As a child, I was a big fan of LEGO’s Model Team sets of highly detailed and realistic-looking vehicles. It will be no surprise then that I also liked the Classic Beetle LEGO released more than six years ago and that I also bought the Volkswagen Camper van. To my delight, LEGO has now introduced another classic car: the MINI Cooper. The Mini started life as a humble economy car, but with a lasting legacy. To maximise passenger space within its short body, its engine was transversally mounted and drove the front wheels, which is a configuration copied in pretty much every small family hatchback built since. Sporty versions, called the Cooper and Cooper S, became successful rally racers and celebrities such as Steve McQueen, Paul McCartney, Prince Charles and even Enzo Ferrari owned Minis. From its humble origins, the Mini grew into a cult car, with a particularly British kind of cool. The set represents a late-model Mini Cooper (produced in late 1997/ early 1998, judging from the license plate) in dark green, with white stripes on the bonnet (hood), white wing mirrors and a white roof.
The dark green colour is a close match for traditional British racing green and the colour scheme just screams Mini. The front of the car is spot-on, with the shape of the radiator grille, front-mounted fog lights and the silver bumper pieces. The curved elements used below the windows have neatly-printed thin white lines on them, that run the length of the car. Small details such as the fuel filler cap and indicator lights are nicely represented. Remarkably, for a LEGO set, the finished model is almost completely studless, which suggests that LEGO also hopes to cater to fans of the Mini who may not necessarily be into LEGO. The model is not without faults, however. Especially when seen from behind, it does not look quite round enough. Having built my own models of Minis, I know that both the front and rear windows ought to be curved, but on the model they are built using large flat window panels. I also don’t particularly like the way the pillars supporting the corners of the roof are built, using 75-degree slopes covered with stickers marked with a black triangle.
The stickers are intended to make the pillars look narrower, but I don’t think it really works. In fairness, though, alternative solutions would either require completely new part shapes or would add greatly to the complexity, parts count and cost of the set. Despite the compromises, it definitely looks like a Mini. The chassis of the model is built using plates and traditional studded Technic beams and feels rock-solid. Most of the construction is fairly straightforward, but there are a few really clever features. The one that struck me in particular is the construction required to create a small gap (of half a plate in width) that allows the doors to open easily. Another neat feature is the spare wheel, which neatly fits into a 6x5x1 panel mounted in the bottom of the car and is covered by a hinged panel that also forms the floor of the car’s boot (trunk). The model has fairly wide wheels, with nice wheel covers that look very much like the alloys fitted to the real car. Unfortunately, the front wheels don’t steer and their width, combined with the small clearance around them, suggests that fitting the model with working steering yourself will not be easy.
For me, the interior is the highpoint of the model. There is a lot of detail throughout, with a dashboard with a glove compartment (that doesn’t open, however), speakers and a few dials. It is built using brown elements, making it look as though it is covered in wood veneer. The seats have a neat chequered pattern built out of tan, dark tan and white elements. The insides of the doors are covered in tan tiles, adding to the classy look. The interior can be appreciated by removing the roof. This is held on by just a few studs at the back, which allows it to be easily removed. Because of the strength of the chassis, this construction doesn’t seem to weaken the model much. Opening the bonnet (hood) reveals a faithful representation of the engine, including its two carburettors. Besides the previously-mentioned spare wheel, the boot (trunk) houses a pick-nick hamper (with bread, glasses and cheese), a large bottle and a red-and-white cloth pick-nick blanket. I can imagine this is just the sort of stuff people might take with them to a Mini-owners meeting.
I bought the set for €99.99 from LEGO’s on-line shop in the Netherlands (it costs $99.99 in the US, £74.99 in the UK). This not exactly cheap for a set that set contains 1077 parts, but the dark green makes it a useful parts pack. Military builders who like camouflage, in particular, will definitely love this one. It has several elements that previously were not available in dark green, including plate hinges, 1×1 plates and 1×1 bricks with a stud on the side. It also includes a fair few 1×1 tile pieces in dark green and in dark tan. Unlike in the earlier camper van and the Beetle, the parts come in numbered bags, which is a great help when building. The model comes with two sticker sheets with Mini and Mini Cooper logos and license plates to represent either a British registered car (R-reg) or cars registered in Denmark, Germany, Australia or Connecticut. Mini lovers may want to build their own car in a different colour, but this will require a fair bit of creativity, since the elements used for the mudguards and for the curved boot lid (trunk lid) are available in only a handful of colours.
If you like classic cars and Minis in particular, this is a great addition to your collection. It is not built to the same scale as the older camper van or the Beetle, however. Car builders often base the scale of their models on the size of the available wheels and that also seems to be the case for this set. The model is a bit too boxy, but it shows great attention to detail and the colour combination is simply classy. The colour is also the main attraction if you are looking for useful parts for your own builds. The LEGO Mini Cooper is available from the LEGO Shop online:Back in March, LEGO announced that the next LEGO Ideas set would be 21307 Caterham Seven 620R, designed by Carl Greatrix. Just released this month, we’re pleased to bring our readers a full hands-on review. This is quite a lovely set with some great parts — both brand new molds and recolored existing parts. Read our full review, but we think you’ll like this set as much as we do. As with other LEGO Ideas sets, the Caterham Seven comes in a sturdy storage box, and the instruction booklet includes details about the real-life vehicle, a profile of Carl Greatrix, and some words from Henrik Andersen, the LEGO Designer Carl worked with to take his Ideas design through to a product design.
The booklet is 190 pages long, and spans 237 steps. The parts come in three numbered bags, and I was able to build the set with the box as my parts bin — always a nice feature for LEGO builders with limited build space, or those of us who take LEGO to work, on business trips, and everywhere else we go. The build begins with four jack stands so you can play mechanic and swap out the car’s tires. Building someone else’s design is always an opportunity to learn new techniques and parts usages. I think it says a lot about the progress that LEGO set designs have made over the past 10 years that the build itself — as enjoyable as it is — didn’t feel more challenging or innovative than many of the other LEGO Ideas and Creator/Expert sets designed by talented LEGO builders hired by the company, like Jamie Berard, Mark Stafford, Marcos Bessa, and Mike Psiaki. In fact, Carl himself works as a professional LEGO designer for TT Games — hired after he saw a job ad we posted right here on TBB.
But I did run into a surprise as early as step 27, when I saw that the disc brakes behind the wheels are printed! In fact, there isn’t a sticker sheet in the set; every single stripe, “7”, and “Caterham” is printed. The second bag begins on step 71 with the removable engine, which also has a printed tile. The bucket seats are also removable. The sub-assemblies for the front bumpers use some interesting connections, with clips holding the curved sections out over the tires. The entire front two thirds of the car narrows from 10 studs wide to 6 studs wide, with the hood/bonnet in the third bag also angling (by way of hinges) to match. One especially innovative part usage is the way the exhaust connects to the muffler. Yup, those are LEGO Friends lipstick pieces. They keep the round Technic connectors from rattling around between the “macaroni” pieces and the lower half of the balloon that funnels back to the muffler. (We’ll come back to all the great new parts in this photo later.)
The third bag adds most of the visible exterior, from the car’s nose and hood/bonnet to the rear trunk/boot. This thing just looks fast — like it could go 0-60 in 2.79 seconds, to be precise. The scale is a bit larger than the LEGO Creator series of vehicles (the VW Camper Van, Mini Cooper, and VW Beetle), but that has enabled LEGO to retain much of Carl’s original LEGO Caterham design. The model doesn’t skimp on details even at the rear (a perennial weak spot in LEGO set designs). The cover of the trunk/boot is removable, and you can store those jacks there and let them rattle around as you fly around the track. My one nitpick about the design applies as equally to Carl’s pre-Ideas design. The real-life Caterham has a smoothly curved hood, with a prominent stripe down the center. Carl uses tiles to replicate this look in LEGO, and the tiles also serve a structural purpose by hiding the gap between the left and right halves of the hinged structure underneath.
It’s a great technical solution in LEGO, but the use of tiles that sit above the overall curve doesn’t quite match the real thing. This is most evident in the front view, where the stripe tiles stand up from the hood, further broken up by the grills/vents toward the front. Nevertheless, that’s looking pretty hard for something to criticize, and the overall model is excellent from front to back. I’ve mentioned a few of the play features, but here’s the full list: The most noteworthy new part in this set is the 2×3 tile, in both yellow and black (also available in some other colors in some of the new Star Wars Rogue One LEGO sets). This 2×4 plate with Technic pin holes will come in handy. “Macaroni” pieces with Technic axle connections are new in light bluish gray and in black. This is very similar to the older chrome silver macaroni piece which has been extinct since 2008, but the new one incorporates the Technic axle connections. Other new or interesting pieces include 1×1 round plates with bar in black, a 2×2 round brick inverted dome (balloon bottom), and bar 2L with towbar in dark bluish gray.
The set also includes pneumatic tube in light bluish gray — a fairly rare part. And don’t forget all those printed parts — we counted twenty, but there could be more we missed. At $80 USD for 771 pieces, it’s clear you’re paying a bit more for all that printing (and for a new IP license). But this set has some really great parts and good design, and overall it’s a solid value. Several of us here at The Brothers Brick have built this set since its release a couple weeks ago, and we all love it. Our resident parts monkeys love all the new pieces for a great overall value. For me, this is the kind of set I’d keep together and display at work alongside my other LEGO cars. (It’s also the sort of set I’d get a second copy of for the parts, because LEGO parts monkeys are usually right.) We definitely recommend this set, and we’re glad to see Carl Greatrix succeed not just as a virtual set designer in video games, but also as a real-life LEGO set designer. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.