Porsche 924 Turbo

The 924 was Porsche's first front-engined, water-cooled production car, originally developed as a Volkswagen-Audi project and taken over by Porsche when VW dropped it. It ran from 1976 to 1988 with a 2.0 litre four and a transaxle layout that gave it near-perfect weight distribution. The 924 Turbo of 1979 to 1982 added a KKK turbocharger for around 170 horsepower and a genuine 140 mph top speed, plus the four NACA-style bonnet vents that distinguish it. Purists sneered at it; it sold in large numbers and kept Porsche solvent.

Cliffjumper is the hot-headed Minibot, small and permanently spoiling for a fight, and the 924 is exactly the right car for him: a fast machine that everyone insists is not a real Porsche. The toy is deliberately super-deformed, with the wheelbase compressed so a robot can fit inside a 2 inch shell, which is why it reads as a caricature rather than a scale model.

This is a Microchange Mini CAR Robo piece, not a Diaclone Car Robot, and the difference shows in the simpler transformation and the absence of die-cast. The famous complication is colour: the Beetle and the Porsche moulds were released in both red and yellow across different markets, producing yellow Porsche 'Bumblebee' and red Beetle 'Cliffjumper' variants that are still argued about, and which eventually got formalised as separate characters.

Not Diaclone. Takara Microman 'Microchange' Mini CAR Robo series (1983), a super-deformed Porsche 924, part of the same sub-line that produced Bumblebee, Windcharger, Gears and Brawn.

Fan lore about these vehicles is unusually unreliable. Where a popular claim does not survive checking, it is recorded here rather than repeated.

• Whether the mould is a 924 or a 924 Turbo specifically; the bonnet vents suggest the Turbo but the toy is too stylised to be conclusive.