Throughout my childhood, Lego sets and the Game Boy Color occupied much of my time. Before I really got into video games (and later, cars), I’d spend hours building, rebuilding, and tinkering with Lego pieces to see what sort of nonsense I could create.
Though I no longer own any of the Lego sets I grew up with, the brand still holds a special place in my heart. That’s why I’m so conflicted about this new brick set from one of Lego’s competitors, Mattel Brick Shop. Developed in a collaboration with Hot Wheels—a Mattel brand—it’s a 1:32 scale buildable model of one of the coolest wagons ever, the Audi RS2 Avant.
I’m not one to betray a brand I’ve been loyal to since birth, but this RS2 kit makes it pretty tough. Its proportions echo the real car near perfectly, and it’s colored in the same Nogaro Blue. The fascia matches up well, and those five-spoke wheels—borrowed from the Porsche 968 Clubsport—are instantly recognizable.
The real RS2 is well-known for being the car that kicked off the hot wagon craze at Audi. The car itself was built in a collaboration with Porsche, which, in addition to those wheels, also supplied parts like the bigger brakes and even the logo. Porsche interviewed an engineer, Michael Hölscher, back in 2021 to celebrate 25 years of the RS2. He revealed just how much work the sports car company put in at the time:
Hölscher recalls the Porsche parts that were integrated into the Audi or developed from scratch in Zuffenhausen: the 17-inch light-alloy wheels borrowed from the Cup car, the exterior mirrors with their new mirror base design, the red high-performance brakes, Porsche lettering in the RS logo, the front and rear bumpers, dials and the door openers.
“Around 20 per cent of the RS2 stems from Porsche,” he estimates. His team fundamentally re-engineered the engine with new parts. “We found it essential to make the Porsche character immediately noticeable and the associations clear.”
That engine, a very Audi-esque turbocharged five-cylinder, made 310 horsepower, which was about as much as a BMW M5 of the same era. For the mid-90s, it was incredibly capable. Sadly, it doesn’t look as if the Mattel version has an engine bay of any kind (at least judging by the promotional photos).
What it does have is a full interior, complete with two rows of seats, a steering wheel, and even a set of stickered gauges. There are also a handful of other stickers, like Audi logos, sponsor stickers, and number decals, that you can stick on wherever you’d like, if you’re the type of person who prefers a custom look. There’s even a second set of rally-inspired aero disc wheels painted in white, in case you want to keep those five-spokes in storage so they don’t get curbed up.
Kits like this can exist because Lego’s patent for interlocking bricks expired decades ago. The great Jason Torchinsky did a whole video on a strange Lego-esque Beetle kit a couple of years back, which I highly recommend watching.
Top graphic image: Mattel
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What’s that, Brian, you like Lego AND Game Boy? Now is the perfect time for you to get back in the hobby.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/game-boy-72046?consent-modal=show
Hot take: It’s a flawed compromise and a waste of the mold-cutting budget. Nowhere near as detailed or accurate as a true model car kit, nowhere near as infinitely rebuildable and recombinable into other things as brick toys should be.
It may represent a hot wagon but it’s an extremely mid crossover product in itself.
Agreed. part of what makes the LEGO Speed Champions sets so cool is how well they manage to reproduce the car in question with off-the-shelf parts instead of bespoke molds. I’ve marveled at the way they’ve accomplished some of the details and realized that even with full access to the entire LEGO parts catalog and an infinite amount if time, I’d have never been able to accomplish what the set designers did.
I’m old and I remember building blocks and all of that and the challenges of putting something together that sparked my creativity. These give no spark. They’re just kits to copy, similar to doing a jig saw puzzle. There’s no creativity involved either for children or the legions of adults who still buy these toys. It’s just a challenge to build, then? I’ve been turned off the Lego craze for quite a while because of this trend. Especially all of the branded Star Wars stuff. How is this creative? It’s just conforming in the worst way, imo.
The kit costs 20 bucks, and you really want it.
Your job today is to write an article about the kit.
The article is about how it’s tempting to get this, even though it’s not real lego.
I’ve pondered this too, but I’m just not sure if those pieces will have that precise fit that genuine lego is renowned for.
I can’t help but wonder, why not just buy the kit, build it, and then tell us how that went?
Guess we’re not ready to take that plunge yet.
Looking forward to the next chapter in this saga.
It’s pretty cool , but it’s not Lego cool. Lego builds are cool because they look like they are built with Legos. As if somebody built a car out of pieces they had laying around, although I’m aware Lego makes some custom pieces for sets like this. Mattel stuff looks like it’s 90% custom parts made specifically for each set, and only somewhat Lego-adjacent. At that point, is there really much difference between this and a Revell snap-together model kit?
This was exactly what I was gonna say. A lot of not-LEGO sets love to produce pieces that just take the place of whole multi-part assemblies were they rendered in LEGO. The roof and nose on this are especially egregious.
Bingo. I’ve got a legit Lego Countach next to me right now. It has exactly zero bespoke parts to it, unless you count the from-the-factory coloring on the cockpit glass. Same with the beautiful Lotus Evija parked next to it.
Now, maybe they aren’t as 1:1 as this… “brick” Audi. But that’s part of the charm. If I wanted something more accurate to reality, I’d buy a die cast or something.
Oh boy here I go pre-ordering again
Kudos for not writing LEGOS
Thank you! That bugs me way more than it probably should.
As a boomer I remember when you bought LEGOs and you got pieces and you needed imagination to create something. Now it seems they just make custom bricks to build a specific item, see death star, might as well just buy and build a model. LEGOS the kitcar of models.
Thank you. I just don’t understand modern LEGO and its appeal.
There’s still a ton of clever engineering and technique going on in modern LEGO, and they don’t actually create all that many new pieces a per year.
And, of course, no one is forcing you to buy a set and build only that model with it. There’s a whole huge segment of the community that’s focused on alternative builds of single sets, of kitbashing, of weird and creative and honestly sometimes beautiful creations that people do.
AND if you want to get picky, outside of some pieces being made in new colors, a couple specific individual geometry pieces, and a number of minifig pieces, the vast majority of pieces in the newest Death Star set are from the mid ’90s or earlier. LEGO is actually pretty conservative on creating new pieces, because the molds cost several hundred thousand dollars to procure and tool.
Go find yourself a LEGO convention or local group. There’s so, so much more than just buying 8 vaguely different F1 cars, putting them together, and leaving them on the shelf forever.
But motors and other remarkable things do make it like a kit car rather than a custom build.
Sometimes you just want to do something with your hands but also to deactivate your brain a bit. I get the appeal but lack the space for the completed models.
Thanks for including a reference image of the actual car in the topshot (although that, too, looks like a toy).
Mattel includes a Hot Wheel (1/64 scale) version of the Audi along with the brick kit, that’s what is pictured. Neat!
Still looks more realistic than the bricks and it’s great for comparison. I’ve been griping lately about articles referencing something that don’t include an image or description of the original thing. I appreciate it.
“no longer own any of the Lego sets I grew up with”
What is wrong with you?
Lego is a forever toy. I have bins and bins of them in the room next to me from when I was a kid. My kids play with them still, and someday my grandkids will too. Buy sets, get bored with them, add the bricks to the bins. In the future they will be a castle, or house, or spaceship, or tank, or truck… best toy ever.
Why not just get it? The newer stuff Mattel has been putting out in the Mega Construx /Bloks line is way better than it used to be. Tempted to get the NSX myself to display next to my Lego Icons Porsche 911.
I have the Lego1985 Audi Sport Quattro S1 and I loved the build. It did a very good job of looking the part without being a slavish duplication of every line and curve (not that curves were a huge part of the Quattro’s design language..).
I look at this one, though, and see “plastic model, just with studs instead of superglue”. Too many pieces that look like custom one-offs (doors, hood, pillars…) to make me really happy with the design.
Like most car models made from bricks (LEGO or other), this sits deep in „uncanny valley“ territory for me.
I have the Porsche 911 and classic mustang creator kits. Fun to build and look good but ridiculously priced like all Lego kits. Those matchbox ones look tempting.
Those Lego sets are much bigger than this set. There are smaller sets like Speed Champions which are priced similar.
In some ways I actually find the relatively budget Speed Champions sets more impressive than the bigger, more elaborate sets. Their relative accuracy with the significant size and cost constraints are quite an accomplishment.