Yet, while turning the former Dinobot Commander into a car may have seemed strange, they at least chose a fitting vehicle - the latest iteration of one of the most well-known American muscle cars.
Vehicle Mode:
The early 2000s Ford Mustang is a decent-looking car... Possibly not as full of character as some of the earlier cars to bear that prestigious moniker, but it looks powerful, sporty and maybe even a little intimidating (it was, after all, the basis for the Saleen custom used as Barricade in the original TransFormers live action movie). The silver paint job gives it a somewhat high-end look, but even the Alternators version got a full silver paint job, so the only real difference in this case is the heft of the die-cast metal used on some parts.
Front and rear windscreens are naturally molded in clear, colourless plastic, while all the lights - front, rear and side - are likely molded in the same, but painted as appropriate - orange for the indicators, red for most of the lights on the back, including the central brake light, set just below the spoiler. The Mustang logo, the exhaust pipes and all the hubcaps are chromed for extra punch and authenticity. The car's doors don't have windows, but the smaller windows, flanking the rear windscreen, are present, and all the windoes have their requisite black framing. His numberplate looks a bit awkward - the left half features a large Autobot insignia, leaving his name to be squeezed into the righthand side in its entirety.
Grimlock's interior has the typical Binaltech level of detail: a fairly accurate - albeit unpainted - rendition of the dashboard, a mobile steering wheel, a central control section including gearstick and handbrake. The seats and insides of the doors are also accurately rendered (the latter even featuring touches of red paint), though I've always been bothered by the use of bright red plastic for the former. It's something of an eyesore and a distraction in an otherwise excellent model.
As with other figures in the Binaltech line, Grimlock's primary weapon becomes his vehicle mode's engine block, and plugs in securely below the bonnet. He also comes with a secondary weapon - a sword - which plugs in on the underside of the vehicle. It's worth noting that, while the engine block/handgun on this version is beautifully chromed, the Alternators version just got painted silver, so it wasn't quite so striking to look at.
For the most part, Binaltech Grimlock's vehicle mode looks great... but I've found that the front section of the vehicle doesn't necessarily align properly with the plate which forms the central underside of the vehicle, and is visible below the doors on each side. This plate plays a significant role in vehicle mode's structural integrity, but it seems to align better on one side than the other. Perhaps more significantly, due to transformation, the rear windscreen has not just a seam, but a couple of sections of grey, structural plastic splitting it in half, and robot parts are clearly visible within. On the upside, this model does get back to the Binaltech almost-staple of functional steering on the front wheels.
Robot Mode:
While the limitations of the vehicular alternate mode deny BT Grimlock his traditional gold chrome chest, there's certainly no mistaking which character this is: he's bulky, his lower legs are massive and, aside from the slightly weird-looking arms, the overall silhouette is quite close to the G1 Dinobot commander. Aside from his head sculpt, he is pretty much at his most G1 from the waist down - the black belly plate and Diaclone-style bonnet chest look OK, but aren't really on-brand for the former Dinobot Commander. One of my favourite aspects of the mold - for no obvious reason - is the way the rear bumper folds back onto the open boot of the car to give Grimlock massive protruding kneepads.
The arms are one of the more bothersome elements. Had they found a way to have his wheels on his shoulders, they'd better resemble the G1 toy's dino-hip shoulders, and some sort of vestigial claw could have been added around his wrists. As it stands, his shoulders are rather angular, and the car doors stick up and out to the sides, connected to the backs of his shoulders. Having the windscreen and the roof on the robot's back is pretty traditional on TransFormers toys, and was very common in the Binaltech line... but on Grimlock, this is supplemented by a massive square plate that hangs off his backside looking like coat-tails. Granted, that's where he stores his sword when it's not in use... but I can't see how the robot would be able to reach around and grab it, so it's not a very practical scabbard.
Another weird choice with this figure was turning the car's seats into the robot's feet. They actually look surprisingly good... but, from a practical point of view, I can't see how foam-filled leather could be expected to support a robot which - assuming no mass shifting occurred - would be approximately 14 feet tall, based on the size of the real-life vehicle. He'd likely only take a step or two before they burst, or the leather got ripped to shreds.
One thing robot mode makes clear - to a degree - is the reasoning behind the bright red seats, since the groin section is also molded in red plastic to emulate the G1 toy's red groin. It feels to me as though they could have used black plastic for both, and then painted the groin parts... but they likely had their reasons. It is rather disappointing that the belly plate - which is literally just a thin, trapezoid panel with structural plastic on the back linking it to the waist joint - wasn't painted gold (or, better still, gold chromed) to better resemble a traditional G1-style Grimlock. The silver car chest would have been more forgivable had it linked to a gold belly, and some kind of paintwork would have helped bring out the shallow details sculpted there.
Grimlock's engine gun seeks to represent the G1 toy's double-barrelled blaster, but the shape makes it look more like an upscaled taser. Plus, while the chrome looks great for its engine mode, I have to admit it's pretty gaudy on a handgun of this size. His energo sword is nicely sculpted, albeit nothing like Grimlock's G1 sword in shape or style. It also seems proportionally shorter than it should be, though its length was already difficult for vehicle mode to accomodate in the designers' chosen place/orientation. Both weapons peg into either hand and remain securely in place thanks to the minimal articulation of the fingers.
Binaltech Grimlock's head sculpt is another puzzling aspect of this figure, since its paint job appears to follow none of the established patterns for Grimlocks. By and large, the sculpt is closer to his G1 animation model than the toy, with a fairly curved look to the helmet, and horns almost looking like cat ears. His visor is the standard Autobot blue, but the paintwork appears to be based more on the G1 box art than anything else, with the red block in his central crest and a coating of very pale gold paint over his minimally-detailed battlemask.
The Binaltech line had already gained a reputation for awkward and frustrating transformations, but this tenth entry into the line brought that to a whole new level. Not only was it necessary to perform every step in a very specific order due to clearance issues, but the doors had a nasty habit of popping off regardless of how well the instructions were followed. Forming the robot's legs out of the vehicle's back end is almost elegant, particularly with the way the seats turn into feet with minimal adjustment. The front end sounds easy in theory - the arms collapse in under the bonnet, like so many of the Diaclone-derived G1 Autobot cars and their Binaltech remakes - but the exact process can be an utter nightmare, even with the doors pre-emptively popped off the shoulders. The way they fold in and together just isn't intuitive, and then fitting them into the vehicle shell is not smooth. Deploying or stowing the head is just as frustrating, as the neck is mounted on a slide joint that's supposed to allow it to slip through the small space vacated by a thin sliver of bonnet, and then it doesn't even clip into place. Probably the worst aspect is just that large panel of vehicle underside that does nothing useful in robot mode. Sure, it's not unprecedented, but it's still poor design... Though at least it doesn't get in the way much.
Painful though Grimlock may be to transform, at least he's well poseable. The arms can rotate a full 360° at the shoulders (at the slight risk of the car doors either popping off or scratching paintwork), with about 90° swing out to the sides. The elbow is a ball joint on the end of a pinned rod which can itself swing from side to side as part of transformation. The wrists are ball-jointed, and the hands are standard Binaltech - the index finger can move independently of the other three. The waist can rotate 360°, but the butt flap can clash with the legs. His hips are large ball joints with rotation joints just below, and the knees can bend to about 90°. The ankles are able to move a little, both up/down and inward/outward, both certainly beyond what's required for transformation, and far more adaptable than the ball joints on Lambor/Dead End's ankles, as well as being more subtle than Hound/Swindle's.
Fussy transformation and enormous butt-flap aside, I'd have to say that Grimlock is one of my favourite Binaltech figures - he's very imposing, very powerful-looking, and the fact that he comes with two weapons as standard is a bonus. After all, Grimlock just isn't Grimlock without his energo sword. Given that this mold was originally set also to be Windcharger, it seems strange in retropect that the Mustang mold was only used as Grimlock and Wheeljack - not even the Alternators version got any additional repaints, likely because it just wasn't well received by fans. Grimlock was an odd choice for including in the Binaltech line but, for the most part, I feel this mold did him justice.
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