Japan released their last weekend and I got mine on Saturday morning. I have a soft spot for Hot Rod and Rodimus. I just love the flamey awesome car design of HR and ponder at the thought process of thinking that a firey red camper van would make an exciting leader toy character dude.
So, ignoring Rodimus' character flaws in the G1 cartoon, I approach his Kingdom with a lot of my own head canon and I like it.
I see this guy as an appropriate upgrade for Rodimus. The individual vehicle mode looks suitably Hot Rod -esque, but with a butt-load of extra oomph! Him coming with a sword and being able to plug the rifle on the side of the car makes me think of this Rodimus as a Mad Max style character. A grizzled fellow who travels alone in a post apocalyptic world, making adjustments as he needs to. Hence the big beefy back end of the car as opposed to the sleek smoothness of HR. The trailer is his guns and weapon storage and back up. Sometimes he takes it with him, sometimes he doesn't. I should just let everyone know I've been watching a fair bit of Fist of the North Star lately as well :P

Transformation is there, but not frustratingly so. Although I extended the grey joint connected to his windshield wot swivel the arms around once. Don't do that as it took me about 2 hours work a way to force that sucker back in place again. Fingers were sore for the rest of the day.
However the end result is an incredibly well articulated Transformer with presence! Dayum it's impressive. In person the face doesn't look as depressed as I thought and the silver is pretty nice.
Like Bidoof said though, his head/neck is a tad too recessed behind his collar.

Accessories wise, the sword (based on a gladius?) is very nice and I have no idea about it except that it shows up in the last page of the Gens Selects comics. I like it though. Fits well, can be plugged into his back. His gun is a little too skinny for my liking, and maybe a tad too long. The main accessory being the trailer is pretty cool and its nice to see that its so easy to plonk Rodimus on it with minimal fuss. Unlike the Masterpiece.... The storage tray is nice, but he can't hold everything all that well, so effect parts are in a collective effect bag. One thing I find intriguing is that the sword can be held under the vehicle (car)and works when plugged into the trailer, but the only lace to stash the gun is under the spoiler. Now when plugged ino the trailer, the gun can't go there and despite all the plugs inside the trailer, there isn't room to place the gun in there, so you end up shoving it in somewhere loose. This baffles me a little bit.

Overall I think this is a great toy. You can tell it's more than a leader figure, but I'm not sure it makes the stretch to commander as such, however, I do not regret spending my hard earned yennies on this guy.

I was excited the moment I saw his debut, and I wasn't disappointed when I opened the box.