Streetwise certainly isn’t the most important of characters. He’s pretty much low on the C list, hanging around with Bomb-Burst and Fizzle. If he wasn’t part of Defensor, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have seen any customs of him at all.

But even then, is it too much to ask to actually have a figure that LOOKS like Streetwise? The original figure transformed into a Nissan 300ZX police car, so it makes sense to have his car form similar to Prowl (who went from a Datsun 280Z to a Nissan 350Z-ish Classics form). But hello? Has anyone ever taken a look at the robot mode?

Streetwise isn’t a chestformer. He’s complex for a combiner limb, but he looks nowhere like Prowl and bros in robot mode. I’m sure the G2 Streetstar at Botcon had something to do with it, but every single Streetwise I’ve seen has been either a straight Prowl repaint or some other figure who looks nothing like him either.

That is something I set out to correct. Streetwise may have a minimum of screen and page apperances and his major highlights may include being verbally owned by Starscream and shooting First Aid, but he deserves better.

I bought an extra Universe Prowl back then, to keep around in case Smokescreen wasn’t produced. Eventually he was, so the extra Prowl stayed dismantled. Then recently I finished my adaptation for Generations Hot Spot, and I was inspired to start working on his team. Now, that’s not a promise that Groove, First Aid and Blades are next, but they might be. :)

As I said, the number one priority was mimicking the original transformation and robot form, while keeping the car form intact. The end result is a really tall deluxe figure, especially compared to Prowl. Yes, all of this figure fits into that same car mode. Some sacrifices had to be made since I didn’t want to spend months on him. With this general transformation, it’s quite possible to improve his shoulders by rebuilding the transformation swivels and making them longer, placing them a little higher up. A dedicated builder could also make better heels, since his original feet just sit there – the spare room could be used for something to unfold.

But overall I’m quite happy with him. Even though he dwarfs Prowl, he fits right in with Hot Spot and Blades, and gives me something to shoot for if I ever make his other team-mates. Like my old Terrorcons, the idea won’t be to combine them, as I want to explore the separate characters rather than just make them into limbs and never seen again.

Let me just state that Lego is wonderful. I’m sure most builders are familiar with Bionicle joints by now, but there’s so much neat stuff to use. Since Lego is so uniform, it’s very easy to come up with mechanisms, and there’s plenty of pieces to choose from. I used loads of Technic to make Supreme Smokescreen’s spine and rear wheel mechanisms. This time I worked on a whole different scale, but there was still some useful stuff.

The main mechanisms that needed creating were the new spine and the hinge for the roof and head. The spine was simple enough: two thinner Technic plates and a four nob bar. The hinge needed a bunch of small pieces – I settled for 2×1 hinges, robot arms, a flag, horizontal 1×1 ringed bricks and chopped up flagpoles to swivel around. Eventually however, I realized that the robot arms were too long, and trying to shorten them removed most of the benefits of using original bricks to begin with. So I replaced them with scratch built mini bars. All of the other parts were also trimmed down to take as little room as possible. Everything was ordered off of Bricklink.com. It may be noted that a 3.2 mm drill makes holes that perfectly fit the thinner Lego rods.

However, I’m very impressed by the versatility of the Prowl mold. I removed the door hinges from the hood, cut the front bar that holds the hood opening part, and trimmed out most of the underside. The contraption that holds Prowl’s gun in car mode was exactly the right size to hold the new spine. I had plans to make a new hinge to open the hood the other way, but it turned out that it’s tight enough anyway so I cheated. It’s not like this mold doesn’t already have lots of pieces that can snap off.

The main alteration to the car mode is a new cut along the front edge of Prowl’s lightbar, and down along the doors. I glued the roof to the legs, instantly making him much taller but retaining Streetwise’s robot proportions. Inside I made some support structures and made small supports to the back of his now hollow feet. These go very tightly against his hands in car mode so they can’t be too wide.

The doors obviously needed a new placement. This was another revelation, along with the great fit for the spine. Prowl has holes on the back of his wrists. Into this I put a piece of 5.5 mm Evergreen styrene tube, and inside that a 4 mm piece slightly longer. On top of this, the original door hinges fit perfectly. I don’t even need to pin them back. So that’s how easy it was to get the doors onto his arms.

I never cared much for Streetwise being slightly gray, or possibly silver. As usual I went for comic accuracy, so he got a red hip but stayed mostly white. The head was built around the Prowl head, not much special there. The door stars were printed on paper, used as guides to cut the same shapes out of black decals, and then I added the rounded points with paint. I then used a few Gundam decals to spice up his details.

The slightly changed hip was actually a mistake. I used the wrong screw to put him together and suddenly the diamond plating on his hip had an unsightly hole. So I had to cover it all up. The benefit is that he looks a bit different from Prowl now.

Overall this was a fun build because of how accessible the Prowl mold proved to be, and this was the first time I scratch built any mechanisms. Hopefully someone else can improve on this design, and maybe there won’t be as many Prowl repaints now. With some additional TLC, this should be the best way to make Classics Streetwise.