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Sunstreaker - The Missing Link

In continuing the "Transformers" theme, I wanted to post the results of some online research I've done. Everyone familiar with the 1984 Transformer cars knows that they were all based on real cars with one exception: Sunstreaker. His front half is clearly based on a Lamborghini Countach, but no Countach ever had that giant rear engine or squared-off rear end.

Image from lambocars.com
LamboCars.com

Some people consider the Lamborghini Restyling Prototype (above) to be the inspiration for Sunstreaker, but there's one problem: this car wasn't created until the mid-1980s, years after the Sunstreaker mold first hit the market.

Looking at the timeline found at Fred's Workshop, we see that the first proto-transformer was something called the "Cosmo-Countach," a half robot/half sports car that could be converted into a full sports car. The "Cosmo" cars were a series of changable vehicles created by Takara to cash in on the "super car" craze of the 1970s (the trend could be seen in everything from Hot Wheels cars to real car accessories like wings and zoomie pipes). As it turns out, the Cosmo-Countach bears a striking resemblence to a certain Lamborghini brother:

Image from kaikodo.net
kaikodo.net

One can see how the idea used for the Cosmo-Countach could evolve into Sunstreaker: the head and arms are essentially in the same place, so all that's left would be to engineer the front of the car into a set of legs. That idea could then spawn an entire series of car-to-robot figures, with greater care taken to make them look like their real-world counterparts (the information at Fred's Workshop backs up this thought as well: the Countach LP500S Super Tuning is listed as the first release of the Diaclone line). It looks like, in an idea similar to the Penny Racer car modes of Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, Takara based the design for one toy on the design of an older toy.


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