Sideswipe

Sideswipe is one of the Autobot warriors from the Ark's original crew, reformatted in 1984 as a red Lamborghini Countach LP500S. He is the more sociable half of a pair with his brother Sunstreaker: almost as skilled, considerably less ruthless, and in it primarily for the sport. His tech file calls him brave but often rash, a warrior who makes decisions that endanger him in pursuit of a possible win, and who is not above cheating when everything is on the line.

He fights close and he fights from the air. In "More than Meets the Eye, Part 3" he lends Optimus Prime his rocket backpack so Prime can pursue the escaping Decepticon cruiser. In "Roll for It" he and Sunstreaker take to the air against incoming Seekers in a rambunctious and largely ineffective display of jet judo. His best individual moment is "City of Steel," where he launches himself off a Decepticon tower, grabs Starscream in midair and wrestles the Decepticon air commander into the Hudson.

The recklessness costs him regularly. In "A Plague of Insecticons" he charges in ahead of the group, gets picked up and thrown bodily at the rest of the Autobots by Megatron, and is then mind-controlled by Shrapnel's override waves into ramming his own side. In "Trans-Europe Express" he talks Sunstreaker into a detour through Italy and both brothers are boxed in by the Stunticons and shot out of the race by Dead End.

He is a workhorse of the Earth-based seasons rather than a plot driver, and his last significant US cartoon appearance is "Masquerade," where he is sprayed with camouflage paint to impersonate the Stunticon Breakdown.

Piston-driven arms that work as piledrivers and can punch through rock, a flare gun, and a short-range rocket backpack giving limited flight, which in the Marvel comics burns fuel fast enough to be a liability. He is nearly as skilled a combatant as Sunstreaker without the same ruthlessness. His listed weakness is his own recklessness, and the fiction bears it out repeatedly: he charges ahead of formation, gets thrown around by heavier opponents, and is one of the easier Autobots for the Decepticons to bait or mind-control.

• Sunstreaker: his brother and constant partner, whose vanity and ruthlessness Sideswipe both indulges and offsets.
• Optimus Prime: serves under him from the Ark onward, and gives up his own rocket pack to keep Prime in the fight.
• Tracks: comes to his aid against Ravage in "Make Tracks," one of several pairings in the New York-set episodes.

Marvel leans on the rocket backpack and flare gun and makes their fuel cost a real plot constraint, notably in "Power Play!" where using them leaves several Autobots running on empty; the cartoon foregrounds his piston arms and hand-to-hand aerial stunts instead. Marvel also treats him and Sunstreaker as a genuine double act, which the cartoon largely drops after season 1.

Survives the Earth-based seasons of the G1 cartoon but does not appear in the 1986 movie or season 3, his US appearances effectively ending with season 2. In the Marvel continuity he serves through the war and is among the Autobots restored by the Last Autobot at its close.

• The toy originated as Takara's Diaclone "Car Robot New Countach LP500S," complete with a die-cast pilot who sat in the cockpit cavity.
• Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had their moulds swapped late in development but not their colours. His published Transformers Universe profile and the original series bible therefore describe Sunstreaker's toy features, which is where the jet pack and the piledriver arms in his bio come from.
• Modern Hasbro and TakaraTomy releases have restored the original intent as separate characters: Spin-Out is the toy that was meant to be Sideswipe, and Tigertrack the one meant to be Sunstreaker.
• Red Alert shares his mould, being a redeco of the Diaclone New Countach LP500S Police Car, itself a retool of Sideswipe's Countach with added roof lights.
• His piston arms were drawn differently in essentially every cartoon episode that used them, despite a model sheet existing based on their "S.O.S. Dinobots" appearance.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• The Sunstreaker/Sideswipe bio swap means his official tech spec describes hardware his toy does not have, and Sunstreaker's describes weapons Sideswipe carries.
• How literally they are twins varies by source; the toy bios and Marvel treat them as brothers, and the cartoon rarely mentions the relationship at all.