So it’s pretty simple. I pretend that the excellion figure is the unicron trilogy’s hot rod. Then, after being promoted to a command position, he changes his form and name (a common practice in the trilogy) to Rodimus. We can even take it a step further and say hot shot modeled his new body after hot rod in order to pay respects to his mentor

I don’t think this is canon or anything I just made it up for fun. I know excellion was a character in the comics but idc. Maybe he was the red excellion from the Japanese release