Review: 75910 Porsche 918 Spyder
Posted by CapnRex101,
The Speed Champions sets will all be available for general sale from Sunday, although many have already made it into stores and proven quite popular thus far.
Of the four smallest Speed Champions sets, 75910 Porsche 918 Spyder was probably the one I was least excited for, mainly because I didn't think the open top would look as attractive as the hardtop cars in the range. I am not sure whether or not that is still the case.
The Porsche 918 Spyder is priced at £12.99 or $14.99 in LEGO form, while the actual car will cost you in the region of $850,000, which is inexpensive beside the LaFerrari and McLaren P1. I tried my best to persuade Huw that we would need to acquire the actual car for me to compare the model with, but alas you will have to make do with my impressions based on a comparison with images.
Box and Contents
The four sets at this price point all feature very similar box designs, with the subject car racing down the track and the car manufacturer's logo in the corner. I like the combination of the carbon fibre and chequered flag pattern running across the top of the box very much. On the back we find some images of the car from other angles and a few facts about it, telling us that its top speed is 214 MPH, it does 0-60 MPH in 2.5 seconds and the engine produces 887 HP.
Inside is one instruction manual, which is a welcome change from some of the other sets of this size containing two booklets. There is a rather attractive image of all the vehicles from this wave lined up with their drivers at the back as well as an advertisement for the other sets in the line. The sticker sheet is relatively modest compared with other Speed Champions sets with only fourteen to apply on the car and one for the flag at the side of the track.
Minifigure
The Speed Champions sets certainly aren't about the minifigures, although I rather like these simple designs. This driver is particularly striking as he features lime green arms and legs, while his helmet is black and the words 'Porsche Motorsport' appear on the front and back of his torso. He is equipped with a wrench which is used for changing the alloys.
The Completed Model
Although the car is the star of the show, I appreciate the inclusion of a chequered flag and section of rumble strip for the side of the track. This is a simple little build but might give a bit of depth to a display if you wish to use it. I am surprised that the flag is not printed as it appears in multiple Speed Champions sets and will probably continue to do, assuming the theme runs for further waves.
The Porsche 918 Spyder itself is a pretty good model in my opinion. It doesn't suffer from being too narrow compared with its width nearly as badly as the other cars simply because it is a little bit shorter, although I think there are still a number of improvements to be made.
The front of the model captures the shape of the bonnet quite well and I like the Porsche badge on the nose. The two air intakes are formed using stickers which does not give them the required depth compared with the real thing, but I cannot really see how this could be improved upon. The entire bonnet section might look a little better if its height were reduced by one plate, but I quite like it as it is and I suspect reducing the height might destabilise it significantly. The ground clearance is also notably higher than on some of the other Speed Champions cars, which further contributes to its slightly stubby appearance.
The wheels appear on every car in the Speed Champions theme and feature interchangeable alloys. Two sets are included in this set which are pretty accurate to those on the actual car.
The central section looks fantastic from the outside, with the air scoops on each door shaped very effectively using some 2x2 curved slopes. The bodywork narrows here which really conveys the typical style of a Porsche. The windscreen leaves a little to be desired for me as the car rarely appears with an open top and side windows raised. Had the windscreen component not featured door windows, it would be greatly improved.
On the other hand, the profile of the rear of the car is much better, sloping down and finishing with some lights and grille details at the back. There is even a sticker identifying the vehicle as a Porsche 918 Spyder which is great, despite being almost entirely obscured by one of the new 2x6 curved plates.
From the side you can see that while some areas of the car are quite accurate, others miss the mark. The bodywork appears to slope down gradually from the back of the 918 Spyder to the front, a feature which is simply not captured at all in the model. At this scale I think that would have been almost impossible to render, but it is nevertheless an inaccuracy and must be taken into account. Otherwise, I think the general shape of the car is quite reasonable, with the curves above the forward wheel arches captured beautifully and some nice shaping around the mid-section of the vehicle.
Overall
I like 75910 Porsche 918 Spyder more than I thought I would, but it still does not match some of the other sets in the range for me. The value for money and playability is certainly there, but the accuracy to the real thing is not as good as the 75899 LaFerrari or 75908 458 Italia GT2 in my opinion.
The parts selection is impressive, featuring three of the new 2x6 curved plates in light bluish grey and, for some reason, four dark red 1x1 round tiles (plus one spare) which are used inside the car and are almost completely hidden when it is completed. If the windscreen had not featured side windows my opinion of the set would be much higher, not only because it would improve this model but also provide many more opportunities for creating your own convertibles.
I should also mention the colour of the model. Light bluish grey really doesn't do justice to the metallic silver of the real Porsche 918 Spyder and I would certainly have paid £19.99 to see this set feature almost entirely metallic silver bodywork. Admittedly this would be very optimistic and I doubt LEGO would produce a set consisting of so many pieces in a non-standard colour, but it would still look absolutely fantastic.
On the whole, I think this is a good model. It is not my favourite of the range, nor is it my least favourite, but it could do with some improvements here and there and some fairly minor changes would have made me much happier with the finished product.
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13 comments on this article
well, at least the silver-ish tint does it a little justice
I agree with several things that you said here, Capn.
1. Not silver enough. The sticker could have been, it was the least they could have done.
2. It could have had a few improvements - less studs, perhaps?
3. Not a big enough track-barrier.
It is a good set, but IDK if I'll get this.
I like this one a lot more than the McLaren or LaFerrari. It may not be a scale model (what do you expect at this size) but the proportions seem better on this one.
Or maybe I'm biased because I've always preferred Porsches over Ferraris...
Probably buying all of these and adding "real" lights (not stickers) so they can be Lego city sports cars rather than branded automobiles.
This model looks much better to me in these larger pictures than in the ones I'd seen earlier--it does capture the car surprisingly well considering the scale and the modelling medium. Now there are three of these sets on my list, before we even get out of the $15 range...drat it! Decisions, decisions....
Hum. I still don't like this set at all. There's quite a long list of serious issues with it:
-The return of the checkered flag sticker. That didn't make sense in 2011 and it doesn't make sense now.
-It's not silver. Say what you will, but light bley is a mere approximation of the car's shiny metal.
-The bumpers are chunky and all of their detail is taken from ugly stickers.
-The windshield with the side windows that way. There's a perfect CITY window that works there, and they didn't use it. WHY?
-It's absurdly out of proportion. Those two lumps behind the cockpit? Headrests. The minifig is perched right between them, and it looks really, really odd.
-The shaping of the car doors is completely messed up.
This set would have been so much better in 8-wide. As it is, it's too boring, inaccurate, clunky, and all-around blah for me.
What he^ said. And the corners of the cheesers on the front look terrible.
I updated my version - I know its blasphemy - but still worth it - at least in my opinion. I lowered the front, lowered the inside - so the guy would fit, and added a roof... I actually think this looks better. But ofc, one can argue that its not the actual 918 set anymore. Wich is true. But still a better 918. Kinda... :P
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ez9pfrs4fcn0bt/Photo%20Feb%2028%2C%202%2059%2008%20AM.jpg?dl=0
(Yeah, as you might've noticed, the porsche-sticker at the front no longer exist on the new front piece....)
Great review! This was a set that I didn't think would look great physically due to the more exposed studs than the other Speed Champions sets but looking at the photographs in this review it's not as bad as I thought. And I laughed when you said you asked Huw to get the real car for comparison! I look forward to the upcoming Ferrari F40 set because I actually do have intentions of having the real car and the set to compare in the same review. I love when my job as a professional automotive photographer meets my LEGO hobby. :-)
This is the best looking of the cars reviewed so far but that's not saying much. These sets are so far removed from the real cars that, without the Ferrari etc branding, these probably wouldn't sell much. I'm hugely disappointed. The small scale Shell Ferrari's were much better than these.
I loved the Italian sports car in the 60007 chase set and it set me working on ways to build more interesting cars at this scale. While the sets only resemble their real counterparts, they greatly expand on the range of City car designs and offer some great part for original creations. I'm sure I'll get all of the non-F1 series. Thanks for the great reviews. I actually found the Porsche the most interesting in the preview pictures for all the reasons you mentioned.
I think these sets are really nice, but at this scale there's no way they could ever get round certain limitations.
They have all looked too tall, but that's surely down to the fixed height of a plate, and keeping them to a 6-stud width.
Given that limitation I think they're pretty good. In fact, it makes them look like Lego-ised versions of the real thing, and isn't that a good thing because it's exactly what they are?
(And hey, many companies produced 4x4 versions of their cars, BMW and Porche spring to mind, that look like inflated versions of the real thing, like the smaller model but stretched to be taller. They look woefully dreadful but they're real and somehow people still like them! :P)
The flag though is utterly pathetic.
Only one sticker so it's only one-sided?
I'm sure I remember owning plenty of printed flags down the years, and I'm sure one of them was a black and white square pattern, from an old racing set no less.
I'm not a sticker hater, but this single sided stickered flag is utterly appalling, laughable even. Shame on you, Lego! Shame!
i thought the Porsche is the best car to build with real bricks for headlights. instead i see stickers. lol oh well...