Fight the winter blues with Lego’s 830-piece Technic McLaren Senna GTR
Hankering to buy a McLaren, but hamstrung by the global pandemic and—let’s be real—a less-than-McLaren-worthy bank balance? Lego’s got a solution for you: the $50 Technic McLaren Senna GTR, available as of January 1.
First, a bit of slicing and dicing. McLaren has already made a 467,854-part Lego version of the Senna, but that was a full-size plastic replica that required 42 master builders and 2700 hours of work. Lego, for its part, has already made a Senna—a 219-unit mass-market affair that’s only five inches long. The model before you today is a more complex (and rewarding, according to our experience with Lego’s Technic sets) rendition of the wildest iteration of McLaren’s supercar: the track-only Senna GTR.
Though Lego has previously offered kits for the P1, the 720S, and the aforementioned Senna, the Senna GTR is the first McLaren model to appear as a Technic kit.
Lego aficionados will be familiar with the brand’s Technic line, differentiated from Lego’s plastic-brick-centric Creator offerings by its use of gears, electric motors, and even pneumatic pieces. These Technic kits incorporate a different building style and that produce results that are more mobile and realistic than you might expect: its “Super Car” set boasted a working steering rack, motorized butterfly doors, an extendable rear spoiler that tucked under the rear bodywork, and a V-8 engine connected via a plastic crankshaft to the rear wheels whose pistons bobbed when the car was moving.
The 12-inch Senna GTR is far more handsome than its anonymous 2011 predecessor, though it shares the plastic, moving-piston V-8. It also includes fancy dihedral doors to match its real-life counterpart, plus a blue racing livery—check out those patterned front fender panels!
At 830 pieces, the Senna GTR won’t intimidate Technic builders who’ve whetted their skills on the 1281-piece Super Car or the 1580-piece Porsche 911 RSR. Still, the Senna GTR is pretty awesome, and it has the attractive quality of being cheaper than either of the previously mentioned sets.
