Lego launches a brick-built and drivable Bugatti Chiron

Date
30 August 2018

We’d wager that the bulk of readers spent countless childhood hours putzing about with Lego. Entire summer holidays vanished as you put the finishing touches to a replica of the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse by Leicester Square, Christmas dinners went cold because that life-size tyrannosaurus rex won’t build itself, and your pre-adolescence was marked by nightmares that involved missing bricks.

Now you’re older, wiser, and probably able to drive a car. Life has come to life, and yet you still yearn for those heady days of yore when the entire world was to be found in a bucket of 2X4 plate pieces. So, what do you do?

Well, you wait for days like this, days when the team at Lego announce that after spending 13,000 hours working on it, they’ve managed to build a drivable Bugatti Chiron built entirely from Lego Technics pieces. That fantasy you’ve harboured before you knew fantasies were a thing – it’s a reality.

The non-glued, fully-functional and self-propelled Lego Technic model can hit speeds of 20mph. Yes, you read that right: twenty whole miles per hour. Lego’s first ever the large scale, movable construction is packed with 2,304 motors and 4,032 Technic Gear wheels which, Lego say, pushed “the boundaries of what Lego builders imagined was possible to build with Lego elements.”

The construction-loving Danes note that the car consists of an outer skin which is “built of interconnected triangular segments made into a Lego Technic ‘fabric’ designed to mimic the iconic shapes of the original Chiron,” while a closer look at the interior will reveal that “every single detail of the original car has been carefully and precisely recreated in Lego Technic elements,” from the seats to the steering wheel.

Le Mans winner Andy Wallace took the blocky Bugatti out for a spin at the Ehra Lessien proving ground in Germany, where he reportedly clocked the insane speed mentioned above, going on to say that, “Driving the Lego Chiron was a great experience, which I thoroughly enjoyed. All those years ago I could never have imagined that one day I would actually drive a Lego car!"

While you’re probably not likely to be able to wander into your local independent toyshop and walk out with a Lego-made drivable sports car, a hyper-realistic – if stationary – Technics version of the Chiron is available now, and the real deal will be on display at this weekend’s Grand Prix Formula 1 event in Monza, Italy.

Above

LEGO Group

Above

LEGO Group

Above

LEGO Group

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

Josh Baines

Josh Baines joined It's Nice That from July 2018 to July 2019 as News Editor, covering new high-profile projects, awards announcements, and everything else in between.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.