Hmm. Those tires do look pretty certainly type-specific but still quite cool. Hanging on the hope that they actually split in two but that's unlikely. They might be good with Tridoron though. I can see hooking wrecker dramatically pulling something.

Chaser's upgrades look weird with all that detailing but only basic silver. Might look better in motion though.

New form in episode 5 though? That's awfully quick. Guess it might take longer until Technique emerges.

Hooking... Oh my god Drive is an Autobot! He turned Hoist into a Shift Car!

Yeah, that was my first thought, too.

I think it makes sense from a toy perspective: Gaim had a lot of riders and a single line wide gimmick. Drive in comparison has only three characters, Drive has three main forms, Chaser and Mach have their own gimmicks, and I think the dead heat upgrade will allow the use of both tires and signals on one figure. The smaller number of figures mean they can have more then one gimmick and as we seen the figure can be much more different from each other where as Gaim mostly use three base bodies (some with modifications) with really only the helmets and Arms giving the figure any personality

Fourze got his first upgraded design in Episode 6. Its not really that weird.

Makes sense when you look at the time frame, seeing as the holiday rush is about to start up.

New form= new merchandise.

Considering Gaim got an alternate form in episode 2 and every episode in Gaim until episode 9 had a brand new lockseed in it, I'm not shocked by this anymore.

Was checking the symbols (stickers) on my shift cars and I noticed that some like the three main ones Drive keeps one him have a faint tire in them that matches type speed (on a angle) but Mixer has a different tire (I'd say is type wild) running horizontal and the tire in Monster's sticker runs vertical (type Techic). What really sticks out is the tire treads. Cab and vega both have the type speed tire although cabs is next to impossible to see unless you get the light to hit the sticker just right.

And within like, a single day I'm proven wrong (latest scans show that Speed Doctor and Speed Dump exist).

After watching Drive episode four and seeing the new scans I'm stuck on this idea that Chase was Proto-Drive. The way he transforms, the colors of Proto-Drive, the fact the he looks more like a Rider than a Roidmude, and the Viral Cores gimmick. Could it be that the Roidmudes corrupted his suit and body with a virus of some type? Also, one other thing that stood out to me was how Proto-Drive couldn't destroy Roidmude cores. Hmmm.