![]() In the original series Wheeljack was a Lancia Stratos Turbo complete with Alitalia livery. Suffice it to say, the picture cars were likely South American-market T2 buses with the older T1 front-end "V" graphic grafted on. We'll kick it over to The Autopian's resident VW freak Jason Torchinsky for the details because it's a deep, deep rabbit hole. However, this is no ordinary Kombi, as it strangely combines visual cues from both the T1 and T2 generation in a way that was never offered from the factory. The Autobot mechanic and scientist known as Wheeljack is represented by a white-over-pink Volkswagen Kombi. Similarly, Jazz was reportedly supposed to be updated to a 986 Boxster, but Porsche had a similar stance on "war machines" not representing the brand. The toymakers approached Volkswagen but were denied because they didn't want to be associated with "war toys". Interestingly, in 2005 Hasbro tried to reboot the toy line and the New Beetle would have been the perfect update. Of course, any Transformers originalist knows that Bumblebee was a VW Beetle before the GM placement deal turned him into a Camaro. And yes, in case you were wondering, that is a robot cheetah running beside him because in this movie there are apparently sentient alien machines that take the form of Earth mammals the size of an Amazon delivery truck in order to, uh, blend in. Here, though, Bumblebee is safari-ized with brush guards, fender flares, rally lights and a bunch more cosmetic frippery in order to drive at speed off-road. Instead he takes the form of a 1977 Camaro, which is how he starts in 2007's Transformers. He's still a Camaro, but because Transformers: Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994 he's not a fith-gen. If you're wondering why this Porsche isn't the character Jazz, whose original vehicle mode was an ultra-cool Martini-liveried Porsche 935, well, he was remade into a Pontiac Solstice voiced by Darius McCrary during the GM product placement rewrite in 2007's Transformers reboot, then unceremoniously killed.įormerly the franchise star, Bumblebee gets far less screen time in the trailers. An F1 racer would raise an eyebrow on the streets, so it made sense to update to a street-legal sports car. In the original 1984 Transformers lineup Mirage was a Ligier JS11 Formula 1 car, complete with faux Gitanes cigarette branding (on a children's toy!). ![]() However, the sound department did record the engine note of an actual RS 3.8 for accuracy, as the higher crank speeds of the 3.8 have a distinctive sound. Producers instead built five cars for different purposes - shooting closeups of actors, jumps, the obligatory driving backwards real fast - out of lesser 911s. ![]() It wore the Turbo's wide-body badonk with a bi-level rear wing, but Porsche reportedly stripped out 570 pounds' worth of weight despite embiggening key performance parts like brakes and wheels.įortunately, no actual RS 3.8s were used in the movie. As the name implies, it came with a bored-out M64 turbo flat-six as opposed to the 964 Turbo's 3.6. Except, this isn't just any ordinary 911 it's a Carrera RS 3.8, a European-exclusive model of which Porsche only built 55 units. It's been the most promoted of the movie cars, even more so than formerly central characters like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. So far the star of the film, car-wise, looks to be a blue-on-silver 964 Porsche named Mirage that is voiced by Pete Davidson. ![]()
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