At the time of discovery, it was the only homoleptic trimetallic non-carbonyl cluster featuring hydrocarbon ligands. An isolobal analogy can be made with the related Fe(CO) (μ-CO) cluster first prepared by Jones and Dewar.
Alternatively, the compound could be compared to ferrocene. In this interpretation, each iron fragment bears an η allyl and η pentadienyl ligand as depicted. Under Green and Parkin's covalent bond classification method, this would yield LX and LX respectively. Then additionally, the iron centers donate a pair of electrons into an adjacent empty iron orbital as an adduct (donor-acceptor pairs L and Z type), to overall yield MLX (18 electrons). In fact, the bond orders in ferrocene and Fe3(COT)3 are reported to be very similar.
In fact, Fe(CO) and the group 5 analogues, Ru(CO) and Os(CO) are also known to feature highly fluxional CO ligands in solution (and even in the solid state).
Hypoelectronic derivatives (M=Ti, Cr, V, Mn) of Fe(CH) would be predicted to have metal multiple bonds. Some somewhat related compounds, notably, Ti(CH) and Cr(CH) have been experimentally isolated.