Tag Archives: mkII

LEGO Technic 42223 1966 Ford GT40 MKII Race Car | Set Preview

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It’s that time of year again, when a crack team of Elven ‘Volunteers’ are fired over The LEGO Company’s perimeter wall by way of the office catapult, tasked with uncovering the newest LEGO sets due to hit shelves next year.

We’ll report their finds for 2026 in the coming weeks, but we have one 2026 Technic set to share ahead of the main event today. This is the brand new LEGO Technic 42223 1966 Ford GT40 MKII Race Car!

Bringing one of America’s* greatest ever race cars into the Technic line-up, 42223 recreates the car that finished 1, 2, 3 at the 1966 Daytona 24 Hours, Sebring 12 Hours, and Le Mans 24 Hours sixty years ago, becoming an all-time legend in the process.

The new LEGO Technic 42223 Ford GT40 captures the exterior of the all-conquering ’66 MkII variant with a range of pieces appearing in new colours – including those gold wheels – plus an array of decently-authentic looking decals adding the side and centre stripes, roundels and seat details.

793 parts make up the new 42223 GT40 in all, with the set featuring the default working engine (a miniaturised V8), working steering, and the opening doors and engine cover expected as a minimum at this scale, and no more.

Except 42223 does have one unexpected variance from the mid-size Technic vehicles that have preceded it… An 18+ age and £65 / $75 price tag.

No, that isn’t a typo. Despite being constructed from under 800 pieces, and with no more working features than any other mid-size Technic vehicle, LEGO have somehow determined that 42223 requires a brain eighteen years or older to complete it, and thus it carries a price to match.

Which is – and there’s no other way to put this – a marketing scam.

We’re admittedly idiots here at The Lego Car Blog, but we don’t like LEGO treating its customers as such. The brand new 42223 Ford GT40 MkII Race Car might bring one of greatest cars of the 1960s to the Technic range, but the cynical, unscrupulous, and exploitative marketing that accompanies it is definitely from 2026.

At £55 / $65 and an age of 12+, 42223 could have been a strong set. As it is, this GT40 should have stayed in ‘66.

*Except it was British. Ford are no strangers to marketing scams either…

The One We’ve All Been Waiting For

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Ohhh yes…. 42009, the Mobile Crane MkII, is finally here. Was it worth the wait ? Was it worth 150 smackers ? Was it worth spending my entire day off building it ? Read on…

Lego technic 42009

Well, what do you think ? I mean, look at it. Before I get down to it, a quick word about how we do our reviews around here. LEGO doesn’t send us review copies (yet; hint, hint…) so we spend our own money on sets for review, but these are sets that we’d have wanted anyway. This might explain the usually positive flavour of our musings; we’re not going to spend our hard-earned on something we know we won’t like. I haven’t reviewed the 42000 Grand Prix racer because I won’t be getting it.

We do still try to be objective.

Enough already, get on with it!

So, to business. First impressions: Wow, that box is heavy! 2,600 pieces, plus motor and battery box would explain that. It’s the largest Technic set ever, by some margin. Not the most expensive, though, which remains the 8110 Unimog at a fiver more than this; which fact rather gives the lie to the notion of LEGO inflating their prices with each successive generation. You get 550 more pieces and a fiver in exchange for the ‘mog’s pneumatics.

Fortunately, the bags are numbered to reflect the three main stages of the build. This isn’t quite the advantage it might be with the chassis forming well over half of it… Many, many bags all numbered ‘1’. Give yourself plenty of room. And time. That said, it never took me long to find a piece, and I never sort first as LEGO suggest.

There are six instruction books; 3 for the chassis, 2 for the crane part and the last one for the boom. Books 4 and 5 could have easily been combined to make it 1 for the crane part; book 5 is inexplicably slender. There were no mistakes, as we’ve come to expect, and this time not all the build steps are quite so tiny. There is nothing to confuse here as long as you concentrate and don’t forget to insert the 15 long beams alongside the stabilizers; causing you to perform major surgery part way through, or anything silly like that…

At the end of an enjoyable 6-8 hours of building, what have you got ? It’s a very robust, playable, multi-functional and impressive thing. There’s lots going on here, so I’ll break it down. Continue reading →