Tag Archives: S1

Wetter Than an Otter’s Pocket

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We all know that James Bond can seduce any woman in less time than it takes to read this sentence. Yup, if you’re a girl (What? We have female readers! Probably…), you’d already be, well.. you know.

Cue László Torma, and this magnificent Speed Champions Lotus Esprit S1, the star the 1977 Bond film ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. Of course in the aforementioned movie, Bond’s Lotus was fitted with a few optional extras courtesy of Q-Branch / the Pinewood special effects department, which meant that his Esprit could get rather more aquatic than most.

A car submarine chase of utter ridiculousness was the obligatory result, in which Bond seemed to spend as much time no-doubt-successfully seducing his female passenger as he did trying to evade the generic goons sent in pursuit.

Eventually 007’s Lotus sprung an inevitable leak (because even non-aquatic Esprits would do that), but by then he’d already defeated his adversaries and secured certain relations with his glamorous fellow submariner.

With building instructions available and the ability to become (well, be rebuilt as) a submarine, we’re looking forward to the effect László’s Lotus Esprit will have on the females here in TLCB Office. You can give it ago yourself via the link above, plus you watch the real car submarine in the iconic movie scene here.

Speed Champions 2024 | Set Previews

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It’s that time of year again, when a special group of Lego Car Blog Elves, chosen due to their expendability… er, we mean ‘bravery’, are selected for a top secret mission.

That mission is to infiltrate The LEGO Company’s HQ, avoid being eaten by the German Shepherds, and return triumphant / mildly chewed to TLCB Towers having scooped the brand new Speed Champions sets joining the line-up.

But why risk our mythical workers for a few LEGO sets? Partly because we never seem to run out of them, but mostly it’s because the Speed Champions theme is the best decision LEGO have made since they invented the LEGO brick. Real-world cars for pocket money prices? What’s not to love. And here are the new ones…

76920 Ford Mustang Dark Horse

LEGO will never run out of real-world Mustangs to recreate in brick form. Ford’s seemingly endless supply of special edition ‘stangs – all stupidly named and all equally likely to stack it leaving a car meet – culminated in 2023* with this, the 500bhp ‘Dark Horse’.

Created from 344 pieces, the Speed Champions 76920 Ford Mustang Dark Horse looks right on the money – although inevitably with a few more stickers than we’d like to see – and features some surprisingly complex SNOT techniques, particularly to create the hood and rear window.

A female mini-figure driver is included and we expect 76902 to cost around £20/$26 from March next year, when you’ll be able to recreate your very favourite Mustang crashes at home.

*Until Ford release the next Mustang special edition in a few weeks.

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76921 Audi S1 e-tron quattro

The second new entry to the 2024 Speed Champions range brings a prototype all-electric racing car to the line-up; this is the Audi S1 e-tron quattro, using all lower-case because that’s cooler, and as deployed brilliantly in the last ever Ken Block ‘Gymkhana’ film.

Aimed at ages 9+, the new Speed Champions 76921 Audi S1 e-tron quattro is constructed from 274 pieces, of which about half of them wear a sticker.

The result looks as wild as the real thing, and whilst we bemoan the uses of decals to create every single detail, they are at least individual to each part, allowing the model to be deconstructed and the pieces re-purposed, as LEGO should be.

Priced identically to the 76920 Mustang Dark Horse above, 76921 will reach store shelves in March 2024 where for us, it’ll stay. Bricks beat stickers, every time.

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76922 BMW M4 GT3 & BMW M-Hybrid V8

The final new addition to the H1 2024 Speed Champions range is a racing car double, the Speed Champions 76922 BMW M4 GT3 & BMW M-Hybrid V8.

Featuring 676 pieces, 76922 includes new wheels and a racing driver mini-figure for each of the real-world BMW racers, with plenty of SNOT techniques and even more plentiful stickers doing a great job of recreating BMW Motorsport’s mega four-colour livery.

We expect 76922 to cost around 60% more than the single car Speed Champions sets when it races into stores next year, and it could be the pick of the bunch.

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That’s the brand new LEGO Speed Champions line-up for 2024; three new sets, four new cars, and about a million stickers. They do look good though.

Each will be available from March next year, with prices expected between £20/$26 and £35/$45. Great stuff.

76897 Speed Champions Audi Sport quattro S1 | Set Preview

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The elite team of Elves dispatched over The LEGO Company’s perimeter walls are one by one returning to TLCB Towers, clutching their discoveries stolen from the bowels of LEGO’s R&D department.

A couple may also carry a few bite marks (and some don’t return at all), but that’s why we employ mythical creatures, as there’s no way you’d get us to squeeze through an air-conditioning duct to escape a Danish Alsatian. We’re much too fat.

Anyway, the Elf that returned today came home clutching a new set that has got us very excited, the frankly brilliant looking 76897 Audi Sport quattro (with a little ‘q’) S1 rally car.

The quattro was not the first car to be fitted with all-wheel-drive, but it was the first to take the idea rallying, along with a unique 5-cylinder turbocharged engine that made a truly ridiculous amount of power, allowed thanks to Group B’s incredibly lax rulebook. The result was a car that won the World Rally Championship in ’82 and ’84, with every WRC manufacturer title claimed by an all-wheel-drive car thereafter.

The new 76897 set recreates the Audi Sport quattro S1 which finished second in 1985 season in the hands of Stig Blomqvist and Walter Röhrl, using LEGO’s new 8-wide template to bring more realism to the Speed Champions range. Constructed from 250 pieces, the Audi’s famous livery has been really well replicated, and for once the detail is brick-built rather than being applied by stickers. There are stickers too of course, and they look splendid, adding excellent period authenticity to the set.

Like all Speed Champions sets 76897 also includes a mini-figure driver, but annoyingly no co-driver, despite the 8-wide design allowing one to fit. This is no doubt due to cost, but is nevertheless disappointing from a realism point of view.

Despite this oversight we think the Speed Champions Audi Sport quattro S1 is one of the best products to come from the franchise yet, and – at an expected cost of around $20 when it reaches stores at then end of the year – there’s no cooler set for the money. We’ll just have to add our own second mini-figure to the model to complete it.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

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Audi Quattro S1

Not pretty, but very clever

Another classic car from an axis power today; the stupendous Audi quattro Sport. Long before Audi became the preserve of outside-lane tailgating, bluetooth headset wearing cocks, they were a relatively niche manufacturer of dull saloon cars. Then they took a British idea (Google ‘Jensen FF’), applied it to their new coupe, took it rallying, and changed the automotive world.

Maks‘ Lego version is one of the last rally quattros, raced during the insane Group B era with a chunk cut out of the wheelbase to keep it competitive against a slew of new 4×4 rivals. View it and Maks’ other work on Flickr.