Have you (or any former version of you) ever wanted to be David Hasselhof circa Knight Rider? How about Marty McFly hitting 88-miles-per-hour in the Back to the Future DeLorean of your childhood dreams? This Halloween, Rivian has created Car Costumes that finally deliver on this vehicular fantasy.
Rivian has already been releasing annual Halloween updates with cool “hidden treats” like jack-o-lanterns and bats in the UI displays and creepy sound effects, but this year they’ve gone all out with multi-sensory “Car Costumes” that use their powerful on-board software, sound systems, and interior lighting (on all models) and exterior lighting (on Gen 2 models) to turn your Rivian R1T or R1S into K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, the DeLorean from Back To The Future, or a haunted house on wheels.
The first time I turned on the Knight Rider costume on the Rivian app, the dash lit up and drew a memory from the distant recesses of my brain. Then the theme song started playing and instantly conjured a vision of sitting on the carpet in front of my old living room tv watching Hasselhof in all black, racing around in his futurized Trans Am.
Rivian even made the exterior lightbars on the front and rear cascade back and forth and make the same sound as the red beam of the scanner on the Hoff’s legendary ride. Both dashboard screens are taken over by the theme, and on the back seat screen you can find the little buttons with things like Oil Slick, Missile, and Smoke Release that I remember watching Michael Knight employ on his enemies and dreamed of doing in my father’s Volvo.
But K.I.T.T. was just a prelude to the second Car Costume, which channeled a pure obsession of my ten-year-old self. When Back to the Future came out, I got my hair cut like Michael J. Fox and even bought a skateboard and jean jacket to look like Marty McFly. Turning on the Time Machine costume transforms the dash into a dead ringer for the DeLorean’s interior ––with 1955 on the display and 88-miles-per-hour on the speedometer, and even the Flux Capacitor on the rear-seat screen.
Outside, lights that mimic the lightning strike shimmer on the front and rear lightbars to the sound cue from the movie when the car hits 88-miles-per-hour and disappears. Meanwhile on the inside, the film’s theme song plays on the speakers. It was an immersion that no haircut, jean jacket, or Valterra skateboard could touch, and it spoke to desires I didn’t even know still existed in me.
Now, to be clear, these costumes only work when the vehicle is in Park. So, for obvious safety reasons, you can’t drive around with 88-miles-per hour locked on your odometer or K.I.T.T.’s “oil slick” buttons on the screen. But you can turn it on and leave it in front of your house or on the street and let it be the coolest Halloween decoration on the block.
Or, after you’re done thrilling your inner ’80s kid, you can do what I did and put your kids in the car at night and turn on the Haunted Rivian costume and scare the bejesus out of them with flickering lights, creepy sounds, and spiders and bats creeping through staticky screens that evoke the one in Poltergeist. Sometimes a gimmick actually delivers. This is one of those times. For anyone already driving or thinking of owning a Rivian, these tricks are available until November 4.