TV heroes always had a cool car, Magnum PI had his ferrari, Miami Vice their Daytona Spyder and the Munsters had their Koach. The bigger the hero, the more tricked out the ride became.In this installment I will delve deeper on "Top 6 Tricked Out TV Rides".

6. "Stealth"

Ad you can see, "stealth" is a particularly ugly truck from the short-running (1 season) "Highwayman" TV series. It did however have some cool features beyond just being dog-ugly. In the back was a control center with a whole lot of tricked out computer equipment, I'm not sure what it did anymore, but I'm guessing it had awesome surveillance capabilities, super-computing power and maybe functioned as a cocaine lab. The front of the truck is where the magic happens however, the truck fell away and the cabin of the truck turned into a helicopter. I'm not sure why, but the bad guys never ever spotted it, an ugly truck with a face like a helicopter can't be that inconspicuous. Even though it was short lived I do remember being addicted to this show in my adolescence; "stealth" is awarded the #6 slot because of not only it's appearance, but also the general lack of information available about its other talents (if any).

5. The Gadget Mobile

What can one say about the gadget mobile. Well, some critics believe it is based on a starion, the pop up lights, fastback coupe shape and B pillar vents are stated as proof. In reality though, whatever car the gadget mobile was based on, it was still a very cool car. Amongst it's tricks were the ability to have extremely long suspension (to drive above traffic), the ability to swap the wheels for skis and just about any other trick the writers wanted it to do. This lack of consistency in its powers is what lends it to its number 5 slot. It did have over major advantages, Gadget's bumbling have proven this car to be just about indestructible, and if he wanted to be incognito (not that Gadget ever was) the Gadget Mobile was capable of transforming into a white van.

4. "The Defender"

The Defender was the alter-ego of a dodge viper in the self named "Viper" TV series, it ran for about 4 seasons which is quite an achievement due to it's turnover of actors. A common Viper by day, the driver could transform it into the Defender at will.
The cars (as there were a few made for the show) themselves were based on an elongated Viper wheelbase and shared much the same drive train, although the stunt cars apparently came out with automatic transmissions.

The premise of the Defender in the first series was that it was a non-violent take-down vehicle, from memory it was driven by an ex-cop or an ex-con, one of the two for sure.. :) In the first series the Defender featured only a tunneller missile, static pulse and grappling hook as weapons as well as a probe hooked into the Defenders computers inside. It also had the ability to grow huge-ass wheels and 4WD capability to go off road. By the second season it gained .50 caliber machine guns and a laser, by the third a grenade launcher and a flame thrower. The fourth season even did away with the red convertible stock Viper and changed to a more recent blue coupe, added capabilities that season included a torpedo launcher, canister bombs and even a hovercraft mode. I'm not too sure what season was finally shown here, but I kind of lost interest by the second season when things started going crazy with the actors.

3. KITT

KITT will be forever remembered as the car that catapulted David Hasslehoff to our screens, and is therefore at least partially responsible for bringing Baywatch to our screens, just for that, KITT is that much more cool....
KITT was based on a trans am, but in the series was produced by Knight Industries, the car wasn't cheap with an estimated $11 million dollar fictitious price and was capable of doing the 1/3 mile in 4.286 seconds @ 300mph! That must have been some STICKY rubber. Other than that KITT was made of a near-indestructable plasteel alloy, and capable of such tricks such as smoke screen, auto pilot, auto tracking, radar, sonar, in dash entertainment (where did they fit the subs with all these other electronics?), oil jets, spectrograph, blood analyzer, two wheel skis, voice analyzer, grappling hook, chemical analyzer and I can't be bothered typing all the rest analyzer. Suffice to say that KITT was one seriously loaded car and well deserves #3 placement, it would have made it higher were it not for David's singing career.

2. The Batmobile / Bat Cycle

Batman gets number 2 spot because he didn't have just one cool vehicle, he had 2!
I'll outline the bat cycle first as there isn't a whole lot about it to write, basically it was a motorcycle, probably bulletproof, certainly funky looking in true batman style. Its main ability was that Robin's side cart could brake off and was a mini-vehicle in itself. I can only assume that robin is a crap driver, it's the only reason why they didn't just make lighter (without the stupid cart, therefore faster) motorcycles.

The batmobile was every man's dream car back in the 70's, it had a bubble dome, heaps of power, and big fins on the back, in fact very reminiscent of the car that Homer designed in the episode that sent his brother broke.
The batmobile had it's share of cool toys, a jet engine out the back, chutes to slow it down, anti theft devices, bat scope, laser gun controls, three rocket launchers, radios and bat-seats. I assume that from episode to episode it gained other abilities, I seem to remember the seats being able to eject at some point as well. Batman grabs the #2 spot not only because he has 2 vehicles, but well.. because he's batman, he probably KAPPOWED David Hasslehoff for this spot.

1. Mach 5

Here he comes, here comes speed racer, straight for the #1 spot. Speed racer and the mach 5 win this race (as they always do) as Speed and his gang was one of the coolest cartoons in it's time, next to Voltron it was one of the first anime-style cartoons on public TV. It's also #1 because it's a hell of a car with some great abilities, and because once the writers designed the car they kept all its abilities the same. It's about consistency people!
Apart from being a pretty cool race car the Mach 5's abilities were all activated from its steering wheel, it had buttons A through to G each of which had a different effect.
The fist button “Releases powerful jacks to boost the car so that Sparky, our mechanic, can quickly make any necessary repairs or adjustments." These were also used to jump the car amongst other things
The second button released special tries that could drive over ANY terrain, this included ice, vertical mountains and even underwater, it also activated 5000hp(!!!) to each wheel evenly.. 5000hp!! I'll write it once more if you missed it, 5000hp!! at all 4 wheels!! The Mach 5 would have made the 4 sec 1/4 mile of KITT piss, speed would pass out each time he put his foot on the accelerator. I'm guessing speed kept awake due to his cybernetic enhancements which are never referred to in the series.
Button C activated huge-assed rotary saws which were designed to let the Mach 5 cut though wooden terrain without skipping a beat, also provided it with a self defense mechanism (because speed would never attack out of anger).
The fourth button deploys a deflector, basically making the drivers compartment safer then the cockpit of an F16, it was practically impervious and resistant to anything.
Button #5 uses the Mach 5's special headlights, I assume these are just ahead of their time halogens or something.
Control F turns the Mach 5 into a submarine, complete with a periscope and 30 minutes worth of air.
The final control on the steering wheel releases the Mach 5's bird-like homing robot. The robot is capable of carrying items and relaying messages, as well as defending the Mach 5.