To be honest, a lot of my feelings about Combiner Wars Lightspeed are because of expectations.  For almost as long as Combiner Wars was a thing, there was a will-they-won't-they about making Computron, and so long as we speculators were in the will-they camp, we were wondering where Lightspeed would come from. Original Lightspeed's a very futuristic car who transforms in a specific way that's kinda unique to combining car limb guys, and so the two available options of Breakdown and Dead End seemed to both fall short in every category except "broadly a four-wheeled vehicle."  

But then the retool of Breakdown into Wheeljack happened, and, oh, hey, that's where Lightspeed was gonna come from, obviously.  Like, super obviously.  Wheeljack shaved off a buncha what was non-Lightspeed about Breakdown, adding some similar shapes to the car mode (if not going full-futuristic) and also retooling the robot mode to look like Wheeljack's.  See, Lightspeed transformed like Wheeljack, with a hood for feet and a roof for a chest.  And so, like, duh, that's Future Lightspeed.  Total duh-doy.  

And then Combiner Wars Computron was finally announced and revealed and it was just a friggin' redecoed Streetwise, the Dead End mold.  It was like COME ON, GUYS.  JEEZ.  And so there was this drop from expectation to this seemingly boggling reality.  There's a toy that looks like Lightspeed RIGHT THERE!  Why wasn't it used?  

....I am guessing Streetwise was used because, I dunno, Hasbro ran out of retooling budget when they got to Lightspeed and so they chose the car guy with the closest head.  Sigh.

The colors on Hasbro's Computron are mostly pretty good!  Five out of six guys are really nice-looking.  Everyone has all these interesting highlight colors that make the decoes pop. But then there's Lightspeed, just plain ol' red and gray, no pizzazz.  He just really sticks out, I dunno.  

Anyway, Takara announced/revealed their Computron and they used the Wheeljack body with a new Lightspeed head.  And that was basically when and why I decided to get the Takara version in addition to the Hasbro one.  I had The-Lightspeed-I-Was-Expecting blueballs.  Sure, since then I've come to appreciate some of the other components more than Lightspeed, but he was the catalyst.

I will say that Takara's Lightspeed head is a little weird.  Lightspeed's original/cartoon head was essentially Trailbreaker's.  It was a box with a goggled face inside.  But this new sculpt they made is... well, it's interesting-looking.  It's not a box, it's a loose interpretation that gives it all these new angles and visual interest.  Which is weird because Takara kinda usually just copies the animation faithfully.  

But it's the Lightspeed body I wanted, so score.

(Note, Hasbro's Lightspeed is actually named "Lightsteed" because of trademark reasons, which is hilarous.)