It'll leave your retinas in a bit of pain, but it's the only time we've ever seen anything come close to approximating the view from inside one of those Hot Wheels loop-de-loop courses we used to play with back in the day. Some of the lines in the trailer made us cringe a bit, and we'll be missing the ultraquick dialogue and the speed lines... but we're marginally starting to look forward to what these races look like both in the movie, and in the game. We just hope you can use all of the gadgets that the Mach 5 has to offer while you batter your opponents.

Take a first look at Speed Racer [Palgn]

• Speed Racer was originally a manga series called Mach GoGoGo (which might actually be a catchier title) in the 1960s.
• Creator Tatsuo Yoshida was inspired to make the series after he saw Goldfinger and Viva Las Vegas, so you can thank James Bond and Elvis.
• Speed inherited Elvis' neckerchief and black hairdo from Viva, and all the car gadgetry and espionage from Goldfinger.
• Yoshida also created Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman, or Battle of the Planets in 1972.
• Speed's name is actually Go Mifune, and the giant red M on the hood of the car stands for Mifune Motors, not Mach 5.
• The name Mifune was an homage to Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, who appeared in over 170 films, including Seven Samurai and Hidden Fortress.
• The name Go in Japanese is also a homophone for the number five, and it's also why Speed has a G embroidered on his shirt.
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  Speed first appeared on television in 1967, and was also quickly snapped up by American producers. In fact, producer Peter Fernandez provided the voices for Speed and Racer X.

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  The buttons on the Mach 5's steering wheel each have a specific function: A fires the autojacks, which can make the car leap over obstacles, B deploys the belt tires for extra traction on slippery terrain, C makes the ginormous saw blades pop out of the side of the car, D extends a deflector over the cockpit, allowing it to go underwater, E activates the "Evening Eyes" which lets Speed see in the dark, F turns the car into "Frogger mode" which allows the vehicle to submerge and has 30 minutes of oxygen, G fires the "gizmo rocket," (at sort of bird-shaped homing robot) and H sends the robot back home.
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• Trixie's original name was Michi Shimura, which explains the M on her own shirt. In fact, she came from a family of rich auto-racing rivals, and was initially sent to spy on Speed in her chopper. However, she fell in love with him and started flying support over Speed's races and giving him advice on the radio.
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• In the original series, Speed's brother Ken'ichi Mifune (Rex Racer) crashes the families first car while waving to Pops in the stands. After his father chews his ass out, he runs away from home and later reappears as the Mysterious Racer X.
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• TV Guide called the episode where Racer X reveals his identity as one of the most memorable moments in television history.
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• When the animated series aired in Germany in 1971, they had to take it off the air after only three episodes because parents hated it. Newspapers called it "horror comic" and "blood and collision racket." Maybe they didn't want supercars hopping up and down the autobahn.
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• Speed Racer has been parodied on Dexter's Laboratory, Family Guy, and in the Fairly Oddparents movie, each aping the hyperspeed that Speed and crew talk in.
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• There have been several attempts to revive Speed Racer, but they've each been yanked off the air fairly quickly. A new series will begin airing on Nicktoons after the live-action film airs later this year. However, it's doubtful anyone can recapture the camp of the original.
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  Check out the megalame introduction from The New Adventures of Speed Racer. Ouch.

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  Here's the much better looking introduction from 1997's Mach GoGoGo, which adopted a much more hardcore anime look and feel.

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• Check out these two Speed Racer parody commercials. In one, Speed is given a Volkswagen GTI after the Mach 5 is mysteriously sabotaged, and uses it to knock other drivers off the course where they careen to their death. In the Geico one, he tells Trixie "Not now, bitch!" when she calls him from her chopper to tell him the bridge is out, then gapes when he realizes how much he's fucked.

  

  

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If you don't remember the original Knight Rider pilot, Michael Knight started out as Michael Long. He was a cop who was double crossed, and got shot in the face. The Foundation for Law and Government (hi folks, we handle both law and government, but we're a private foundation owned by a billionaire) takes over his care, surgically alters his face, dubs him Michael Knight, and sends him off to fight crime with their superintelligent, superexpensive car, the Knight Industries Two Thousand, or K.I.T.T.

So, after four seasons in the 80s, Knight Rider got mothballed and put into storage. But that didn't stop NBC from making Knight Rider 2000, Knight Rider 2010, and Team Knight Rider from 1991 to 1997. Last year, the success of Transformers made the network want to try one more time, and here's what we got. Yet another reason to hate the Transformers movie.

So why was last night's Knight Rider reboot so bad? Allow me to sum up: terrible writing and bad acting, and that's being generous.

The show started out with promise, with unnamed thugs breaking into original K.I.T.T. inventor Charles Graiman's home. After giving the man (actually, his decoy) a heart attack and shooting his Roomba, we see a few shots of our favorite A.I. car in the background as the thugs check out his workshop. Then, the nerdy thug (you know, because he wears glasses) says "I've never seen algorithms like these!" while looking at a screenshot from Tronon a monitor, and the whole thing goes downhill from there.

New and improved K.I.T.T. (now the Knight Industries Three Thousand) drives off on his own after deflecting some thug gunfire, and calls Graiman's daughter Sarah. She hasn't seen her dad in a long time, but K.I.T.T. uses the code word "Knight" (subtle), so she knows she can trust him, even though he turns out to be a talking car. He picks her up at her campus in Palo Alto (where she's a nanotech expert) and drives across the strangely soaking wet walkways on the quad, while the sun blazes down. Maybe they needed the water for all the dramatic skids.

Then, we're introduced to Mike Traceur. We know he's a cool playboy party dude because he's in post-threesome bliss. His nerdy sidekick wakes him up because he has thugs of his own at the door, wanting the money they loaned him. Ostensibly, this was for auto racing, although his car is a piece of junk and has the superpower of sucking. The thugs insult Mike. Cue the obligatory fight scene showing off what a badass Mike is.

Then, we're introduced to Carrie. A tough, young FBI agent who likes to surf in the morning after bedding other female hotties. Don't all FBI agents lead lives like this? She also happens to know Charles and Sarah, and gets called in when Charles is reported as dead. Meanwhile, Sarah and K.I.T.T. have now picked up Mike, who is trying to gamble his winnings back at the same NBC casino used by Las Vegas and Heroes. K.I.T.T. changes color to Deep Purple, which causes Mike to quip, "I didn't know it came in cholo." At least the weird 1980s racism of the original show hasn't changed.

The rest of the two hours unfold predictably. The kids hook back up with Sarah's dad, Michael's mom gets killed (boo hoo emotional moment), K.I.T.T. gets hacked, and there's a showdown between the talking car and an approaching thug-filled Yukon. Mike steers the car in front of them and whammo: it crumples like an accordion into K.I.T.T.'s indestructible nanotech hide. Of course, this leaves the passengers in the Yukon dead and/or bloodied up, including Sarah's dad who survived with just a cut on his forehead. Michael stares down the guy who shot his mom, and the bad guy gasps "This... changes... nothing." Probably the lamest last line from a bad guy ever.

Then we have what's meant to be a touching scene with The Hoff showing up at Traceur's mom's funeral as Mike's dad, Michael Knight. It's one of the worst father/son reunions ever, although it did actually make us miss The Hoff, and I never thought that would be possible. As Michael walks back to the koi pond he apparently lives in now, Mike decides to be the new driver of K.I.T.T. In the final scene, he backs the car down a ramp which looks like it might be from the old Knight Industries 18-wheeler, but it turns out to be a huge black C-130 plane. Looks like they've increased the budget. K.I.T.T.'s superspoilers morph out, the supporting cast (including Mike's lame goofy sidekick buddy) give a thumbs-up, and they drive off into the distance hopefully never to be seen again.

What's really sad about the whole thing is that K.I.T.T. is supposed to be a cool artificial intelligence, but he spends much of the show asking Mike twelve-year-old kid questions like "Are you a homosexual?" and chastising him with photos of Iron Eyes Cody and his single tear when Mike almost litters. He also tries to comfort Sarah about the news that her father might be dead by saying "That does... suck." Mind you, K.I.T.T. says that, not Mike. Made all the more creepy by Val Kilmer's monotonal K.I.T.T. that lacks all the charm and wit of William Daniels snotty car voice.

Just when you thought that it couldn't get much worse, though, there were a lame series of Ford Focus commercials featuring Mike Traceur out on a date being followed by a jealous K.I.T.T. These little vignettes put together told a story that was meant to pimp out the Ford Sync system that can voice-activate your songs and read your incoming text messages. We just want to see the look on a parent's face when their teenager's car radio system pumps out "WTF LOLZ OMG!" using one of these things. Needless to say, the Knight Rider-inspired commercials were craptastic.

So what was cool about the show? Well, very little. The solar hybrid gas system was a neat idea, but we want K.I.T.T. to run on plutonium or something. Not regular unleaded. The nanotechnology was fairly fun, and the bullet-deflecting animations were the best CGI in the show. K.I.T.T.'s morphing spoilers were interesting, but why not just grow wings and fly instead of rocketing down the streets at 191 mph? If a car happens to pull out of a driveway or a dog runs into the road, we have a feeling even K.I.T.T. would be fucked. But, give us a car that can change color over and over and it's all OK.

There was also a lot of sucky technology in the show. Why did K.I.T.T.'s computer have to be active in order for the nanotechnology to work? Wouldn't the outer shell of the car go all gray goo every time it powered down? Plus, did you catch the brief glimpse inside K.I.T.T.'s accessory drawer? He not only had an earpiece for Sarah, but it looks like he also comes stocked with Morpheus' red and blue pills, a jar of skin lotion, and who knows what else. Not very A.I. And what the hell with the manual mode? The pedals drop down and the shift-lever pops up. So why does he have a steering wheel when not in manual mode? Beats us.

There's no telling if this thing will actually go to series, but given the fact that there hasn't been much of anything new lately... this might have pulled in decent numbers. If it does, be sure to look for another weekly opportunity for us to bitch about it. You know, we probably wouldn't have hated it so much if K.I.T.T. would have turbo-jumped at least once. That's all we're asking for. We tried to tell you not to do it, Hollywood. But if you just had to, you could have at least thrown us a bone. If you're eager to relive the pain, you can check out Jalopnik's high-larious liveblog of the show after you track down a copy online. Just don't say we never warned you.

With oil costing $100 a barrel, you might be scratching your head over a talking supercar who probably eats up more gasoline than a Hummer going up a hill. However, according to executive producer David Bartis, he'll be using solar power, and "going green in some new ways." While he wasn't clear on what that means, we doubt K.I.T.T. is upholstered in organic cotton and running on repurposed french fry grease. You think a biodiesel car could turbo boost?

Plus, this new car can morph, change colors, defend itself, hack into computers and has a pretty robust artificial intelligence voiced by comedian Will Arnett. Probably not the sort of thing a normal car battery and a tank of unleaded could handle. In the words of Marty McFly, "Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?" Well, we're not... but we're starting to wonder.

The owners of Robosaurus have decided to put the dragon-like robot car up for purchase because they're retiring him from car shows, the giant robot's bread and butter. Starting January 19th, Robosaurus and all of his materials will be up for auction. If you've been saving your pennies for a rainy day and you want a transforming robot that you can drive, this is it.

You can find out everything you need to know about Robosaurus at his private robo-website, and study up on what you'll need to know about the steely beast, even the tooth engineering. Plus, if you're thinking that you'd love to buy him, but you don't have any way to get him home... not to worry. He transforms into a fully functional tractor-trailer, Optimus Prime style.

Artist Harald Belker created this red racer as a piece of concept art for a Fahrenheit 451 feature film that was canceled after a few weeks of development. It's a shame too, because we would have bought the toy version of this firetruck for sure. We just hope that all those rounded edges don't mean they'll be cutting corners when it comes to safety.

We thought fires in the future would be fought with foam-dispensing hoverpods and wormhole-powered oxygen suppression systems, but if the engines are going to look this great, then by all means keep all four wheels on the ground.

Death Race 2000, the original, was about a genetically engineered superdriver named Frankenstein (David Carradine), who is forced to compete in a race across the country where you can earn points by running down pedestrians, babies and the elderly, who are worth up to 100 bonus points! He's hell-bent on ending both the race and the life of "Mr. President." Pretty gritty stuff.

In the remake Jason Statham plays Frakenstein, but this time he's a family man trying to get out of prison and back to his daughter on the outside. Plus the Death Race now occurs in prisons, and on closed-circuit television. Talk about missing the point entirely, and with our current fixation on reality TV this should have been a no-brainer. It's like remaking Star Wars and having the Rebels and the Imperials sit down at a negotiating table and work things out nicely.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson, who is also helming the supercar movie Spy Hunter, will be directing this, giving us even more cause for concern. Do yourself a favor next year and rent the original. At least it wasn't afraid to put the pedal to the metal and run you down.