If you don’t know what to spend money for…
The LEGO new Technic 911 GT3 RS set is beautiful, desirable and slightly scary — not unlike the actual car.
Three years in the making, the intimidating set joins the Danish toymaker’s Technic line, highly complex model kits whose parts number in the thousands. Within the Lego Porsche’s black box lurks 2,704 pieces (an impressive figure, but still a fair bit shy of the company’s 5,195-piece Millennium Falcon kit). But the scope of the project is only part of the set’s allure: with the GT3 RS set, Lego is emphasizing not just the parts and their 1:8-scale sum, but the experience of putting it all together.
The company worked with Porsche to replicate the build process for an actual GT3 RS, allowing Lego builders to follow Stuttgart’s actual production sequence as closely as possible. The kit includes an inch-thick instruction manual which, says Lego Technic senior design manager Andrew Woodman, “is more like a coffee table book or an exclusive book” than a build tutorial. It includes not only step-by-step assembly instructions for the set, but tandem design and engineering backstories for Porsche’s actual 911 GT3 RS.
Despite its enormity, the set features only seven new pieces, including two minor body parts, a couple of internal bits, RS-emblem wheelhubs and set-exclusive black wheels. There’s also tiny glovebox plaque with a laser-engraved serial number — digits which, says Lego, will unlock some special Web content for the car’s owner. No surprise, Lego’s take on Porsche’s 500-horsepower, £130,000 racecar for the road is intended for mature audiences, and it won’t come cheaply. When it goes on sale on 1 June, the Technic GT3 RS set will command a cool $300 in the US, $350 in Canada and £250 in the UK.