Photo: LEGO
As Le Mans celebrated its Centenary, LEGO was present in north-west France to mark the much-beloved event with an impressive build. The toy company famous for making many vehicles that give enthusiasts countless hours of fun set its own 24-hour challenge. The goal was to build a life-size replica of Peugeot's 9x8 Le Mans hypercar.
And just as everybody hoped and cheered for, the 12 builders who took on the challenge finished the build in time. But just because the team managed to achieve their goal, it doesn't mean it was easy. The build process involved using a mind-blowing number of 626,392 pieces to complete.
That frankly absurd number of individual elements is due to the size of this project, as the LEGO version is actually larger than the real Peugeot 9x8. The plastic interpretation ended up being 5,200 mm long and 2,200 mm wide, whereas the real car is 200 mm shorter and 180 mm narrower. And as if that weren't insane enough, the LEGO car weighs over 900 kg (1980 lbs), which is whopping.
But the theme of ludicrous complexity keeps ramping up, as 623 different LEGO Technic elements were used throughout the build. On top of that, an entirely new assembly technique was devised for this impressive challenge build.
That new approach was referred to by LEGO as "hyper elements," which were used by builders for the first time for this Le Mans build. In this case, the hyper part means upscaled, as these were larger versions of standard elements made from hundreds of their standard-sized counterparts. And in this case, 720 of these newly devised elements were used in the build.
This novel building technique is fascinating, which in turn, makes the lofty challenge all the more intriguing. But more importantly, this new approach to building was probably the most crucial part of the entire build challenge. This innovative, outside-the-box thinking is most likely what allowed the 12 builders to finish this gargantuan masterpiece in the allotted timeframe.
To put things into perspective, a team of eight people is usually involved in assembling this kind of life-sized car. And most often, they take over five months to do so, which is enough time to take on the process at a leisurely pace.
This time around, however, with only four more people, the time available was dramatically reduced. But somehow, this team of plastic brick heroes achieved what at first sounded almost impossible by working around the clock. This accomplishment is genuinely deserving of praise and perfectly fits the endurance theme of the event where it happened.
Overall, this 24-hour endurance LEGO build challenge was incredibly entertaining to follow. It goes to show that with some imagination and enough LEGO pieces, anything someone can think of can be created.
That frankly absurd number of individual elements is due to the size of this project, as the LEGO version is actually larger than the real Peugeot 9x8. The plastic interpretation ended up being 5,200 mm long and 2,200 mm wide, whereas the real car is 200 mm shorter and 180 mm narrower. And as if that weren't insane enough, the LEGO car weighs over 900 kg (1980 lbs), which is whopping.
But the theme of ludicrous complexity keeps ramping up, as 623 different LEGO Technic elements were used throughout the build. On top of that, an entirely new assembly technique was devised for this impressive challenge build.
That new approach was referred to by LEGO as "hyper elements," which were used by builders for the first time for this Le Mans build. In this case, the hyper part means upscaled, as these were larger versions of standard elements made from hundreds of their standard-sized counterparts. And in this case, 720 of these newly devised elements were used in the build.
This novel building technique is fascinating, which in turn, makes the lofty challenge all the more intriguing. But more importantly, this new approach to building was probably the most crucial part of the entire build challenge. This innovative, outside-the-box thinking is most likely what allowed the 12 builders to finish this gargantuan masterpiece in the allotted timeframe.
To put things into perspective, a team of eight people is usually involved in assembling this kind of life-sized car. And most often, they take over five months to do so, which is enough time to take on the process at a leisurely pace.
This time around, however, with only four more people, the time available was dramatically reduced. But somehow, this team of plastic brick heroes achieved what at first sounded almost impossible by working around the clock. This accomplishment is genuinely deserving of praise and perfectly fits the endurance theme of the event where it happened.
Overall, this 24-hour endurance LEGO build challenge was incredibly entertaining to follow. It goes to show that with some imagination and enough LEGO pieces, anything someone can think of can be created.
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