The Detroit 8V92 was notorious for being the most aggressive and loudest engine on the road. This engine was perfect for Motormaster, but not so great for the Kenworth, which was designed with a different-sized engine. To make matters worse, Detroit 8V92 engines are rare—they stopped making these engines long ago because they had terrible gas mileage and spewed oil.
Gary Barker, Worldwide’s business manager, knew the only way they could pull this off was to find a Kenworth K100 that had been built in a similar year with a retrofitted 8V92. As it turned out, luck was on Travis’ side, and they found their engine in a salvage yard in nearby Elizabethton, TN.
The Transformation Begins
On July 2, 2008, Blue Ridge Kenworth towed the Kenworth to Abingdon, VA and the fun and hard work began.
Travis led the team in the conceptual design phase, drawing on his passion for Transformers and his talents as an engineer. He even enlisted the help of a concept artist who rendered drawings and paintings that helped everyone on the team see where they were headed before the transformation work began.
One of the biggest challenges was making sure the Motormaster design wasn’t over the top. After all, Transformers are robots in disguise. The Kenworth K100 needed to look and function like a high-end truck, but Travis wanted Transformers fans to be able to see subtle signs of the ruthless robot lurking within.
Another challenge was how to bring a character and a truck created in the 80s into the 21st century, without compromising the integrity of either.
The team did a lot of research on the Generation One Transformers. They also carefully studied the Optimus Prime truck used in the first Transformers’ movie. The team’s goal was to take their restoration and transformation to an even higher level.
After nearly a year of painstaking research, numerous team meetings, and countless hours of technical and artistic craftsmanship, the Decepticon Motormaster K100E roared to life and literally shook the walls of the shop in which it was born.
Meet the Decepticon Motormaster K100E
The Decepticon Motormaster K100E is a blend of the old school “King of the Road” truck and the latest in modern technology, which is most fitting for a technologically advanced alien robot disguised as a truck.
Virtually every part of the Kenworth has been painted in Motormaster’s signature purple, black, and silver. The cab’s original interior was gutted and replaced with black leather seats in a vintage diamond pleat. The floorboards are a rich cherry wood with matching dash panels. Stainless steel accents the interior gauges and indicator lights and the toggle switches have chrome extensions with Swarovski crystals embedded in the tips. The cab also has an ultra-modern touch-screen TV and powerful audio system.
At night, hidden interior lights give the cab an eerie purple twilight glow. With his purple undercarriage lights, Motormaster seems to pulse with Energon, the purple lifeblood of all Transformers.
On June 23, 2009, nearly a year after the project began, the Decepticon Motormaster K100E made his debut at the Abingdon Cinemall to help celebrate the opening of the long-awaited second Transformers’ movie, “Revenge of the Fallen.”
Be sure to check out our Photo Gallery and YouTube playlist to see the restoration and transformation process from start to finish.
