What is LEGO Technic? It’s the serious stuff, in a nutshell. Technic kits contain very few traditional LEGO blocks or bricks, as we know them. Instead, they use cog wheels, plastic beams with holes in them, plate sections and interconnecting pins. They actually look a little bit like Meccano sets, but plastic. The beams are connected by plastic pins of various lengths. These provide enormous strength. Entire chassis sections, suspension units and engines are built up this way. Larger bespoke pieces, such as roofs and body panels are then pinned to the chassis beneath, giving the kit its final shape.
That’s how we end up with this LEGO Technics Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar. LEGO’s team worked closely with Peugeot Sport during the car’s highly secret design and testing phase. It’s 1:10 scale, so measures half a metre long in your display shelf. Heaven help the snow domes, Ladro, and whatever else might compete for the space. This thing’s imposing. It took the careful assembly of 1,775 parts and many late nights to get there. The 380 page instruction booklet openly lays out your commitment.
Open the box!
Let’s tear it open and get started. All the bags are numbered. Here’s the best tip for complex LEGO assembly: Get your parts bags and empty them into a tray. This is a big build, so just start with the bags labelled ‘1’. Invest 10 minutes in sorting them by colour. This reduces fossicking. Fossicking’s a pain with any LEGO. If your parts aren’t sorted into colour, you can easily spend 10 minutes looking for a single elusive piece. This way, you often find it immediately.
The rear suspension comes first. It’s a fully independent double wishbone setup with a single lateral spring. The front suspension is similar in type. Is it just like the real thing? It’s hard to say. Peugeot is very secretive about the race car’s suspension. Like all things LEGO, this is undoubtedly a stylised and simplified representation. Hey, Corvettes had a lateral spring too, but theirs was a semi-elliptical leaf spring. Just saying it’s a good thing. This is a working suspension, too.
In quick succession, you’ll be pinning the engine and gearbox to this assembly. Axle shafts and drive shafts are cog-driven. Careful, now! If you install the 5cm beige-coloured driveshaft back to front, you’ll be scratching your head as to why the crankshaft won’t rotate any longer. I did this, having failed to notice a small ridge in the spline at one end. I’d only just started the build, and was reverse-engineering it significantly already. The entire lot had to come apart.
A proper motor
The V6 engine has a rotating crankshaft and pistons which really do go up and down. Is there any point to this if a rocker cover has to go on? Well, yes, that still works. The rocker covers ‘float’ a good 2 to 3 millimetres above the block, so that an admirer can still see the engine working as the wheels turn. For style and display reasons, there are no cylinder heads.
This is done elsewhere throughout the kit. For one thing, let’s not forget it’s LEGO. It’s not a detail-correct scale model. You’d buy a diecast model if that’s what you were after.
We’re working our way forwards now. The rear suspension, engine and transmission are now a single unit. It’s time to work on the cabin and bolt that to the rest of it. The low-set Kryptonite driver’s seat and oblong driver control mimic the real car’s. You can’t call it a steering wheel. In real life, the erstwhile steering wheel is a comfy oblong block with grips, controls and information built-in. A retail-oriented version will be installed in Peugeot cars by the end of the decade. There’s another steering wheel, a discrete knurled one sitting atop the cabin. This one’s just for you and your nerdy friends. Yes, it’s connected to the steering rack via a plethora of cogs and splines. It’s one of those little joyful touches.
The model’s getting longer now. You have to step back from it to take a photo of your progress to date. As soon as the front suspension is on, you’re going to get an idea of how much Ladro to clear out of the display cabinet.
Completing the bodywork
Perhaps the most finicky part of the build process is the gullwing doors. Forwards and upward hinged, they work beautifully and attach strongly, but here is one of those places where the instruction booklet must be studied very hard indeed.
The cabin’s final assembly is the part which attracts my only criticism: it has no windows. I do wonder if this was the subject of long and hard discussion at LEGO. The very assembly and design of the doors probably, genuinely, precluded the inclusion of plastic windows. I think I can see that. But I do think LEGO could have included a single clear plastic piece for the windscreen. As designed, there is a black semi-circular piece which is meant to be the windscreen’s base. It’s actually the wheel arch off another kit. Here is where LEGO invites you to imagine the windscreen, but really, it would have been just as easy and better to include a bespoke clear plastic piece. Oh, well. At least you can peer inside easily.
Clicking together the final pieces
At this point, you’re on the Mulsanne Straight. The rear engine cover, body sides, front bodywork and mudguards are all in situ. Decals have been applied at stage. Each headlamp piece is complex. They consist of glow-in-the-dark vertical pieces and clear plastic single-stud bricks. These latter tiny pieces are among the few traditional LEGO elements in the kit. The vertical pieces replicate the real race car’s headlamp LED lion claws, and they really do glow in the dark. I’d hoped the tail lights might do this, but the decals’ clever vivid detailing makes them appear as though they’re illuminated anyway.
As with all LEGO car kits, the wheels go on last with a satisfying click. It’s the final, celebratory touch which brings a smile to your face and tells you you’ve finished. The kits cost a little under $300 from most Australian retailers. Do you want one? Get one! Winter’s coming up. It’s ideal toil for a Saturday afternoon. This has been a highly engaging build. You won’t be disappointed.
