What do all those buttons on the roof do?

[Xdegenerate]

What was the purpose of those buttons on Kitt's roof? You'd see Michael push them sometimes when Devon called, microjamming, or about to go into pursuit mode or something.

Now, I know it was probably a matter of they where just there, and they told Hasslehoff to push them now and then so they didn't seem pointless, but was there ever a time it was explained that they specifically did something?

Plus, does anyone have any pictures of it? As in not just a side shot screen cap of the show? Is there a picture of a really good view of it, or a diagram of it that shows exactly what it looks like? It seems well hidden a lot of the time with the angles the cameramen used... makes me wonder if that was intentional?

[Skav]

Yeah, it was never really explained but I think they were used for some form of communication to something.

[Knight Racer]

They were mostly just there to make the car look more like a supercomputer on wheels.Most of the time he did use it to communicate with Devon and activate various systems.They were never labeled.I have a shot from the 4rth season premiere where RC3 shows Michael what the overhead console will look like even though it was exactly the same way in season 3.




Here are the clearest shots I could find.

[jeremy223]

The roof console wasn't always exactly the same as in season 3. There were two main hero cars in season 4. One used the same season 3 console. The other used a newer console. You can tell the difference by the LEDs on the side. Season 3 always had 10 rows of LEDs. The newer console has 8 rows of LEDs on the side like in the blueprint picture. Also, in season 3, the 10 small LEDs on the side are never lit (although when lit in season 4 these small LEDs are yellow). The newer console when lit, the LEDs big and small would all light up red. The buttons are different as well. In addition to being different colors, the buttons for the season 4 console are also a little bigger so you can see them better from the side view.

[Amir]

To be fair, how on earth can you drive and push a series of buttons from that angle without looking.

[tharpdevenport]

That's the beauty -- K.I.T.T. can drive himself; take over temporarily.


Somebody correct me if wrong, but I swear one episode (don't know if anymore) Michael pressed some of them right before the turboseat boost -- where he stands on the seat and it propels him upward to a rooftop.

[one man]

This is off the topic of the roof buttons, but Knight Racer's photos show something that has always bugged me. Notice the gap between the switch pod and the steering wheel in the one photo. The 1st and 2nd season dash cars didn't have that much of a gap there, and it looked more streamline and a lot cleaner. Maybe Knight Racer has a photo to show this??? You think they would have done the same with the 3rd and 4th season dashes, unless they had problems steering the cars with the 1st and 2nd season dashes.

[jup]

While I am by no means up to knowing about these kinds of specs, my impression is this:

The main dash that's in front is like a bunch of "F#" keys. Special function keys that are pre-marked on what they are used for. In fact, Function keys have been around since the show's debut. Yet, are so useful that they're even on the keyboard in front of you, to this day. But, Function keys can't do it all. And, since they didn't have room to just whip out a QWERTY keyboard on a cord, we got these other keys that wrap about the interior. It's been hinted at that they are for general programming purposes. Still, it's near impossible to really guess as to what was suppose to do what. As has been stated before, David was probably just told to press random buttons. And, the interior just randomly alters, almost seemingly at will. Continuity on that part was pretty much a lost point from episode one, where the flashing vocal box can claim to be the Knight 2000 one minute and void of any description, the next.

So, I'm going to say that these roof buttons were apart of the A-Z & 0-9 QWERTY buttons, probably mixxing in the Timex Sinclair's programming scheme where each button meant something in BASIC.