If you’ve ever been to LEGOLAND – either in Denmark or the UK – or seen the exhibition The Art Of The Brick, you’ll know that you can make some incredible things out of the Danish brick toy sets – giant figures, miniature cities, even replica works of art. This, though, has taken things to a whole other level.
No – your eyes are not deceiving you. LEGO have built a full-sized, working model of a Bugatti Chiron out of over a million bricks and – get this – 2,300 toy motors.
But that’s not all – the car includes working head and tail lights, doors that open and close and everything you need to drive it with – a steering wheel, gear stick and brake pedals. It even has mirrors. The one thing, according to Top Gear, that it doesn’t have, is an accelerator pedal.
That means, just as you can see in the video – which we keep just watching over and over in disbelief with our jaws hanging down to the floor – it can actually be driven by a human being and can seat two people.
To be fair, it doesn’t quite go as fast as real Bugatti, which has a top speed of 261 mph. This LEGO version can go 12 mph. Which, given that it’s a real car made out of plastic bricks, is good enough for us.
The company started brainstorming the idea back in June of last year and began building the thing in March of this. All in all, it took just under 13,500 hours to assemble – so less time than an IKEA bed – but we’re not sure how many people were involved in that process.
While the vast majority of the car is made from LEGO bricks, there is also a steel frame, but we’ll give them that, seeing how damn cool the thing looks. LEGO also had to make 56 new parts specifically for this project,
Lena Dixen, the LEGO Group’s senior vice president of product and marketing, said: “Our Technic designers and the engineers from the Kladno factory in the Czech Republic, the place which also builds the impressive models for LEGO Stores and LEGOLAND parks, have done an amazing job both at recreating the Chiron’s iconic shapes and making it possible to drive this model.
“It’s a fascinating example of the LEGO Technic building system in action and its potential for creative reinvention.”
We agree – and we’ll be first in line at the store when they go on sale. We’re joking. They’ll never be in stores. But you can pick up a LEGO Technics miniature for the tidy sum of $349.99 from LEGO stores or their website. That’ll have to do.
