It's based on an actual vehicle's design and not one made up by anyone working for Hasbro or any animation studio. I'd say it counts as "real". And clearly the concept design had gone into making at least one prototype car.

That's how all of them are, to avoid issues with IP and licensing. The base vehicle is still very much there. Whatever design changes are made are to avoid that and/or to accommodate a gimmick.

 

I actually like the cybertronian vehicles if they are well thought out, i dun like alt modes that are just jumbled messes. But i tend to display everything in bot mode.

 

I prefer real vehicles, but I don't mind some Cybertronian or "futuristic" ones mixed in when it makes sense. I generally don't like it when the whole lins is that way though.

When it comes to beast modes though, I prefer robotic beasts to fleshy beasts.

 

Cannot be bothered to care, I like it if it looks cool.

 

+1. Beast Wars may have had some really good writing, but it was still a little squicky to imagine robots wandering around with huge pads of flesh hanging off a metal substructure.

Not to mention - in-fiction, were the chunks of flesh supposed to merge into a seamless skin in beast mode, or were they supposed to remain separate? An animal made up of overlapping or squished-together chunks of fake flesh doesn't seem like it would be particularly convincing, but the other option means that the beast skins tore themselves apart every time their wearer transformed. Ick.

 

I'm the same. That's what really put me off Beast Wars more than anything else, whereas I never had a problem with G1 Dinobots and others. And it's not just a matter of what's realistic or not, I find it just looks better aesthetically. The robot/flesh mix tends to be on the fugly side.

I like to think if robotic animals wanted to blend in, they could simulate flesh holographically, the same way TF vehicles have holo-drivers in the movies and some comics.

 

This too on both parts    

 

I'm with you on this. I supposed it could be a G1 thing, but when I was younger I totally loved the Technobots alt modes as well as the headmasters / targetmasters. I'm happy to lose accuracy as long as the alt mode looks cool / stylish and somehow plausible. Figures like the Autobot G1 sixmode (forgot the name...) annoyed the heck out of me as each alt mode didn't feel well realised while the triple changers were mostly pure class.

Having said that, Alternator / Alternity are my favourite recent lines for really pushing alt mode accuracy and MP are full of win