Hotrod

“

That's what it was made for. Click to listen — The Engineer

”

The Hotrod is an unlockable headwear item for the Engineer. It appears as a welding mask with a team-colored fiery design on the front.

Trivia

• In various forms of welding, rods of expendable filler metal are melted and used to join two pieces of metal together; literal 'hot rods'.
• The Hotrod is an arc-welding mask. Arc-welding uses electricity to create an electric arc between the filler rod and metal. A full-face mask is needed to protect against the flying sparks and UV rays generated by arc-welding.
• The Hotrod flips down over the Engineer's face when he is holding a building's blueprints or hauling a building, currently making it the only hat to possess its own unique animation.
• The Engineer wears the Hotrod in addition to his goggles. In reality, the smoked glass of both the welding hood and his goggles would make it impossible to see. This may be why he normally wears the Hotrod in the raised position.
• It is plausible that the Hotrod is a reference to the 1979 movie of the same name, in which Grant Goodeve, voice of the Engineer, starred.
  • It is interesting to note that the late Robert Culp, voice of Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2, also co-starred in this film.
• The Engineer is seen using a welding mask in the teaser video for the Engineer update, though it is not the Hotrod. The Hotrod can, however, be seen sticking out of a tool chest at the very beginning of the video, above the Engineer's acoustic guitar.
• This hat is the very first community item to ever appear in an official Valve short film, in this case the Hotrod appears in the Engie Update teaser.