Week 5
On Wednesday June 6th, a few friends and I went to Leicester Square for dinner and to see the multi-level M&M store to celebrate the last two weeks straight of work we had done towards completing our rough drafts. On our way to Leicester Square, we passed a restored Willy’s Jeep from World War II. The Jeep was painted matte green and on the side were an axe and shovel. The Willy’s Jeep is a American Icon and even my friends I was walking with thought it was really cool. While walking to the square, across from the M&M store, I spotted the LEGO store. Inside the M&M store was a M&M British Mini Cooper. The car was real, but not useable. The brake rotors were painted and there was no engine under the hood. Regardless, it was really unique and cool car and décor to the multilevel store. In the back of the bottom floor, there was a custom vehicle mounted to the wall. The car was supposed to be a replica of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 equipped with the razor wheels and machine gun turrets protruding from the front grill. The car was made out of plastic, which is great because I would have cried if a multimillion dollar and dream car of mine was chopped up and scratched from its daily wear. With our mouths salivating from the M&M store, we walked into the through the LEGO Leicester Square sign into the store. Memories of LEGO filled cars, trucks, boats and houses I made using my imagination rushed into me. Inside, London inspired gigantic LEGO structures surrounded the boxes waiting to be bought and built by a happy child. Some of the builds included, A tube train large enough to walk in, Big Ben (not covered in scaffolding), a red telephone booth and more. My favorite sets inside were the Porsche 911 GT3 RS and Bugatti Chiron. These sets were 1/8 scale models of the actual supercars. I learned that that Bugatti set actually just came out a few days ago. The car in real life is an engineering marvel designed to be the world’s fastest production vehicle. The Chiron is so fast that its top speed is now actually limited due to inferior tire technology. No tire made is capable of withstanding the almost 300 miles per hour projected top speed that the 1479 horsepower, quad turbo W16 engine supplies. The level of detail was astonishing, and you could really see the amount of effort that was put in to creating the set. The Bugatti even has an engine with moving pistons, a moveable spoiler like the actual car, double wishbone suspension, working gearbox and moveable steering wheel. The level of detail comes at the price. The Bugatti LEGO set costs 370 pounds which is technically cheap compared to the 3,000,000 pounds the actual car costs. It is amazing how far LEGO has come and the resources it has to work with a company like Bugatti to develop a model of one of the most desirable super cars in the world. Additionally, there LEGO also sells smaller and less complicated car models. Instead of being 3600 pieces like the Chiron, they have about 150 and cost 13 pounds. The cars offered as part of the Speed Champions collection include the Porsche 919 hybrid Endurance race car, 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback, Ferrari F1 car and more. LEGO also has larger sets that cost around 90 pounds and include multiple cars as well as small structures like a race garage. Seeing the amount of different cars LEGO offers surprised me and I did not think that there was large market for real sets since as a kid, I hated following the instructions and would much rather build what I thought was cool. These small cars would be cool for a desk ornament. I would like to see in the future making LEGOS radio controlled that way they could be driven around. That way kids could also build their own creations and drive them around.