floor and you could go around the speed bumps, so you could just hit it.”
What gave him pause on the car being perfect, though, was the Alpina’s gas consumption. “The only thing I dislike about the car is it eats gas like crazy,” he says. “I can go through almost a tank of gas in a day. It’s just insane, but I think because of the horsepower.”
Hasselhoff calls himself a “BMW guy,” and his enthusiasm for the Alpina is infectious, making you want to check it out. This ride is a unique one, and that’s why it’s currently his favorite. He also likes that it holds the road.
“You can get four people in it comfortably, but it’s really a man’s sports car that is just beyond sexy, and to be honest, it makes me extremely happy just to look at it,” he says. “When I see it in the parking lot, I just go, ‘Wow’ and then I realize it’s mine, and it makes me feel fantastic.”
2017 Cadillac Escalade
Rating: 9
“The Escalade’s an awesome car because it’s just a big bruiser, and you can get 10 people in that car, and it’s got five DVDs,” Hasselhoff says. “It’s great for my daughters to go on location. One of my daughters is a model, and she’s always going on location, and the other one is singer-songwriter, so she’s always doing videos. So it’s a great family car. It’s also great for me because it’s like when you arrive in this car, you know it’s either me or George Bush,” he says, with a laugh. “I use the car. I love the car. The electronics in the car are just phenomenal. They’re better than anything. They’re better than the BMW. But it’s a large car. It’s a handful.”
1960 Mercedes-Benz 190SL
Rating: 10
Like many car lovers who keep their first car for the priceless emotional value and memories it offers them, Hasselhoff still has the car he’s had since his soap opera days on Young and the Restless in 1976.
“I bought this from my next-door neighbor for $3,500 bucks 100 years ago because he was in dire straits, and it was sitting outside just getting filthy,” Hasselhoff says. “I said, ‘I have a check for $3,500 bucks that I got back from taxes, I’ll give it to you.’ So I did, and I restored it and my dad drove it for a long time. Now it’s being rerestored because it’s worth a lot of money now. I had a 1965 Mustang, which I just sold, and also a Harley Davidson motorcycle, which I sold because I knew I would never drive it. It was too big, and it was too dangerous.”
This Mercedes no doubt gets a perfect 10 for the place in his life it’s held. “The Mercedes is just a fun car,” he says. “As a classic car it’s a 10, but as far as drivability, it’s a four cylinder engine and four on the floor, so it’s not powerful at all. I keep it because it’s my memories of my father. He drove it, and he loved it, and I’m getting it really re-re-re-restored again because it’s been so long.”
Car he learned to drive in
Hasselfhoff’s dad taught him how to drive in a Ford Falcon in La Grange, Illinois. “The Ford Falcon was three on the tree, one, two, three, and then reverse was pull it to yourself and up,” he say. “It was my uncle’s car, and he passed away and gave it to me in his will. I went, ‘Wow!’”
He recalls one memory of his father teaching him in the Falcon. “It was really a small tin car, but I was so excited to have a car,” he says. “I just remember driving with my father and him going, ‘Speed up, speed up!’ And I was very afraid when driving, and you drive really slow.”
He kept the Falcon for about a year and after trading it in for a friend’s car that wasn’t very memorable, he got a Corvair that became his high school car. “I drove the Corvair around and thought I was the coolest kid in the world,” he says. “I wore little red glasses, really tiny little reading glasses, but they were red, and a little hat. I used to think that I was cool.”
There would be other cars his folks bought Hasselhoff, including the one that he drove to where he’d make his name one day on TV. “My parents were just fantastic, my father and I were really close, and I was a good kid,” he says. “I wasn’t out partying and doing drugs or anything like that, so they were very happy, and my dad bought me a fantastic car as a gift—it was an orange with a white top Pontiac Firebird, and it was just insane. I drove that to California and drove that around California for a long time.”
Splurge car after Knight Rider
Hasselhoff remembers the car he bought (after becoming a household name driving a dream car that so many fans coveted) like it was yesterday. The real life Knight treated himself to a dream 1986 Porsche 928.
“It was $54,000, and I went in and gave them a check,” he says. “I was afraid to drive it. I got sick. I couldn’t believe that I did that. And I called them up and they said, ‘Drive the shit out of the car! Just go drive it, go crazy. You’re going to love this car.’ So I did, and I fell in love with it.”
“Race For Life” was on the back window of the Porsche because he had a charity of the same name. He painted the car black and gold and points out that there are photos of it online.
“The charity was a part ownership by name only in an Indy car team and ended up with a Paul Newman-Carl Haas team, and I raced for charity,” he says. “The first episode of Knight Rider, we saw the first Make-a-Wish child, and he died, and it just shot an arrow through my heart. From that moment on, I saw kids all over the world in like 30 countries, and the car was the ‘Race For Life’ car because we ended up having an Indy car team. Arie Luyendyk went on to win the Indy 500. Two times in a row.”
Hasselhoff kept his Porsche 928 for about 10 years and then leased Mercedes-Benzes. “I leased Mercedes for a long time, and now I’m a BMW guy, 100 percent,” he says. “And I do race occasionally. My biggest road race was the Gumball Rally. I’ve done it six times. Sometimes I do the whole leg, which is really, really, really hard. It drives you nuts, and you never get any sleep.”
Favorite road trip
Hasselhoff’s favorite road trip memory would be the bonding experience of the Gumball Rally. “The Gumball Rally is the most amazing road trip,” he says.
He autographed KITT’s steering wheel, and it was sold for $40,000. The money was donated to a charity. “All these people that are racing these cars are successful, so the greatest memory that I have is everybody wants to race with me,” Hasselhoff says, laughing, “because when the police stop me, I get out of the car, and before they can give me a ticket or put me in jail, they go, ‘David Hasselhoff!’ ‘How about a picture, OK? You let me go, you let 10 of my drivers go, you get a picture.’ And everybody races with the Hoff, because the Hoff’s got a Get of Jail Free card. The Gumball rally is … just unbelievable. It’s just balls out, crazy fun.”
He’s planning to do another Gumball Rally because driving fast is his vice. “I don’t drink, and I don’t party, so I just drive,” Hasselhoff says. “And I’ll drive slow, and then once in awhile I’ll look around and the police will give me the go ahead, and the kids, all the overpasses are all waving at you and they’ll have signs that say ‘Police up ahead’ or they’ll just press with their hand saying, ‘Rev it, rev it, rev it!’ And I usually drive an R8 in those because they’re safe.”
Knight Rider and KITT
Hasselhoff had his Baywatch success, but many of us will always see him as Michael Knight, who took us into a world of talking cars before any notion of talking devices would have ever occurred to people who weren’t engineers.
Hasselhoff has his own incredible memories from that simpler time when it was unthinkable that a Trans Am could talk to us.
“I did one jump, and when I did the jump, it’s great, but when you land, it rings your bell,” he says. “I said from that moment on, I didn’t do anymore jumps. They would not let me do jumps—we faked it. We said, ‘Action Jack!’ And Jack was our driver.”
Hasselhoff learned how to drive from Jack Gill and his brother Andy. “They’re very famous stuntmen and second unit directors like Talladega Nights type guys,” he says. “I got so good at driving the car that the stunt men were wrecking cars. We had nine cars on the set every day, and sometimes the stunt guys weren’t good at driving it, but I got good and I said, ‘Come on guys, I can do this, damn it, just give me the car!’ And I would go out and do the best reverse 180 that anybody could possibly do. You have one shot, and I’d get out of the car, chase the bad guy, and it was me, it wasn’t just a cut. So I did a lot of that.”
He sold his own KITT car to someone in Turkey for $150,000. “I did a Julien’s auction, and most of the money went to charity—I just had too many cars,” he says. “With a phone call I can get 20 cars in like 48 hours, and I’m always doing commercials with the car.”
He actively buys and refurbishes old Trans Ams into KITTs, to the delight of many fans, who are clients, as well as those unsuspecting car owners he approaches on the street to buy their car. “I just bought another Trans Am,” Hasselhoff says. “When I see them on the road, pull people over, and say, ‘Do you want to sell it?’ They flip out, and they usually sell it to me. I buy them and fix them up. Make them into a Knight Rider car with a gull-wing and make it drivable and make it a better engine. It’s a lot of fun. And then people offer me $150,000 and I go, ‘OK.’”
For those still wondering how KITT “spoke to” Knight, the voiceover was inserted in post-production. “The cars all talk now,” he says. “Back then, the truth is I never ever did a scene with the KITT car talking. It was whoever wanted to read it on the radio, and they would put it in post. I met William Daniels, who was on St. Elsewhere, and he was also Mr. Sweeney in Boy Meets World. He had such a great little voice, kind of continental, very much authoritative and could rattle your bell if he wanted it to. We met at the Christmas party and he said ‘Hi, I’m William Daniels, I play KITT.’ I said, ‘Well, hi! I’m David Hasselhoff, I play Michael Knight!’ and he says, ‘Looks like we have a hit!’ And I said, ‘Yes sir!’ We clicked glasses and had a glass of champagne together and that was the last time I saw him until I saw him again at a couple different functions or at a coffee shop.”
Hasselhoff said it was in post-production looping that he heard how Daniels was playing the voice. “It was a very different show in the beginning because there wasn’t a real sense of humor, and I’m the one who said, ‘Come one guys, KITT should be like the horse like in Roy Rogers or Lone Ranger, high ho silver, away!’ He’s got to be my buddy, so I was the one who started calling him ‘Buddy’ and ‘Pal’ and petting him, and loving the horse. And they loved it.”
As you’d expect, Hasselhoff regularly gets stopped by fans who want to talk about Knight Rider. “Right now it’s every male between 35 and 50 stops me in the grocery store to tell me their Knight Rider story,” he says. “Everybody. ‘Can I tell you my story?’ ‘Oh, here we go again.’ I said, ‘I’m shopping at midnight so I don’t get recognized and I’m going to find the avocados.’ ‘I know where the avocados are!’ ‘Great, walk with me to the avocados and tell me your story.’”
But Hasselhoff appreciates the stories, especially from fans in other parts of the world. “I love them. The stories that I’ve heard are just unbelievable,” he says. “From Soweto, when there was apartheid, they watched Knight Rider and I went and visited Soweto during apartheid, they put me on the blacklist. I said, ‘Well, put me at the top, because I’m going in,’” he recalls. And they were wearing hats with a Knight Rider car on it, and they were singing Siyabonga Amen, which means ‘Thank you God that you are here.’ And they watched it in Pakistan and India like Slumdog Millionaire, 200 people around a TV.”
Another big fan was the Shah of Iran and his wife. “When the Shah was exiled and passed away, I was in the Caribou Club in Aspen, some guy came over and said, ‘The Shah of Iran’s wife wants your autograph,’” Hasselhoff says “I said, ‘Yeah right, send her over!’ She came over and said, ‘I have to tell you that in my country, when the Shah was alive, to watch Knight Rider people would get it on the satellite and children would pay 25 cents to watch it.’ These are like three out of 1,000 stories that I have. Everybody comes up to say how it affected their childhood in such a positive way.”
Hoff the Record on Netflix and Killing Hasselhoff – August 29
“I came back from a long time in Europe, and I decided to stay in America,” he says. “I’m so happy because I have a show on Netflix called Hoff the Record and won an international Emmy. It’s a comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm based on what people have written about me, which is not really the truth. We took that, and we were able to answer it in an entertainment way and it turned out to be a big success. I’m so over the moon.”
Hasselhoff has been busy on the acting front lately on the big screen, too, with the recent Baywatch movie. He was also in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, out on digital August 8, where he sang on its soundtrack as well.
Universal just released the trailer for his new movie Killing Hasselhoff, available on DVD and digital August 29. Its cast includes Ken Jeong and Jim Jeffries.
NBC’s 2008 Knight Rider and a future Knight Rider
Hasselhoff has strong views of NBC’s failed reboot, which did not feature him as a star in the show he helped create and is most associated with many fans. “It was horrible,” he says. “The sad part about that whole thing was I’m the one who brought the reboot to NBC, and I’m the one who created the story. I’m the one who found financing, and then they decided to do it in their own way and cut me out. It was like, ‘Wow, this is a Hollywood story.’ I had people walk up to me and say, ‘What is that show?’ It was not Knight Rider—it was terrible.”
When asked if he ever thinks about Knight Rider returning with him in it, Hasselhoff interrupts mid question, as if asked a thousand times before, and gives an answer that does not disappoint.
“100 percent,” he says. “For 10 years I’ve been thinking about it and had the rights to it. Now it’s at the Weinstein Company, and the Weinstein Company wants to make fun of it, like Starsky and Hutch or Chips. I had the rights for two years.”
What Hasselhoff envisioned for the NBC reboot was rather different than what ended up on TV.
Even though the Weinstein Company holds the rights now, for the many fans around the world who were touched by that iconic show and keep wondering if there will be another try at it with Hasselhoff as the star, there’s always hope because he isn’t giving up either.
“I’m still fighting to bring it back. Robert Rodriguez who did Machete, I said, ‘Hey, how about we do Knight Rider comes back and he’s really pissed off! Hahaha! And Michael and KITT just get back together!’” he says. “I never give up on anything. The same thing with Hoff the Record. We had a deal with Netflix, and the Netflix deal fell through and we never gave up. We finally got it as an acquisition but not an original.”
The First David Hasselhoff World Fan Cruise November 4-9
Although it sometimes takes a group of rock bands to get their own cruise, Hasselhoff gets a cruise solely devoted to him. Fans can spend time with the TV lifeguard at the first ever David Hasselhoff World Fan Cruise in Europe on November 4. It starts in Italy, with stopovers in Spain and France. He’ll perform on stage, offer meet and greets, and a movie night.
Hasselhoff is back on tour next year in Germany, where he’s also been a major musical pop star.
For all things the Hoff, visit davidhasselhoffonline.com
