Of course, he was called 'Lambor' because that was short for Lamborghini... only now he's something else entirely...
Vehicle Mode:
I've mentioned before than I'm neither a connoisseur nor an afficionado of expensive sports cars, but I consider the Lamborghini Countach - like several of their more contemporary models - to be a beautiful vehicle, and I was initially disappointed that 'Lambor' would no longer be a Lambo... But that quickly dissolved when I clapped eyes on the sensual curves of the Dodge Viper. There's certainly a snake-like feel to the very front of the car but, overall, it's a gorgeous, powerful-looking vehicle that's not quite a muscle car, but you get the impression it kinda wishes it was. The fact that it's a red convertable instantly reminds me of Sega's classic arcade game Out Run, and you can easily imagine a car like this turning up in a more contemporary - but hopefully still sprite-based - version of the game. It's a very photogenic car, in a way that cries out for it to appear on television or in movies, breaking speed limits and cracking criminal conspiracies... Or something.
As with almost any other figure in the Binaltech line, Lambor/Sideswipe could easily be mistaken for a model car thanks to the small number of visible seams - there are a couple of extras around the doors and three unexpected splits in the front bumper, but almost every other seam is natural and expected on a car - in particular the huge bonnet which lifts easily to reveal what is still one of the most beautiful Binaltech engine/weapons in the line. It resemblance to the real thing isn't that close but, plugged into the space under the bonnet, it looks convincing enough and, being entirely chromed, it catches the light the moment the bonnet is lifted. There appears to be either a slight misalignment or a missing piece just behind the seats, where the cover for the roof doesn't quite wrap around all the way to the sides and, in the light of BT12 Overdrive, it seems strange that Takara didn't include an attachable soft-top - particularly since there are tabs on the windscreen, used later by BT05 Dead End, for attaching a roof.
Other details on the car are a little hit-and-miss. While the 'VIPER' badge on either wing is raised and painted detail, the Viper crest on the nose and the Dodge/Viper text on the rear bumper are not, so they look a little cheap and artificial. The shape of the headlights seems a little off to me, compared to the photos of the real car I've seen online, and there's something not quite right about the nose of the vehicle but I can't quite put my finger on what. The internal detailing is pretty good, while the rear end is a mixture of the excellent (translucent plastic for all the indicators, including the central brake light) and the half-baked (an unpainted license plate frame, no sculpted boot lock). Worst among all the omissions is the boot, which doesn't open even slightly. Given the way the back end has been designed on this model, it's highly likely this was a structural concern. The hinges for the boot would be either side of the roof cover, so the designers may have felt there just wasn't enough plastic mass to attach hinges, and doing so may have made the rear section floppier... Then again, some of the changes made to the Dead End/Sunstreaker version of the mold would have added the necessary support, yet the boot on that version doesn't open either.
The cockpit area - everything from the insides of the doors to the dashboard to the seats - is beautifully sculpted, and it's all as close to the real thing as possible, with dashes of paint applied to the dashboard and the gearstick to bring out the details. The front wheels move in tandem thanks to another strange arrangement of parts connected by magnets, beneath the engine. The hubcaps are faithfully sculpted and chromed, and even the wing mirrors are nicely reflective. If a had a gripe, it'd be that the hinging of the bonnet is a little flimsy considering the bonnet itself is die-cast, and therefore quite heavy. It's a double-hinge, so it's possible to arrange it so it stays up, but it's a little fussy and does require painted parts to rub up against each other for support.
As a follow-up to Smokescreen, Lambor looks a little underdecorated, even though the die-cast parts on the front and sides (the back end is plastic, likely to prevent him becoming back-heavy in robot mode) are painted a gorgeous shade of red, with the plastic colour matching almost seamlessly except in terms of glossiness. Nevertheless, it is almost tempting to display him in vehicle mode...
Robot Mode:
While there's certainly a clear Sideswipe-yness about this figure, it's fairly obvious this robot mode and its transformation were not initially designed with Sideswipe in mind. Not least, the lack of his iconic Countach bonnet chest. The boot ends up on his back as a large, ugly backpack (one could be generous and say it represents his jetpack), though some clever customisers figured out a way to bring it closer into his body, hooking the wheel wells over the shoulders, to turn it into an alternative chest. Personally, I don't mind a slightly new look for G1 characters - anything's better than endlessly recycling the same damned thing - and I have to admit that I rather like the way the cockpit compresses in on itself, allowing the roof cover to peg into the frame of the windscreen, leaving some of the dashboard visible inside his belly.
In almost every other respect, Lambor is pretty much what one would expect from a Sideswipe. He looks a bit portly due to the way the windscreen doesn't quite flatten back against his torso and the width of his body versus his overall height, but it's definitely him. A decent pose and finding the right angle to view him from makes all the difference. Though, on the subject of viewing angles... he really does look terrible from behind. It's not just the backpack - he has the entire car bonnet hanging off his backside, looking like the tails of a morning suit. While his front is clearly made of folded up car parts, the back doesn't even bother to fold them up... and while I'm sure it was all part of the licensing agreement with Ford/Dodge, it's possibly a little bit too much of a sacrifice in this case.
There are also shortcomings with the arms - they've got the traditional door armour panels, but they seem bulky and ugly here, and with structural parts and hinges on show, they somehow don't look as tidy as the G1 toy... Plus, the doors are hinged themselves and, while they don't sag outward, they seem less like deliberately-positioned armour and more like car parts that just couldn't go anywhere else. I was also a little disappointed that the arms (and feet, for that matter) aren't chromed - the plain grey plastic looks so dull against both the unpainted red plastic of his upper chest and the painted metal of the door. I can understad the decision to a degree - chrome on these parts might chip quite easily during transformation - but the few bits of chrome on the G1 figure where part of what made it stand out as a toy. The arms themselves also feature very little by way of sculpted detail - shallow panel lines on the forearms, some ridges on the biceps - to liven them up... so the upper half seems a little underdeveloped compared to Smokescreen. Weirdly, the Alternators version has a black wash over the sculpted detail on the upper chest... but I'm not sure that counts as an improvement.
His lower half fares a little better, with both more sculpted detail - though still not a great deal - along with silver and pale blue paintwork. Neither really resembles the sticker details on the G1 toy, but nor do they resemble those of G1 Tracks especially well. The thighs seem a little short, in part because the hip joints are actually concealed by the groin plate, in part because the section that contains the knee joint is molded in black plastic rather than grey, but his proportions below the waist are much better than those above. The sections of car grille on his heels look a little weird and the wheels - no longer connected - flop about a bit, but the only thing I really don't like about the lower half is that large flap of die-cast bonnet on his kaboose.
The vehicle mode's glorious chromed engine becomes a glorious chromed handgun in this mode and, while it's nothing like either of the weapons wielded by the G1 toy, it works really well in the hands of a Binaltech figure. While the bulk of it still looks like the vehicle's engine, and the only real change is the long nozzle that 'transforms' out from the underside, it looks as much like a functional weapon as Smokescreens, and has the benefit of being chromed - even though G1 Sideswipe's gun was not. Strangely, and unlike most other Binaltech weapons, it doesn't peg into his hands, but the hinged grip of his fingers is adequate to hold the gun firmly in most poses. This is his only weapon, as well - no shoulder-mounted rocket launcher (not even a third party one, sadly - no socked to peg the Binaltech Arming launchers), no piledriver attachments for his hands... Probably just as well, really, considering how that turned out for Alternators Rumble...
Binaltech Lambor's head sculpt is easily one of the low points of the line - it's just so bland. Not just the face, the whole helmet... I'm not even sure what they based it on since it looks nothing like Sideswipe as he appeared in the comics, the cartoon or the toy. It's very basic and boxy, and the face is flat and expressionless. By and large, Binaltech heads tended to be subtle reimaginings of the toy with a nod toward the cartoon... this one just looks like a knockoff.
It's noteworthy that, in some ways, Lambor's transformation is reversed compared to G1 Sideswipe. On the original, the legs are formed from the rear of the vehicle, with the chest formed from the bonnet. On this one, the legs are the front wings of the vehicle, with the bonnet hanging off his backside. The arms remain attached to the car doors, but their own transformation is rather more involved - folding back on themselves to form cubes that stow inside the rear of the vehicle. It's a surprisingly simple transformation, with the only surprise being the 180° rotation at the waist, which requires the windscreen to be lifted up out of the body of the vehicle. The only drawback to any of it is the likelihood of rubbing - and thereby potentially chipping - painted die-cast parts against each other while finnagling certain parts into position. Once in either form, the gun slots into place easily, and there aren't any significant tolerance issues leading to misalignments in vehicle mode.
At the time he was released, loads of people complained about Lambor/Sideswipe's legs, and the fact that the hips barely move forward or back due to the restrictive plates surrounding them. I can't argue with that point, but it's actually quite easy to get him onto a decent pose that doesn't require that much movement at the hip. Granted, the windscreen reduces his waist articulation effectively to zero, but waist joints weren't all that common even in the mainstream toylines back in 2003 and, while this was a 20th Anniversary toyline, it was very kept very separate from the Masterpiece line, so that same level of articulation should not have been expected. Plus, the feet - mounted on ball joints on the end of hinged rods - have a surprisingly good range, though not in the most sensible directions. His arms, meanwhile, are an absolute joy, despite the added bulk of his car doors and the rear wheels hanging off his shoulders.
Lambor certainly isn't without his shortcomings, but he's still an excellent example of the Binaltech franchise and its reimagining of Generation 1. It's a decent representation of the character - particularly given that it was supposed to be Tracks when it was first designed - but the terrible head sculpt and the massive wastage of car shell is disappointing. All of it was simply a symptom of the objectively ridiculous hoops the car manufacturers expected Takara's designers leap through in the name of license approval, seemingly because they just didn't 'get' the idea of TransFormers. In retrospect, it's interesting what a beneficial effect the Michael Bay movies had on the automotive industry's attitudes to these robots in disguise... and I almost wish Binaltech had been attempted in their wake rather than four years before the first movie hit cinemas...
Ultimately, I wouldn't call Lambor a must-have among the Binaltech range... In fact, some of the knockoffs, with their more elaborate paint jobs, were far more interesting. This figure isn't a shining example of the bold experiment that was Binaltech, but his vehicle mode is gorgeous and very much in keeping with the character, even if the robot mode is weirdly proportioned and saddled with an unfortunate windscreen paunch. Probably the most disappointing thing is that BT05 was Dead End - the first Binaltech Decepticon - rather than Sunstreaker, who appeared only as an Alternator or as part of the later Binaltech Asterisk line.
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