Knight Riding

Frank151: Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself.
Georgie Fechter: My name is Georgie Fechter, I’m 22 years old, born in Vienna, Austria—the heart of Europe. I’ve been heavily involved with extreme sports, building my own brand—Masters of Dirt—with a world tour that goes with it. It’s basically a theatrical show with freestyle motocross, minibike, BMX, the Fuel Girls, basically everything that can entertain someone from zero to 80 years old.
F151: Do you ride and participate, or are you more behind the scenes?
GF: I’m more behind the scenes, but I also am participating and I’m a professional mountain bike dirt-jump rider. It’s kind of a split thing, as I am the manager who doesn’t earn his money by riding, but I also ride.

F151: How did you get introduced to Gumball?
GF: Richie Warren, who is a former Gumballer. He’s done nine rallies by now—he’s a good friend of Max’s—and he is managing the Fuel Girls, who are dancers at my freestyle motocross event. I found out that he had done the Gumball, and I told him, “Richie, I know the Hoff—he’s more or less my godfather—and I have the Knight Rider car in my garage, so get me in the rally.” And from then on, he got me in the rally. That was 2008.
F151: You drove with the Hoff, and you drove KITT?
GF: Yes, exactly. I owned the KITT car, and it was a big, big, big thing to get the Hoff on the rally, because he’s really surrounded and protected by managers and PR agents—one in New York, one in LA—and, “Yeah, you cannot shoot him beside the bar,” and, “No other car brands...” like, untouchable for brands like Gumball. And, you know, you cannot explain something like this to PR agents. I just had to go the private way, and it worked out, and I’m super pumped.
F151: It sounds like you and the Hoff are close.
GF: In ’86 there was the Hasselhoff and the Night Rockers tour in Europe that my dad promoted. When I was born in ’87, two days after my birthday, the Hoff and my dad came home, and the Hoff was the first one to hold me in his hands. Then he came over every few years for his gigs and stuff in Austria. But from probably 12 to 21—in 2008 in San Francisco—I haven’t seen him. I was super nervous at first, but everything was still the same. He was the good-old Hoff, it was only me who got a bit bigger! But it was crazy to see the Hoff again. He’s so famous. He was just the number-one celebrity on the rally and I was more or less his co-pilot, so that was amazing.
F151: Did he have fun doing it?
GF: He had great fun. Basically his PR agent said, “Only one photoshoot,” for me, with the KITT car, for Masters of Dirt and for Gumball, in front of the Roosevelt Hotel. And then really more or less 20 hours before the start line he called me up and he said, “Hey, I wanna drive the first leg.” He only drove out of San Francisco on the highway, then that was it with KITT. He doesn’t seem to love KITT so much anymore. He preferred his Audi. I think it was an S8.

It went from a shoot, to him driving a whole leg, and we’re actually now talking to him again about doing the rally in KITT with me again this year.

F151: Can you tell me a little bit more about the car? Is it the actual KITT?
GF: Yeah. The KITT was built by a Hollywood studio. It’s the studio that has been producing all the Knight Rider cars. It was produced for the TV series, but it got shipped over before being used, and it was used for the Hoff’s European tour, for all promotional gigs, for some filming, and for all that kind of stuff. They had, in the studio, a big cockpit, and that cockpit is now in David’s living room.
Real, full-made KITTs, there are only a few on the market. I think there’s only one in one museum, or something like this. The Hoff has toured in it for over five years, in ’86 in Europe, so we see it as the real KITT. He has no KITT, and I still have it! He only has the dashboard. I still have the whole thing, so that’s pretty cool.
F151: Did you guys have a lot of gadgets on the inside?
GF: We had three KITTs over here. One fell off the crane—it broke. That was the best one. It had like automatic opening doors and that little gadget in the seat that [any] human can drive the car and it looks like someone else is driving it. Then you had the outside speakers so the car would speak outside, and you have that futuristic dashboard that now, over 20 years later, still looks really, really futuristic. It’s really great, but you don’t have gadgets, like the eject seat. All that is made in the studio, unfortunately.

Having KITT and being only 22, having such a car in the garage and the Hoff as a godfather is just something you don’t get that easy, and I’m so proud to talk about it. Just the fact that we won Best Car award on the Gumball— where you have the most expensive supercars in the world—in a 1981 Pontiac just shows the status of KITT.

F151: You did something a little different for the 2009 rally. You hitchhiked?
GF: [Laughs] That’s true. I’ve always had a reserved place with the Fuel Girls, but then they had some issues with the car.

I flew there, I had no hotel room, no ride, nothing, and within the first night got 11 confirmed rides for the whole rally. But by the morning I couldn’t remember any of them [laughs]. So that was a little bit of a problem, but then I found out the Sheikhs—you know the Sheikhs in their robes—that got caught in my mind, and I remembered, Oh, the Sheikhs offered me a place, and I started hitchhiking with them.

We went to a really fancy hairstyle place in Beverly Hills, and I said, “Yeah, I’m going south, to the rednecks, and I want to fit in. What could I get?” Then I got this massive mullet for the rally. Because Europe is very different than America, and at some point we were all looking up to Americans. We were big “Beavis and Butthead” fans. You know, American rednecks from the South with big cars and funny mullets and stuff. And my cousin said, “You want to be a real man? You once in your life need a mullet and a mustache.” So I took that opportunity and ran the mullet through the whole rally. The hairdresser was like, “Oh my God! That’s so not cute!” I was a bit traumatized and thought I wouldn’t get laid and stuff, but the first night I got an Australian chick with the mullet, and then more chicks throughout the rally. So the mullet was only good. I can’t complain!

F151: Was it cool being around people like Trigger Gumm and Rick Thorne?
GF: Trigger Gumm, Duane Peters—those were kind of my guys that I was hanging out with on the rally. I was just so lucky...because I was gonna jump on a leg with them in New Orleans. They were like, “Yeah! Come on! Jump in!” and I’m like, “Mmm. I’ll wait.” And I went with the “Jackass” guys. We’re passing the highway and there’s like four police cars and the guys are all handcuffed. They got caught for fireworks on the highway and had to spend the night in jail. They had my luggage in their truck. I was so lucky I wasn’t in with them!


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