Bugatti Block Buster

We find out how LEGO turned the Chiron hypercar into a beautifully detailed scale model.

- Hugo Griffiths

SUPERCARS are sometimes referred to as ‘toys’ by their owners – vehicles to be enjoyed and played with. But describing the new LEGO Technic Bugatti Chiron as a toy would be doing it a disservice.

As part of LEGO’s advanced range of products, it comes with 3,599 individual parts, 600 pages of instructions, a £330 price tag and takes around 20 hours to build. It’s a serious bit of kit featuring an almost equal amount of detail as the real car.

Bugatti is the latest car manufacturer to join forces with the Danish toy giant, with its new Chiron 1:8-scale Technic model. Porsche did it previously with its GT3 RS supercar, while Formula One Technic cars have also been found in stores. So how does such a project get off the ground, and what does the transition from hypercar to the Technic model look like?

To find out, we headed to the toy manufacturer’s HQ in Billund, Denmark, to speak to designers from LEGO and Bugatti. Andy Woodman, LEGO’s senior design manager, tells us during one of the first conversations he had with Bugatti it was clarified that LEGO would not be creating a replica Chiron.