I initially got a 57 Thunderbird Hot Wheels^TM car for reference, but after a while I decided that I didn't want to try and mold the entire chest by hand. So I got a 55 T-Bird car, initially just for the wheels, but then I cut it apart (yes, the heavy Dremel cutting disc will cut die cast metal). I was thinking of using the top of the car for the head, but decided it was too wide (and it broke in a few places during cutting anyway). I molded the head out of putty and even carved in the window shapes. The shoulder wings (car doors) are sheets of styrene plastic held onto putty roots, The forearms are pure putty. The lower legs are a combination of materials. I first cut sheet styrene to shape for the shinguards (trunk lid), then glued a bunch of copper BBs to this to give the legs some weight. I fleshed the rest out with putty and then glued styrene tubes as heel struts (exhaust pipes bent back). The chest was the front of a die-cast car filled in with hot glue and putty. To attach the wheels from the die-cast car, I used a holepunch to make four circles of styrene sheet and glued these to the arms and boots. This gave me a nice solid base to glue the wheels on, but I didn't glue the wheels on until I was totally done painting.

    The Actionmaster Partner was taken from a $1 action figure I got, as was the rifle. I drilled a hole in the bird's tail and modified the gun so it could fit into that hole and snugly against the eagle's back. This way, the combined gun/eagle piece could be held in the hands of the figure. I didn't bother painting these bits of equipment, instead letting their colors determine what colors I'd use on the figure. As a final touch, I used a small Autobot symbol from Delta's Reprolabels (www.reprolabels.com) on the chest.

    Now that I was done using the Hot Wheels^TM for reference, I decided to paint it the same colors as T-Bird's altmode would have been before he got Nucleon'ed. I was out of small Autobot symbols though, so I had to paint one on by hand. Note that the front ends of the 55 and 57 T-Birds are not the same, ah well. I decided to explain that in the techspec note.

Originally taking his Terran mode from a classic "muscle car," T-Bird was all about speed and power on the road. He was particularly hard hit when he found out that Nucleon had stripped him of his ability to transform, and the power of flight granted by his partner Dazzle has been only partial compensation. Since then, he's tried to lose himself in battle, requiring such frequent repairs that even if he regained the ability to transform, he would no longer change into a single model of car, rather becoming a mix of many makes and models. He carries an electron rifle with a range of 500 meters that can melt unprotected circuits. His partner Dazzle can be given the rifle as well, but this leaves T-Bird with only his fists and the corrosive smoke he can emit from his heel spurs. When attached to T-Bird's back, Dazzle gives his partner the ability to fly at 200 mph. Dazzle can fly on his own at nearly the speed of sound, and has advanced visual sensors. Dazzle is also able to generate a blinding pulse of light from his wings. When Dazzle combines with the electron rifle in T-Bird's hands, the result is a photoelectric cannon with a range of 2km and devastating power.

STR 8  INT 5  SPD 8  END 8   RNK 5  COUR 9  FRP 8  SKL 7   Avg 7.25