With our Christmas vacation at an end, my wife and I returned to Florida on Friday night. It had been a good trip, but we were both glad to be home. I was tired of suffering from mold-induced respiratory problems and not being able to breathe while sleeping. The air was mild—the weather here is at its best at this time of year—and it was a relief to get most of my lung capacity back, although it’s still not all there.

This evening we went out for dinner at a local “spaghetti house,” even though what I order there is never spaghetti—it’s pizza. (To be fair, my wife loves the spaghetti, so the name is well-earned.) After driving our 16-valve (that’s a generous way of saying “four cylinder”) Pontiac Vibe around all day on a shopping expedition, I felt in the mood to take KITT down to the restaurant. As they say, a four cylinder is only half an engine. And having been away from V8s while on vacation, I was missing the characteristic grumble.

Ironically, KITT does not have a characteristic grumble. He has a characteristic bellow. A roar, if you will, of Flowmaster muffler combined with an exhaust leak somewhere that contributes to a very tractor-like sound of gnashing valves and thunderous compression. Under greater than one-quarter throttle, it sounds like a Cavalier with half the muffler gone. Until you get your foot down past halfway, that is, when suddenly the rattle-rasp disappears and the scream of the engine takes over the audio spectrum. The Borg-Warner 2.77 rear axle gears don’t provide as much low-end oomph as the G92 factory 3.23 ratio—an option sadly absent from my Formula, according to the dealer invoice copy I received from Pontiac Historic Services—but in return the car has a lot of top-end breathing room, and it’s an incredibly comfortable car in which to cruise the highways. In fact, the interstate is where KITT is at his best.

The roads were largely devoid of vehicular traffic at 9:15 as we cruised home. Having had a chance to warm up on the trip over, KITT’s 700R4 was shifting smoothly and the raucous exhaust had settled somewhat. He wasn’t in top form tonight—the paint was spattered with water spots from being left out in the rain, the windshield smudged from a lousy wiper blade, and the ever-burning left turn signal arrow staring back at me from the instrument panel, its glowing green a constant reminder of the mysterious circuit fault somewhere in the rat’s nest of wire loom, splices and fusible links under the domed power bulge hood. But it didn’t much matter. I always feel incredibly proud when I drive that car. Even if it sounds a bit like a hoopty under acceleration, even with the malfunctioning signal and the swirly paint and the driver’s side fender that doesn’t quite line up. I don’t recall being able to do this with a car before—normally a car’s every imperfection rides heavily on me like a cloak of shame—but when I look at the Formula, I only see it for what it someday will become—not what it is now.

Of the three Pontiacs in my garage and driveway in Florida, KITT ranks as number one. He’s nearly a decade older than my ‘98 Ram Air Trans Am—which I’ve owned since the day the factory delivered it—and certainly in worse overall shape. He’s more brash, more rough and much less dependable than my wife’s subdued Pontiac Vibe, a Toyota/GM crossover that blends the former’s legendary reliability with the latter’s flair and style. But he’s still my favorite. Most peculiarly, KITT is the one car whose flaws fail to disturb me. I feel more pride swinging that Formula into a turn, exhaust rattling and grumbling, than I do pulling into my driveway in my ‘98 T/A, its suspension creaking and groaning and its brakes making noises that would scare ordinary men into leaving the car on a deserted roadside. Perhaps it’s because KITT has never been—and never will be—touched by our area’s shit-awful Pontiac service departments that he holds together so well even today.

The brand new SilverStar sealed-beam headlights cut two blueish-white swaths of illumination before us as we drove down a deserted, poorly-lit two lane road. For a moment it seemed as if an oncoming charter bus winked its high-beams at me—those SilverStars are bright. I smiled as I thought about momentarily keying on my own high-beams in response. If you think those lights are bright now, wait until the high intensity filaments crank up. The Sony radio head unit warbled something of Elton John’s, and the loose connection in its LCD display had once again garbled the current time beyond legibility. I rapped the top of the faceplate twice, and the correct digits popped back into view. Just another little quirk. A quirk that will cease to exist in February, when I’ll be replacing the Sony head unit with a JVC KD-SX9350.

Behind the wheel of this car, I’m reminded of the typical sought-after prize of a woman in a novel or a film. She’s always perfect, except for that one mundane flaw—a nose that flares excessively, a too-long lower lip, an endearing crooked tooth. Makes her more believable, perhaps. KITT has his fair share of mundane flaws—in fact, it’s damn near impossible to look at the car from any angle without being reminded of one—but somehow, in my mind, they all converge to form a perfect symphony of uniqueness, while at the same time presenting a constant challenge to me to systematically eliminate each quirk until the once-marred surface shines like a polished jewel.

As during the many occasions when KITT was rescued from certain destruction—whether towed away from the scene of a vehicular ambush or hauled from the bottom of a pit of acidic toxic waste—the car was always set right, improved upon, and made better than he was before. Such is the idea with 1989 Pontiac F-car number 57,023. Return to factory stock, then improve upon. Restore the ailing components, the disued equipment and the missing parts. Then turn the car into a work of art. Something you won’t find another of for five hundred miles.

Today I took an important step towards enabling this goal. I went down to Sears and, utilizing a Christmas gift, stocked up on a 318-piece Craftsman mechanic’s toolset, a rollaway cabinet, a 3-ton floor jack with 21 inches of lift, a retractable-reel work lamp and a wire stripper. Add this to the digital/analog combo multimeter my friend Sparse gave me as a gift, plus the 3,000 page Helm ‘89 Firebird factory service manual I received, and I’d say that from this point forward, if I am unable to make a repair or at least a diagnosis with KITT, then it will be due to my own sheer incompetence and not my lack of equipment!

In the meantime, I’ll still look at KITT’s crooked hood, wacky wiring and droopy Flowmaster and smile—not because the car’s a hopeless wreck and I’m finding the miserable humor in my continued interest in it, but because one day all of this stuff will be a memory that I will look back on with amusement because it will all be taken care of—much of it, hopefully, by my own hand. In just a few weeks, I’ve gone from just standing and staring helplessly at the L98 engine, to actually removing screws and bolts and seeing how stuff attaches, climbing under the car, pulling wires and seeing how it all fits together. It’s amazing what a Torx T-20 socket, a universal joint and a couple of extensions will do for your curiosity.

Yes, I’ll admit that sometimes I feel as though I may be getting in a bit over my head. But with a few costly exceptions, I’d rather learn things the hard way than not learn them at all. At one point, the Sears employee who helped me select some tools and equipment earlier this evening asked me, “Is this stuff for a shop?” No, just a personal project. He looked at me like I was nuts. “A 318-piece toolset?” Once I told him I was working on a muscle car, his look of bewilderment changed to one of awe. “I’ve always wanted to rebuild a car,” he said wistfully, “but I got no idea what I would need or where to start.” For a moment I thought, Neither do I—I’m just hoping I get lucky as I poke around with things that I probably have no business poking around with. But it’s going to be a good time whatever the result, and hey—a 318-piece toolset with a lifetime replacement warranty is always a good investment—especially when it was on sale for $100 off like it was today.

The Knight Project isn’t to be taken lightly—lesser men have collapsed, thrown in the towel and sold all of their hard work to the highest bidder after getting far further along than I. But I don’t have the ability to buy my way into this dream, so I’ve got to work at it the hard way. I’ve been lucky enough to have many things simply fall into my lap in the past, but I can tell this isn’t going to be one of them. I’ll have to claw for every inch of the way on this one, but in the end, that makes it all the more worthwhile—and something to be especially proud of.

And when the day comes that I can cruise down the street with that red halogen light bar bobbing from side-to-side under the lip of the freshly-repainted cowl-induction hood, this whole silly mess will finally have been realized.

Thanks for listening.