Windcharger

Windcharger is the fastest Autobot on the ground over short distances, a red Pontiac Firebird Trans Am who can hit sixty from a standstill almost instantly, limited only by tyre traction. He is also impulsive and impatient in equal measure, prone to tearing away with a neck-snapping jerk and then squealing to a halt seconds later because something caught his eye.

His real weapon is magnetism. In robot mode he energises his arms into the poles of a precisely controllable electromagnet, strong enough to levitate ten tons of steel at seven hundred feet. Handled carefully he can draw an object gently toward him or hurl it violently away; at close range the field is strong enough to tear magnetic objects apart, which, given that Cybertronians are made of metal, makes him genuinely terrifying. Decepticons have been known to withdraw on hearing he has entered a fight. The cartoon used the power constantly but rarely at full horror: detecting depth while tunnelling under the Decepticon base, hauling Bumblebee out of a chasm in "The Ultimate Doom, Part 2", raising a repulsor field against Shrapnel's shrapnel grenade in "A Plague of Insecticons", and dragging five Autobots together into a convincing fake Menasor in "Masquerade".

The catch is his power supply, which is built for a brief heavy overload and fails if the overload runs too hard or too long, and his impulsiveness means he seldom exercises the restraint needed to avoid that. He regularly ends up limping home reeking of ozone and burned insulation. He was oddly badly served early on, never named or given a chance to use his powers across the whole three-part pilot, and did not speak until "Divide and Conquer".

Explosive short-distance acceleration, effectively zero to sixty instantly, limited only by traction. His arms become the poles of a precisely controllable electromagnet able to levitate ten tons of steel from 700 feet, draw objects gently in, hurl them away, project a repulsor field, or at close range tear metal objects to pieces. The limit is severe: his power supply is biased toward a brief heavy overload and fails if the overload is too strong or too sustained, leaving him needing repairs, and his impulsive nature means he rarely rations it. His endurance in a straight fight is poor.

• Brawn: his closest friend among the Autobots, with easy banter and effective teamwork, and Brawn swears vengeance when Windcharger is injured in Peru in "Fire on the Mountain".
• Bumblebee: hauled bodily out of a chasm by Windcharger's tractor beam during the retreat in "The Ultimate Doom, Part 2".
• Gears: frequent patrol partner in season one, the two of them tangling with Reflector together in the pilot.
• Sunstreaker: given a magnetic boost mid-air in "The Autobot Run" after the hot shot comes up short on a stunt jump.

Marvel gave Windcharger far more decisive moments than the cartoon did, including saving Optimus Prime with his magnetism at Iacon, countering the Ark computer Auntie's magnetic fields alongside Ravage, and hurling Megatron bodily out of the Autobot base. The cartoon mostly reduced the same power to utility work: tunnelling, tractor beams and repulsor fields.

Killed at the Battle of Autobot City in The Transformers: The Movie; Arcee drags his body into the shelter of a bunker and lays it alongside Wheeljack's. He nonetheless turns up again in the third-season episode "Call of the Primitives" as Tornedron attacks Cybertron.

• The toy is a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, first released in 1983 in Takara's Micro Change line, with evidence pointing to an original Knickerbocker design for the cancelled Mysterians toyline. The same mould made Camaro and was retooled into Tailgate, or in Mexico's case simply redecoed into Tailgate.
• His preliminary name was Sprint, and Bob Budiansky's early unpublished profiles gave him the nickname "Jack Rabbit".
• He is the only Autobot who gets neither a name-check nor a use of his special power anywhere in the three-part pilot; a scripted spotlight helping Brawn and Huffer fight the oil rig fire was cut, leaving him mute until "Divide and Conquer".
• An early draft of the 1986 film killed him far more graphically: launched into the air by the missile volley that obliterated Gears, then torn apart in midair by Cyclonus and his armada flying through him, his parts raining down on Blaster.
• The Brazilian Estrela release was oddly named "Camaro", most likely because his Trans Am mode was mistaken for a third-generation Chevrolet Camaro during localisation.

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.

• His post-mortem appearance in "Call of the Primitives" is unexplained: it is either an animation error or an unstated resurrection, and the cartoon never says which.
• Whether the Alternators Windcharger toy represents this character at all, given it was originally designed and released under Binaltech as the Omnibot Overdrive and its packaging carries no bio.