Season 4 of Knight Rider saw the introduction of Pursuit Mode, a transforming option for K.I.T.T. This year was 1985 and what was popular at the time? Transformers. I don’t need to look up any history to know what they were trying to do was create a transforming version of K.I.T.T. due to the popularity of Transformers. It was season 4 and I’m sure Knight Rider was starting to drop in the ratings (no I didn’t research anything for this post). So let’s make K.I.T.T. transform! The effect was cool where he could now go upwards of 300 MPH but it just looked like total garbage. I remember in 1985 thinking about how dumb it looked. Of course, that was the last season of Knight Rider so other people had to agree. haha. It’s just bad looking design. All of that garbage coming out of the car wouldn’t make it go any faster and instead, it just looks like it would slow it down. The back of it also looked especially bad. So that’s why I believe Pursuit Mode was the jump the shark moment for Knight Rider.

They also added a convertible mode but if you look behind David Hasselhoff you can see that it doesn’t even line up/look good. Total hack job on the car

Source: Knight Rider Super Pursuit Mode KITT Goes to Auction