Here is Sideways in his vehicle mode, which takes the form of an approximation of the Audi R8 that was actually used in the movie; this is due to the licensing issues that Hasbro and Paramount dealt with back then. As far as how it represents the vehicle, it looks mostly fine. The crevises over the car are standard for the Moviefigures due to their more complex transformations, but while it's not on the same problems as Universe Ironhide, it's fairly broken up on the sides, which makes it somewhat hard to line the parts up due to the way some of the joints work on this guy.
It's not entirely perfect, as he back looks like it wants to go in but it can't due to the precise nature of where you need to line up the fingers and thumb on both hands, but I've seen worse. That middle gray part reminds me of the Combiner Wars Dead End mold, with the unpaintable plastic used on the elbow joint. And yes, there is a difference between the snap-on tires and the pinned tires.
The weapon storage has the gun (based on the PS2/Wii video game) stay on the back of the car. Nothing too new.
For a vehicle mode size comparison, here he is alongside Sideswipe, and in front of the two Sides are the Arcee triplets. The scale between the vehicles in question works fairly well; the Corvette Stingray and the Audi R8 are fairly low in terms of car height or profiles, so they look pretty good next to the bikes, which aren't that grossly oversized.
You can recreate the times the Arcee Triplets tried to shoot Sideways down, but while we can't recreate the Twins' failed attempt at stopping him, we can at least have Sideswipe's path get cleared so he can show how he's damn good by slicing Sideways in two. You can't actually split him, but lifting the panel and jamming in the blade works.
Transformation is pretty similar to Barricade's, but with a few differences here and there: the hood becomes part of the backpack on Barry while the front of the car only breaks up on Sideways, the arms are made up from a majority of the vehicle's sides like on Sideways rather than including the windows as shown with Barricade. The winglets are made from parts of the doors rather than being faux parts, and the legs are much skinnier on Sideways due to them not integrating any vehicle parts. This results in a similar yet different approach to Barricade's design, which has even distribution even in spite of having long arms. Ot does help distinguish them, in a way similar to.any G1 Autobot Car with a hood chest, or the way TLK Hot Rod has more of a leaner build than Bumblebee's. His engineering does feel less effective than Barricades, kind of calling back to the way old Deluxes used to work. I like how the tires embed themselves into the arms, though.
Head sculpt is pretty silver, though the eyes are kind of hard to make out. They are there, though, and painted in red. His articulation consists of ball joints at the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and ankles (though no rockers), hinges at the fingers thumbs, and knees, and a swivel at the waist. His gun pegs in by sliding the fingers into it and solidifying the connection with the thumb. Don't know why it needs the 5mm port, but hey, this guy has a unique form of weapon storage! Massive W.
For a robot mode size comparison, here he is with Sideswipe and the triplets once again. He's pretty squat, contrasting the lean proportions that Sideswipe is known for. And it has been a complaint some fans initially seemed to have until it turned out the stock images made him seem hunched over. That being said, he is a pretty sid release in spite of his shortcomings. He hasn't impressed me as much as Galvatron did, but it's nice to see a new mold pop up after tons of attention to SS86 and Bumblebee.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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