Heh, I was asking for King Solon back when the campaign was active. But after a quick search through this thread, I guess I never mentioned it here.
But yeah, it seems like even Takara has let all of the G1 manga pre-Zone go forgotten, since all they and anyone ever seem to reference are just their cartoon counterparts. It's a shame, too, since up until Masterforce and Victory, that manga was all written to serve as tie-ins to the cartoons, set in the same continuity and everything. The 1985 G1 manga even served as a prelude to the Scramble City OVA, with Trypticon being built by the Decepticons while Metroplex was still undergoing construction. Alas, though, Masterforce and Victory decided to do their own thing instead of tying into their respective cartoons, and ever since it seems like Takara has gone on to ignore all of the G1 manga that was released prior to Zone.
Though, interestingly enough, the pre-Scramble City manga chapter that first introduced Ultra Magnus also introduced a few other very specific things that would go on to serve as inspiration for some very similar things later seen in the Car Robots cartoon. In that chapter, it is revealed that the Autobots have a Japanese division with secret bases being built all around the world hidden beneath human-operated facilities like parking garages, and all of these bases are connected together by an underground highway called the Cybertron Road (or "Autobot Road" in the English translation).
The Japanese Autobot base hidden under a parking garage looks like this (the second and third pics are from an old fan translation):
That sure is a lot of humans working there with their own workstations and monitors everywhere.
Now, fast forward to the year 2000 when the Car Robots cartoon showed us its base for the Autobots/Cybertrons, which was also located in Japan beneath a parking garage:
Monitors everywhere and several human-sized workstations, despite no humans actually working there (Ai only ever used just one console throughout the entire series, with the rest of those workstations going unused). While not an exact match in artwork, the resemblance between the two both in concept and design aesthetic is remarkably uncanny. The cartoon version would merely be a simplification of the manga's more detailed artwork.
Now, I did mention the Cybertron Road earlier, and while Car Robots's Cybertron Net (renamed "Global Space Bridge" in the RID dub) is very similar in concept, those two I don't actually believe to be one and the same. The Cybertron Road is said to be only 2500 meters below the surface, which would place it within the Earth's crust. Meanwhile, the first episode of Car Robots states that the Cybertron Net runs through Earth's mantle. Since the Earth's crust is about 70 kilometers deep, the Cybertron Road being 2500 meters underground would only be 2.5 kilometers down. Whereas the Cybertron Net being inside the mantle would put it
way down,
far below where the Cybertron Road would be.
Plus, Episode 21 of Car Robots also has Build Boy ("Wedge" in the dub) confirm that he and the other Buildmasters ("Build Team" in the dub) are the ones who built the Cybertron Net in the first place, and they didn't come to Earth until 2000, when the manga is set during the late 1980s. Though, it is still possible that the Buildmasters could have used the Cybertron Road as a springboard for the Cybertron Net, and simply incorporated the former into the latter when they built the Cybertron Net.
Nevertheless, I do remain convinced that the Japanese base seen in this story would go on to become the same one used by Fire Convoy's team in Car Robots over a decade later. Or at the very least, served as the inspiration for the Car Robots base.
