Im new to the forums and generally, collecting.
Im a 1980s kid, and have recently returned to tf
thx to the IDW comics. particularly after Last stand of the wreckers, which i felt was all kinds of awesome.
Anyway, my renewed interest towards this universe eventually dragged me to fanpages and wikis and forums to dig out info's and trivia's about charactered i liked and like. To my surprise I found a vibrant community, capable of digging out lost details about cartoon and toy productions, of properly referencing said info (that was incredible) and of making sense of the billions of multiverses and toy versions. I was particularly 'impressed' with the acquisition on the original 86 movie script by a group of individuals just to make it available online and then sold it.
Thus a growing sensation of wanting to participate in this collective effort to inform about transformer history and make said info freely available on the net.
But what do I know that could possibly interest the community and that they don't already know.
Well heres my attempt.
If you were to talk to an Italian transformers fan (g1) you might notice a overthetop interest for wheeljack. there are 2 reasons for that. The brief answer is because wheeljack transformed in a Lancia Turbo (ill get back to that) and secondly he wore the alitalia (italian airplane company) sponsor tickets.
Now.. this kinda melds with Italian history, which might or might not interest you (more the last I assume)
the setting
Italy still felt it was an underdog, having achieved the 'developped world' country status only since after the 2 WW, and as much as the americans feared italy would vote communist, in the end the working class joined the 'borgois' in the economic boom of the 60's in an attempt to modernise the country and catch up with the rest o the world. so in the 70's the working class snobbed the hippy students and the 80s generations found itself in a country that was still dealing with the harsh terrorist bombings of the 70's. In the 80s italy was changing, berlusconi and the mafia was already there, (only just 10 year in the coming) it was effectively the beggining of the END. Italy now is a country in tatters, with a giudiciary system so beurocractically complicated it doesnt work (see Amanda Knox about that - im not saying shes guilty or innocent, just that 10 years after the trial, its disgracefull Italy wants to reopen a case for which it never spent enough resources to solve). Aside from that our Parlament is a joke (last elections saw the rise of a Commedian Beppe Grillo in parlament). We used to take the piss out of US for having an actor president, but with Berlusconi and now Beppe grillo, Italians nowadays are so ashamed you could scream at them and they wouldn't dare react.
Whats this to do with WHeeljack? the 80's was the start of the End, but us 80s kids got a glimpse of what was there before. of what could have been. and trust me it could have been EVERYTHING. And wheeljack represents just THAT. The Lancia stratos Turbo... Lancia would eventually be bought by FIAT (who also eventually bought ferrari and who ruined everything.. but that another story..)
Alitalia was bought by airfrance couple years ago.
But back in 198X it hadn't happened yet and that Stratos Turbo was the best Italy had to offer, and in fact,
not even Subaru can beat Lancias STAGGERING collection of 13 world rallies (if u count the fiat abarth teams using stratoses) with citroen in second place with just 8. subuaru 3. Even if u dont count the fiat abarth, lancia still has 9 or 10 championships, 2 more than citroen.
Just a couple things about the stratos. The lancia statos was built from fulvia engine but went for a ferrai engine in the end 492 road legal stratos were sold. The rally winning cars of the 74-76, streak was the Lancia Stratos Turbo. Its last championship win in 81, only 2 such cars were ever made one ended up burnt in a ditch (76) it was the malboro sponsor lancia. In other words, wheeljack is modeled on a 'unique' car as in there is only 1 in the world.
I mean 30 years after and Lancia still is unbeaten. dont just take my word for it go see top gears episode on lancia they love them (
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... 7764,d.ZG4)
Wheeljack for us italians is a memento of what could have and should have been.The harsh reality hit us in the face in 1992 when the mafia lit up 1 km of highway killing court judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and his police escort. He was ofcourse working on cases about the mafia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Falcone).
shortly after came mani pulite (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_pulite)
AND then came ... our own personal Megatron: Silvio Berlusconi. Whatever they tell about him, all you need to know is his 'horse handeler' vittorio mangano (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Mangano)
was a sentenced killer for the mafia.. why would a to be prime minister have a killer at his service, one that knew all the major mafia players of the 90's and why did mr Berlusconi pass law in parlaments that lowered law penalties for mafia convicted criminals and had harsher conditions imposed for pentiti.
As I said, Wheeljack reminds us of a time before it all went to ****, a time when our cars were so bad ass, no one has ever done better in world rallies ever since.
And Alitalia? its just another symbol of the typical nepotist italian way of doing economy. but we didn't know back then, we look at alitalia as our pan am, many were sad in seeing it being sold to the french, and Berlusconi made a case of it, trying to save it but in the end just lost us time and got us a worst deal with airfrance. .. yeah it was so in tatters nobody wanted it...
Conclusion: Wheeljack; thumbs up! berlusconi... not so much. how could it go so wrong!????
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
