Transmetal Driver

The "Transmetal Driver" is an alien artifact from the "" series. It appeared in season 3 in the possession of Megatron, seemingly from nowhere. It is generally accepted by fans he discovered the alien technology off screen at one of the other alien sites from a previous episode.

At first he used it to produce cyborg velociraptors made to hunt down protohumans, but later used it to produce a Transmetal 2 clone of the deceased Dinobot, using the interior of Rampage's spark. Cheetor was caught in the overload from the Transmetal Driver and after a delayed reaction, was transformed into a new, yet somewhat mangled, Transmetal 2 form.

Depth Charge stole the Driver and thought that he destroyed it by throwing it into a magma pit, but Blackarachnia saved it before it could submerge in the lava and kept it for herself. Blackarachnia tried to use the Transmetal Driver to remake herself into a Transmetal, but was interrupted by Silverbolt. This caused her to suffer malfunctioning glitches similar to Energon overloads, resulting in her Predacon shell program to degrade and threaten her life. While Rhinox attempted to remove her Predacon shell programming, Tarantulas and the other Predacons caused a power interruption which allowed failsafes within her programming to take her offline, but the alien Transmetal Driver activated and remade her into a new Transmetal 2 Blackarachnia, minus her old Predacon programming.

Each Transmetal 2 has a unique characteristic other than their obvious augmentations. The Dinobot clone exhibits unmatched strength, Cheetor can exceed speeds of Mach 2, and Blackarachnia possesses mental telekinetic abilities. The Driver; however, is never featured in the television series again after reactivating Blackarachnia.

The Transmetal Driver would later appear in the Botcon comic book story where it was used by the Vok to help create Primal Prime.