>>8448527>>8448228>>8448542Engineering and transformation make up the technique that gets you from one mode to another. It doesn't matter if Prime's chest windows aren't actually the cab windows or Hot Rod's chest isn't the front of the grill so long as the engineering in the transformation get you to that point where both modes look great without either sacrificing too much. Nobody wants a Hot Rod's chest that looks like a Rubrix cube just so it can be the actual hood. THAT'S bad engineering, when you have a ton of panels, hinges, cuts and pins breaking up the look.
"But wait, in the cartoon Wheeljack's chest becomes the windshield!" Yeah, and Prime's hands suck themselves into his fenders and the headlights expand somehow. It may be mindblowing but the original cartoon Transformers aren't made up of solid chunks of metal that slide together perfectly. Just like our muscles their sections expand and contract, but unlike ours they can reshape the surface of their metal skin and shrink. It's not engineering in the show or comics, they need a 'transformation cog' to transform. Otherwise Kup could just manually fold one portion of his arm up using his other arm and it would look just like the side of his alt mode.
So no, you don't need to have the same wheel become the same heel of the robot because there's no way we can mimic the shapeshifting massforming mechanic of the cartoons. We need only to get them to both modes effectivly and end up with both modes looking like they should.
