Toy-brick car took 19 months to build, versus the six months it takes to manufacture one of the US$3-million hypercars
The Bugatti Chiron’s US$3-million price tag is, in some part, a function of the incredible amount of labour and time the company’s craftspeople have to put into completing one—start to finish, it takes about six months for 20 team members to assemble one of the hand-built hypercars.
We’re wondering, then, what LEGO might charge for this full-size working replica of the thing, which the company’s engineers in the Czech Republic developed over the course of 13,000 hours, or about 19 months.
That’s—a lot of time, but it’s understandable what took them so long. We’re talking 339 different types of LEGO Technic bricks, more than 1,000,000 pieces total, including 2,304 electric motors, all coming together in the shape of the world’s first self-propelled life-size LEGO Technic car.
Some 58 new types of pieces had to be custom-built for the effort, the company’s first real load-bearing parts.
Much of the weight of the LEGO Chiron – it’s about 1.5 tonnes – is resting on plastic, save for the actual-Chiron wheels and tires; and it’s all driven by motors from the LEGO Power Function platform.
Of course, that means its performance is a little limited, especially versus the real thing: the motors’ 68 lb-ft of torque and 5.3 horsepower can only accelerate the car up to 20 km/h.
A functional deploy-able spoiler; working LEGO speedometer; brick-based headlights and taillights — this thing is arguably just as impressive (or more impressive?) than the actual Bugatti Chiron.
