{"id":233697,"date":"2026-05-16T12:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T12:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233697\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T12:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T12:48:17","slug":"kitt-replica-at-illinois-museum-got-a-brooklyn-speeding-ticket-but-it-hasnt-moved-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233697\/","title":{"rendered":"KITT Replica at Illinois Museum Got a Brooklyn Speeding Ticket \u2014 But It Hasn’t Moved in Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Volo Museum in Volo, Illinois<\/a>, just outside Chicago, has a KITT replica<\/a> on static display. The museum recently received a $50 traffic<\/a> ticket from New York<\/a> City, alleging that the car<\/a> was traveling 36 mph in a 25 mph zone in Brooklyn on April 22.<\/p>\n

The car has not left the building in years. Museum security footage confirms it was parked at the time of the alleged offense. The universe, apparently, has a sense of humor.<\/p>\n

The explanation is almost mundane once you pull the thread. The ticket arrived with traffic camera photos showing a black Trans Am<\/a> bearing the California<\/a> license plate KNIGHT, the same plate carried by the TV show car and the novelty plate on the museum\u2019s unregistered display vehicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the California DMV, a person with the last name Knight renewed their registration for that exact plate in March.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in New York City, someone is driving<\/a> a convincing KITT replica with that same \u201cKNIGHT\u201d tag, and NYC\u2019s camera system dutifully chased the ticket back to the only KITT it could locate in any database \u2013 a motionless exhibit in Illinois.<\/p>\n

City records show that plate is connected to five other unpaid traffic violations in New York since late 2024.<\/p>\n

Nobody Knows How the Bill Found Its Way to Illinois<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re legally tied to a movie<\/a> prop is interesting,\u201d said Jim Wojdyla, the museum\u2019s marketing director. \u201cWe\u2019re known for having our Hollywood cars<\/a> from TV and movies, but I have no idea how we got registered from a ticket in New York to the plates in California to the Volo Museum in Illinois. We\u2019re still trying to figure it out.\u201d The museum has since requested a hearing to challenge the ticket.<\/p>\n

New York City hasn\u2019t offered an explanation.<\/p>\n

The museum wrote on Facebook<\/a> that the Brooklyn traffic camera \u201ccaptured the novelty license plate (not a real plate\u2026and also a California plate)\u201d and linked it to their display vehicle.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s theory is that the city\u2019s system connected the novelty plate in the camera photo directly to the car in the museum\u2019s records.<\/p>\n

How that connection was made remains unclear. The museum is unregistered in New York, and the car hasn\u2019t turned a wheel in years.<\/p>\n

The Volo Museum is, understandably, having a great time with this.<\/p>\n

It updated its Facebook page header to read \u201cHome of the Knight Rider KITT that famously got a speeding ticket in New York City without ever leaving its exhibit in Illinois!\u201d and asked publicly if anyone had David Hasselhoff\u2019s number.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, Road<\/a> & Track has reported that around 20 KITTs were built for the original production<\/a> run, with only five originals still in existence.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a Facebook group for KITT replica owners that has nearly 19,000 members \u2013 so the pool of suspects running around with a \u201cKNIGHT\u201d plate is genuinely not small.<\/p>\n

Knight Rider ran on NBC from 1982 to 1986. KITT, Knight Industries Two Thousand, was voiced by William Daniels and was, in the fiction of the show, essentially impossible to catch. That a stationary museum replica of the car has now accumulated a speeding citation while the real culprit drives free somewhere in New York is either a cosmic joke or the best automotive PR story of the year. Probably both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Volo Museum in Volo, Illinois, just outside Chicago, has a KITT replica on static display. The museum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-233697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}