"But Dave, if this mold was so bad, why did you ever pick up a redeco?"
Well, being only $10 at Ollie's was enough for me to impulse-buy it on the
remote chance that my WWII Bumblebee was just an exceptionally bad copy and
the mold itself wasn't too bad...or maybe even the slight changes to make it
Hot Rod helped. Still, even after I bought it, it sat unopened on my to be
reviewed shelf for many months, so I didn't think it was THAT big a chance.
But I'm trying to get through my redecos while in a lull of new molds, so
here you go.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/Deluxe5 has a capsule review of
WWII Bumblebee. I considered doing the Hot Rod review as if it were a new
toy (a full review), but...meh. It's just all that much better.

AUTOBOT: WWII AUTOBOT HOT ROD
Assortment: #50
Altmode: Humber Light Reconnaisance Car
Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps
Previous Name Use: None with all the qualifiers
Previous Mold Use: Studio (#26 WWII Bumblebee)
Movie: The Last Knight
Scene: WWII Flashback

HOT ROD teams up with BUMBLEBEE to provide serious firepower during an
assault on an enemy stronghold.

Note, Hot Rod's WWII vehicle mode in the movie was a different type, but
they kinda faked some of it for his fake vehicle kibble on the new chest.
The "enemy stronghold" is a Nazi base, but I guess you can't say that on the
packaging if you want to sell it in Germany.
One thing that was notable about Hot Rod's original movie toys was that
they were all Walmart exclusives. So, this may be the only non-exclusive
"proper" TLK Hot Rod toy (leaving aside Tiny Turbo Changers and the like).

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot into the blister (yeah, this is old
enough it still has a plastic blister tray), one tie holds a drum-fed cannon
that evokes the weird gun modern-day Hot Rod used in Last Knight.
The backdrop is the German compound in some generic European city with
neo-classical architecture in the background, some searchlights and plenty of
explosions, a sandbagged checkpoint, what might be a tank in the main
explosion, and a 40s car parked in the street. No people (except maybe a
teeny one in the far background) and certainly no identifiable Nazi imagery.

Color Swaps: Black stays black, gunmetal becomes black, dark olive green
becomes gunmetal.

Paint Apps: In robot mode, dilver paint on the face, the belly, the
belt, the tops of the forearms. There's some faint paint on the biceps and
bullet casing details on the sides of the chest that are either silver
painted on thinly or a darker silver. The thigh armor plates are painted
gunmetal. The nosepiece, cheeks, and forearm armor plates are orange-red.
That color is also used to print D:2 on the right thigh and a red circle on
the right pec with negative space D:2. The left thigh has a sort of
arrowhead with a flame in it printed in orange-red. Printed in white on the
right shoulder is a doodle that might be ancient Cybertronian or something.
It's not the Cyberglyphix used by other movie stuff, though. Maybe it's just
supposed to be weird splatter?
Vehicle mode adds a lot of gloss black paint on the front end, the front
fenders, and the sides, with an airbrush-y boundary. The rear fenders are
unpainted and therefore kinda stand out. The headlights and the straps
holding the cases on the sides (see below) are silver.

Mold Changes and Other Notes: Well, the robot mode still has trouble
standing due to the shallow heels and big backpack.
The head, chestplate, upper arms, and pelvis front are new for robot
mode. The sides of vehicle mode were retooled to add a small and a large
ammo box strapped in place, the bigger of which would prevent the doors from
opening, oops.
The new gun has a diagonal slot on either side that goes into the
windshield armor gap, rather than connecting in any way to the roof piece.
This does let the roof close down better, if not fully, due to a slight
warping apparently common to both versions of the mold (I tried it first on
Bumblebee, it's an improvement but the roof panel itself is slightly warped
or something). You can sort of put it on the turret, but not well. The
shell casings around the outside (because open-to-the-elements ammo drums are
such a good idea) are painted orange-red.
It holds together about the same as Bumblebee overall, but the darker
colors and extensive use of black help make it a little less obvious.

Overall: Eh, worth ten bucks. The core design is still pretty flawed,
but the change of weapon from hammer to gun makes the biggest vehicle mode
problem less blatant. It's a pity, though...I really like the idea of WWII
vehicle altmodes, this is just a poor execution.