Goodwood Festival of Speed was full of cool surprises last year, but the activity that stood out to us the most was that McLaren hand-assembled a new 720S at the show—out of LEGO bricks. McLaren announced that the 1-to-1 ratio replica made its way to North America, where it is on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
On June 2, guests were invited to help complete the model, placing the final orange bricks on the car. The LEGO 720S was then moved to the second floor of the museum, where it will be a part of an interactive display through Aug. 19.
Visitors can build and customize their own Speed Champions McLaren on an iPad next to the car before moving to the Petersen’s Discovery Center a few feet away to play with their creations thanks to the exhibit’s building area and racing ramps.
The LEGO McLaren 720S is made up of more than 280,000 LEGO bricks built onto a steel frame with real wheels and Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires. It took over 2,000 hours for McLaren’s six-man team to assemble. The 1-to-1 ratio model weights 3,200 pounds, which is 372 pounds heavier than the real 720S. It doesn’t take the company’s new $67 million carbon fiber research center to figure out that LEGO bricks don’t make good performance car parts.
If you can’t afford the $284,745 asking price for a real 720S at the McLaren dealership less than two miles away, you can pick up a LEGO Speed Champions McLaren for about $15 from the museum’s store. Considering how expensive LEGO toys are now, we don’t want to begin to imagine how much the full-size LEGO 720S would cost if it was for sale.
