There's a scene in a film - which exact film escapes me at present - where a team are doing something. I think they're bad guys, up to no good, but it's possible that they're good guys up to mischief, but for the right reasons.
Anyway. This team are made up of the usual archetypes. The leader. The technical one. The brute force one. The comms guy who's usually also the comic relief. You've seen it a million times. The 'A' Team. The Losers. Dutch's team in 'Predator'.
So as part of whatever shenanigans the team are up to, the clever one is doing something complicated. Maybe opening a safe or bypassing an alarm system. It's complex work, it needs concentration and a steady hand and it's taking a while. Time is running out, and so is the patience of the muscle who, hauling his more bookish compatriot out of the way, simply resolves the issue at hand with the application of explosives / a sledgehammer / several dozen rounds of ammunition.
I'm not really a detail person, as you can probably tell, but you get the gist.
Nerd guy pushes his inevitable pair of glasses back up his nose and shakes his head is he clambers to his feet, while the muscle strides off to their next objective, no doubt muttering some sort of witticism as he goes.
Now in addition to not being a detail person, I'm not really a car person either. I like cars and I love driving, but on the one occasion I ever got to drive fast - a Lotus Elise at the Hethel test track for a birthday treat - I enjoyed the experience immensely, right up until the point where I threw up.
Fortunately I'd managed to extricate myself from the car and remove my helmet first, but only just.
Despite that, I still spend time pondering about what would be in my dream garage. Unsurprisingly, it's populated more with classics that major on looks rather than speed - a VW split screen bus, an original Fiat 500, a Volvo 245 GLT estate that's been thoroughly modernised under the skin, but on the surface, still looks like a 40 year old car. Resto-modding, I believe they call it. I am singularly uninformed by the technical aspects of any of them.
So when we look at the supercar rivalry of Ferrari and Lamborghini, the more automotive-minded will no doubt compare the technology under skin, the powerplants, the chassis design, the various driver modes and so on. Me? My knowledge stretches to what they look like, and the little I glean from occasionally picking up a copy of Evo magazine. I can't afford anything that they feature, but the writing and photography is consistently excellent, so it makes for an interesting diversion once in a while.
So coming back to our seemingly-unrelated introduction, Ferrari has always seemed to me the bookish one, coming up with clever solutions to engineering problems. Maybe using a smaller engine but with a lighter body. Electronic wizardry eking out every last ounce of power and making it available to the driver, all the while, wrapping it in ever more elegant and curvaceous bodies.
Down the road from Maranello, in Sant'Agata, Lamborghini was more like our impatient friend. The laws of physics were something to be defied through the application of brute force. For years, the favoured engine of Lamborghini was the mighty V12 and not for them the sleek, slippery shapes that wind resistance turned a blind eye to. Lambos were hulking great monsters, seemingly hewn from solid blocks of metal, straight edge upon razor-sharp straight edge, looking for all the world like a two-tonne piece of steel origami.
The scalpel versus the sledgehammer. Both get their respective jobs done, but in distinctly different ways. It's possible that Lamborghini's slightly agricultural approach was born from the fact that the company originally made tractors. Apparently Ferruccio Lamborghini had purchased a Ferrari, but in 1963, the clutch broke. Maranello wasn't far, so he went to see Enzo Ferrari, explained the issue and, with his engineering background, offered a solution.
Ferrari, so the story goes, was not one for accepting criticism. Apparently, in a fit of pique he turned to his visitor and said:
"Let me make cars. You stick to making tractors."
Signore Lamborghini, more than a little aggrieved, drove home and resolved to build a better car than Ferrari. And the rest, as they say, is history. It's an interesting history, too, and you can read more about it here.
All of which brings us, finally, to the subject of todays musing.
The Lego Technic 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3.
Lego have produced four expensive, 1:8 scale supercars since 2016: the Porsche 911 GT3 RS was first; the Bugatti Chiron followed in 2018; the Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 came along two years ago in 2020, and now they are joined by the extraordinarily exclusive Daytona SP3.
Manufacturers of automotive exotica don't play by the same rules as other car companies. While the likes of Ford or Vauxhall just want to get as many buyers in to sign on the dotted line for their new hatchback or - more commonly these days - SUV, those at the sportier end of the market can afford to be a bit more choosy about who they sell to. I read recently of someone who wanted to buy one of the more hardcore 'RS' versions of the Porsche 911. Apparently he was scoffed at by the dealer, who informed him that unless he'd already bought at least five other Porsches, there was no way he'd be able to place an order for the race-bred version.
Others are yet more exclusive, with limited edition cars only being offered to those that have a personal history with the brand - and a stable full of cars with the their badge on the nose. The SP3 is one such car.
A few years back, in 2018, Ferrari launched the Icona series. The idea was to build new cars - in limited quantities - on modern platforms, but to take their design inspiration from classic Ferraris of the past. The first two cars launched were the Monza SP1 and the Monza SP2, based around the 750 Monza, the 166M and the 250 Testarossa. Only 499 examples of each were built and despite them being illegal in a number of countries due to their lack of roof or windscreen, 499 well-heeled buyers snapped up one of each, each paying somewhere north of $3m for the pair.
The Daytona SP3 joins the Icona line-up and while there will be slightly more - 599 cars will be built - 499 have already been ordered by the owners of the SP1 and SP2, while the remaining 100 went to 'specially selected customers'.
Don't expect to see one on the road any time soon.
So for us mere mortals, one of the few ways that we might get anywhere near a Daytona SP3 is the new Technic version. I recently got a part time job, writing freelance for a well-known Lego website, Brick Fanatics, and one of the things I do for them is review sets. Mainly Technic, but I've done a few Speed Champions sets as well - more on them in a future post. Up until now, I've reviewed mostly modest-sized sets, but I was delighted when I was offered the chance to review the new Ferrari.
It's released on June 1st, but in mid-May, an exciting looking - and oddly shaped - box (two boxes in fact), arrived from Billund and I set to it!
The three previous cars in what Lego have now, retrospectively, decided to call the Ultimate Series (1), are all similar in terms of construction (complicated gearbox, 'working' engine, fiddly bodywork), but have definitely demonstrated progress in packaging design. The original Porsche came in a stylish but plain black box with minimal branding and the interior, rather than just having a bunch of loose bags thrown in, had a set of fitted, numbered boxes with the wheels set into one. The whole set created a frame for the manual, which looked more like a Porsche Owner's manual rather than a typical Lego instruction book.
The Chiron had a similar box design - a simple picture on a blue background, but while the boxes were again fitted in, jigsaw-style (2), this time rather than plain black, they had an image of the front of the car on them. Indeed, images on both sides, so that you could flip the boxes over and have a picture of the rear of the car if you so wished.
With the Lamborghini the game moved on again. No picture of the set, or indeed of anything at all, on the front. The cover of the eye-searingly green box was a representation of the car bonnet, complete with Raging Bull badge and very simple but effective graphics. The back of the box was more typical, with an image of the car, but inside, six sculpted boxes replicated the distinctive engine cover, complete with overlapping flaps.
The Ferrari box is unusual. rather than the usual big, rectangular box, it's a more compact, squared off affair with a lid in Rosso Corsa that not only lifts off, but has a segment cut out. It looks classy, in situ, but it falls over when you try and put it down.
With the lid off, if becomes apparent that the base of the box is to be tipped on its side, where three internal boxes appear like the drawers of a Snap-On tool cabinet and together give an image of the rear of the car, with it's distinctive, Testarossa-like rear grille.
Ok, enough waffling about boxes - let's build the thing!
First up is the gearbox. It's typical of the other gearboxes in this 'Ultimate' series, insomuch as there are a lot of parts and I don't fully understand how they work. Fortunately the diagrams are clear, regular twiddling ensures that nothing gets snared in the build, and after about 90 minutes, it's complete.
Two things to note at this point.
Much of the promotional material about the car has mentioned the complex, eight-speed gearbox in this set. Less is mentioned about the fact that the car itself only has a seven-speed gearbox (3). I'm guessing that the way the gearbox is constructed means that only even numbers of gears are possible. Which leads us on the the second point. As far as I can tell (from watching a number of video reviews), the way it works is that there are four sequential gears, each moving the pistons slightly faster than the last, and then there's another gear which effectively steps them all up again. However, one YouTuber spotted that a part in the instructions was shown in the wrong position, meaning that instead over having the car flip through the gears, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, it actually goes 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4.
There is a simple fix. Simple, that is, if you can get to the gearbox. I can't, so it stays as it is.
The engine, by comparison, is a straightforward - if large - affair, and other than the fiddly step of trying to drop six pistons into their respective spaces in the cylinder block - and then repeating it for the other half of the engine - it passes without comment. Or swearing. A situation that won't last to the end of the build.
Next up is the rear subframe, which anchors the axle and suspension. On the Chiron, it was noted that the weight of the model meant that there was a lot of suspension travel, so with the Lamborghini, the designers came up with an alternative design, so that the shock absorber element was mounted almost horizontally, giving a much stiffer setup. It still used the existing, relatively small and skinny shock absorber however, that will be familiar to Technic builders from dozens of other sets.
Not for Ferrari - who worked closely with Lego to develop this set - the same skinny shock that has been used before. Oh no! A huge new shock, only used once before, in the recent BMW M 1000 RR, and appearing here in red for the first time, looks impressive and far more like a 'real' shock absorber.
The front subframe follows, and gradually axles and connectors bring moving parts together. The gearbox still spins freely, but worryingly, the pistons in the engine aren't moving. I decide that something will be hooked up later to rectify this, and plough on.
Soon after, the steering rack snakes through the bodywork and up to the nascent dashboard.
It is at this point that the first parts of the bodywork go on, just behind where the doors will be, and I see a pin sticking up. I check the diagram and it's clear that the pin should be flush with the beam that it's currently protruding from.
But it isn't.
I do some rough mental calculations. I reckon to strip the car back to the point where I could replace the pin properly, and then retrace my steps to this point would take about four hours. I am on a deadline to get the set built, photographed and a review written and that's four hours I do not have. The pin won't be visible once the car's complete - the problem will be if it stops me putting a part in at a later step.
I study the images of the finished model, whisper a prayer to the Lego gods and press on. (4)
I'm about seven hours in now. There's a bit of work to do on the (fairly minimalist) interior including a very neat step where you build the transmission tunnel cover, attach it to one side and then it folds over on itself in a very clever fashion. I like steps like that. Another part of the interior that's installed is a shifter that lets you move between Drive, Neutral and Reverse. The mystery of the non-functioning pistons is solved. I was in neutral!
Now we're on to the bodywork. I'm faced with a sea of red beams and panels and an ocean of pins and the seemingly impossible task of making one of the curviest cars I've ever seen out of pieces that are inherently straight. (5)
But slowly the body grows. Parts are attached at crazy angles and elements are used in ways that most people would never think of in a month of Sundays. The windscreen is 'suggested' by four flexible beams but, on reflection, passes muster.
The rear wings, somehow, take on the sweep of the real thing in the same way that, if you draw enough straight lines, each at a slightly steeper angle to the last, you'll end up with a smooth curve.
The front wings - which might have been modelled on the 330 P4 which was campaigned in the 1960s - remind me of nothing other than the 308 GTS, aka 'The car Tom Selleck drove in Magnum, P.I.' aka my favourite Ferrari of all time.
And then we're on to the doors. Oh, the doors.
I'm still torn. The doors could be the greatest part of this set, they could be the worst. I've been looking at the finished model for over a week now and I still can't decide.
Naturally, supercar doors can't just open. You don't pay the equivalent of a twelve bedroom mansion in a very nice part of London for doors that just open. There has to be.... drama! The Lamborghini Countach, first seen in 1974, was the first car to use scissor doors (6) and that set the template that supercar manufacturers followed, more or less, for the best part of the next five decades.
The Ferrari doesn't just have scissor doors though. It has, depending on what you read, swan doors or butterfly doors. Basically the doors lift up, as a scissor door does, but then the bottom of the door swings out. It looks like a bird spreading its wings.
And I wonder how long it look set designer, Uwe Wabra, to come up with a way of replicating it?
Because he did.
Do they work? Yes, after a fashion. They lift, if you get hold of the top of the door and pull them up. With the Lamborghini, there was a rod that ran through the door sill and you could push down on it behind the door and it would pop up. I poked around in the Ferrari and lifted up the rear clamshell and sure enough you can do the same thing. It's not, as far as I can tell, listed as a feature or function, so whether you're supposed to open them like that, I don't know.
It lifts, and it spreads out like a bird's wing. It is quite something to see.
Pushing it down again, unfortunately, is rather less elegant.
Along the bottom of the door is... I'm not sure what you'd call it. If this was 1972, you'd say it was a running board. It's probably part of the aerodynamics as it extends down the side of the car to the rear arch. Anyway, it's a sticky-out piece that runs along the bottom of the door and lifts up with it, even though it appears not to be attached. When you drop the door down again, as often as not, this fairly chunky piece of bodywork doesn't line up with the rest and you have to prod it back into place.
The other thing is that it feels flimsy. Before the bodywork went on, the chassis of the car felt incredibly strong. You could have dropped it on a table from a foot in the air and have been fairly confident that nothing would detach. The doors, however, look like they'd be damaged by a stiff breeze.
But they're nothing compared to the tail.
The rear of the car seemingly pays homage to the 80s icon, the Ferrari Testarossa. Probably best known as one of the cars that Crockett drove in Miami Vice, the side strakes and the grille across the rear were some of its most memorable features, and they are echoed in both the front and the rear of the Daytona SP3.
To create the recognisable 'stripes', Wabra has used regular System Lego parts, rather than Technic elements, and both front and rear are built up in an elaborate sandwich. The front sandwiches just make up the corners and are held firmly in place, albeit at slight angles. The rear sandwich, however, which stretches across the full width of the car, seems to be held in place not so much with studs, more... with a wing and a prayer.
And that's if you manage to get it built.
There are a number of occasions during the build, most notably around the doors and the 'rear sandwich', when the instructions are somewhat... lacking. You've built the sub-assembly and then the next diagram just shows them in place. Usually when you're attaching a part, it's pretty obvious how it connects, but the doors had me scratching my head for a good ten minutes.
The rear, on the other hand, had me spend an hour rebuilding it.
I'd built the rear. It was made in three parts - the main 'straight across the back' section, and the two curved side sections. These three seemed to hang together with no more than two studs holding them in place and then the diagram just showed them... attached to the section above.
So I attached it. I looked at it from a variety of angles and it seemed to look right. Usually you'd try and count some studs somewhere to ensure it was exactly right, but no studs were visible, so I had to go by eye. This large and fragile sub-assembly had two pins at the top edge and two pins at the bottom edge, and it was via these pins that it attached to the rear of the car.
So I offered it up and got the lower sets of pins fitted snugly. The upper set, however were about one stud (or half a blue pin) short. They'd sort of fit, if I pushed them, but it tilted the rear at an angle, and the pins didn't fit cleanly. I've seen some clever parts usage to achieve unusual shapes, but it always stayed within the bounds of 'legal parts usage', and this looked wrong.
I took it off. I tried again, and which point one of the ends fell off. I reattached it and tried again.
Still I was left with a gap, the width of a Technic beam, running across the top deck of the rear. I compared the rear section with the diagram. It still looked right.
Earlier in the build, I'd come across a mistake in the instructions. Fairly minor and easily resolvable, but now I wondered if there had been a more serious mistake somewhere. Or whether I'd just misread something. I was wondering if I had enough parts in the house to fashion a fix of some sort when I offered it up one last time to check what I'd need, and both ends broke.
I decided fate had intervened, so broke the entire rear section down and started again.
My sincere apologies go to Ulla Pelsø and Jane Knudsen, the two ladies who between them, created the instruction booklet for the Daytona. For an hour later the tail was reassembled and lo! It fitted!
Now there were just a last few pieces to add, including the amazing drum-lacquered wheels. Whereas most Lego wheels are side-agnostic, these mirror the car exactly by having a left version and a right version, meaning Lego had had to create two new moulds for the wheels. One new mould for a part that's likely to just be used in one set is an extravagance, but two?
With the wheels and the ultra-low profile tyres fitted, it was the work of a moment to put the data plaque together and then I could sit back and admire...
...the two pieces that were still sitting in my sorting bowl.
Now anyone who has been building Lego sets for a while will know that you're often supplied with a few small extra pieces. A 1x1 tile, a stud, a few Technic pins. The sorting machines that bag the parts up work by weight, and even though they can deal with very fine tolerances, sometimes mistakes happen, so Lego would rather give you an extra piece now and again than have you find yourself short a crucial element.
But these weren't a couple of pins, these were, as the Lego database would have it, LEFT PANEL 2x5 and RIGHT PANEL 2x5. I'd already used about six of them on the rear to create the complex diffuser / aero / thingummybob and now I looked all over to see where they might go.
As luck would have it, a YouTuber with better eyesight than me had also had the same problem and realised that it must be a problem with the instructions, as most of the 'beauty' shots that we'd seen of various promotional materials had them missing too. But he found two red axle pins protruding at the rear, just waiting to have their angled panels fitted. On reflection, they stuck out like a sore thumb, but sometime you can't see for looking.
And that, as they say, is that.
So what's the verdict?
I've had a week to live with the completed set now, and I've been musing on it. Initially I thought it was incredible. The sheer size of the set - it's nearly two feet long - gives it an imposing presence and that's before you take into account the fact that it's bright red. It's certainly not a set to be tucked away, but displayed - on a fairly large table.
There seems to be a certain irony that for a Technic set, which is all about the functionality, this set is destined to sit on shelves and be looked at, maybe occasionally having the butterfly doors demonstrated to visitors, but that's about it. These sets play heavily on the complexity of the gearbox, but given that rolling it along the floor, while trying to squeeze your finger into a cramped cockpit to reach the - fair play to Lego - functioning paddle shifters will simply result in the pistons moving at a slightly different rate, that's almost academic.
The true value of a set like this is in the build. Once that's complete it's a large display piece where most of the functionality, such as it is, is borderline irrelevant. You can open the doors, prop up the front and rear clamshell and press it down to demonstrate the suspension, but really it's not a set for 'playing with', it's a set for looking at, and some will say that Technic is not really a medium for making beautiful sets. If you do want a beautiful car made from Lego, then in my humble opinion you're far better off buying 10265 Creator Expert Mustang. It's over £200 cheaper and looks astonishing.
All of which sounds like I've got a downer on the big Ferrari, but in truth, I haven't. I'm glad that it exists. Critics will point to the fact that Technic is not the ideal medium to recreate shapes like this, but there's a quote, in Vol. 1 of the instruction book, from Carlo Palazzani, Head of Sports Car Exterior Design at Ferrari. He says:
“The main task for the model wasn’t to produce a faithful replica of our original car – it was being able to distil its fundamental spirit.”
And to that end, it must be said the designers have succeeded.
Anyone with the first three cars in the series will already have made up their minds to buy this. maybe not straight away - history tells us that if you hang around for a while, then discounts are available. At £349.99 it's very much a considered purchase. If you could find it at around say,£279.99 later in the year, that might make the decision slightly easier. (7)
If I consider it next to the Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 from a few years back, the big, green Sant'Agata monster just edges it for me. There's no one thing, just a combination of small elements. The slightly more interesting packaging. The doors that are just that bit smoother and more robust. The bodywork that looks 'right' rather than 'slightly contrived'...
But they're marginal gains. The fact is that even if I hadn't been sent this set, and I had paid £350 of my own money for it, I wouldn't feel short-changed.
Like I say, it's all about the build.
And the build is fantastic.
Just one more thing.
I mentioned that when it arrived, there were two boxes. The smaller one contained a copy of the limited edition book, 'The Sense Of Perfection'. What I think of it is largely irrelevant, given that it went on sale at midnight last night, and was sold out before 1am. For a while though, Lego had set the purchase limit to five (rather than, as people expected, one) and so it's little surprise that there are more than one hundred on Ebay today, going for anything up to £195, though £150 seems to be the going rate.
I'll put a review up shortly.
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1. Or maybe Ultimate Car Series - it's not entirely clear at this point.
2. One of the simpler jigsaws that you'll ever attempt.
3. Though it does get mentioned on the data panel / information plaque.
4. You'll be delighted to know I got away with it!
5. Apart from the curved bits, of which there are a good number. But far more straight bits.
6. I'm pretty sure that's right. There's an argument to say it was the Alfa Romeo Carabo, but that was a concept car, so I'm discounting it.
7. I'm not saying it will be discounted, just that looking at previous, similar sets, there's a good chance.
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