Hey ladies and gents,

I haven't seen this posted. I just came across this article regarding Porsche and the building of Mirage, well, several of them, for the new movie. It's a short but cool read: How Porsche created a rare Mirage for the next 'Transformers' movie - Autoblog

 

People probably opened their garages because they were wanting to be paid.

But either way, it's interesting how they used such real parts.

 

This is so cool! I love it when two of my main interests intersect with each other

 

That's so fucking cool. Awsome to see it for one of my favourite cars.

 

Dammit, it should be Jazz!

 

THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYIN’!!!

 

Except not. Jazz is a Porsche 935, a 1976 Group 5 race car. Meanwhile, Mirage is a Carrera RS 3.8, a lightweight race tuned version of the Porsche 911 Turbo(964).

If you're trying to say that a Porsche has to be Jazz, remember that G1 Dead End is also a Porsche. Specifically, a Porsche 928. So using this logic Mirage SHOULD'VE been Dead End, lol.

Cliffjumper is also a Porsche. G1 Cliffjumper is a super-deformed Porsche 924. Triggerbot Backstreet is a Porsche 962. Nightbeat is a Porsche 959!

 

Huh. So Paramount requested the use of this car, not Porsche. Then I assume they also determined the very Jazz-esque colour scheme. Weird.

 

This is pointlessly facetious, Silver Porsche with stripes= Jazz, because confusing character traits accomplishes nothing useful a decade down the road.
People still wish AOE Hound had been named Bulkhead after all this time.

 

Okay fair enough yeah jazz is a racing Porsche, but the 935 is a homologation version of the 911, and at least looks more like the 935 (seeing as they share a platform, and most of their parts,) whereas the 928 looks completely different. But I do get the whole “road car” argument you’re making, from that standpoint, Deadend definitely makes a whole lot more sense

 

Porsche wouldn't have requested this car specifically. If they requested any one, it would've been a plain jane Porsche 911 Turbo(964). Specifically this car is a Carrera RS 3.8, which...I'm going to throw out a word here...a one off homologation of the RSR 3.8.

Homologation in motorsports is basically being certified by a racing body to be allowed in motorsports. Generally, homologation is used to refer to the practice of production race cars, that a race car can only be certified to race if it has a certain number of road legal production versions. To homologate the RSR 3.8, Porsche created 55 Carrera RS 3.8s, which would be the road legal version of the RSR 3.8.

I'm basically saying I don't give a flying shit. Even if this was Jazz it's not going to be anything like the G1 Jazz. Let the goddamn movies be it's own thing. Fans are just wigging out over something Paramount has been doing since 2007 and they're stressing themselves out over nothing.

Plus, I associate Jazz not necessarily with Porsche but rather his colors...the iconic Martini Racing scheme. As I said there's a ton of other Porsche guys in Transformers but to me it's not trying to be like "Jazz" without at least attempting the Martini Racing colors.

 

I agree with that 100%. I just thought I’d throw out some Porsche knowledge since cars and transformers are the two things I’m best at. And I yeah I think this movie should just be its own thing.



also I’m sorry if this comes off as rude, I’ve noticed sometimes I have a “tone” issue when I write things like this, plus it’s 1:49 am local time, and being tired doesn’t help with the whole tone thing. Just thought it’d be fun to discuss fictional alien robots who turn into sports cars from Germany with fellow fans.

 

Huh, interesting.

Well, to be fair to the G1 fans, there is a difference between taking a name and applying it to a new character and taking key visual traits of a character and applying them to someone else. And not everyone will be familiar with the exact origins of Jazz's colour scheme, but may be used to white being shorthand for silver, like with G1 Megatron, who's toy was silver, but was white in media, which could make these two colour schemes even closer in some people's minds, if not exactly the same.

On the other hand, Transformers has a long history of characters sharing key visual traits, heck, even G1 did this any time it repainted one character into another and it's not like Mirage's robot mode has more than vague similarities to Jazz's. Similarities that are shared with countless other G1 characters (car-front-chest isn't exactly unique to Jazz). Plus, G1 fans will often complain no matter what differences there are with G1, so why bother being fair to them?

 

Glad to see Jazz get the love he deserves that they had to recreate a car for him. This attention to detail is definitely chef's kiss.

 

Honestly, with the jungle mission 3 pack mirage to compare, it seems like the early concepts were leaning towards nightbeat for bot mode too.
Part of me wonders if they didn't just look at every Porsche transformer and combine them.

 

His bot mode doesn't look like any of them.

 

Cool, but honestly, I can’t tell one Porsche 911 Carrera from another. The only Porsche that stood out was the 928.

 

Most of the time it’s just performance based changes, and not always cosmetic changes. However most aftermarket 911’s do get a lot of cosmetic enhancements. Do a quick google search for “RWB 911” to see what I mean, if your interested

 

Fair enough but then why name him Mirage? The attempt to capitalize on G1 nostalgia is obviously there, otherwise they'd just use a new name for a new character. After all this time of Porsche refusing to be involved and then finally getting them and then having a 911 derivative not only not be named Jazz but re-using another G1 name with no relation to a Porsche alt mode is an understandably disappointing thing. Unclench.

 

To protect the license of the name.

That's why we generally see nameslaps, however this isn't as much of a nameslap as we have seen before. Sure his ability may not have been holograms in the cartoon, but it works for Mirage and I guess he can go invisible (or at least move location when holograms have been made) to a degree.

Just be happy that another character that generally gets shelved is getting some love, or do I need to remind you of Energon Mirage?