Review: Shell/Ferrari sets
Posted by Huw,
An anonymous benefactor has provided us with a set of the new Shell/Ferrari sets to review. I'll take a look at the four cars today, then the garage, finish line and petrol tanker tomorrow.
The sets are currently available in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau, I believe. There are rumours they'll hit the Netherlands, where Shell has its headquarters, in the next month or so.
The seven sets are packaged in polybags, which I've scanned for the database. The stickers, along with the instructions and a card, are packed in a small polybag to keep them from creasing.
The card is the same in all of the sets which is a bit of missed opportunity: it would have been cool if they were more like trading cards showing a picture of the set they came in.
All four cars contain the small pull-back motor that was first used in the 2012 Shell/Ferrari sets, which has not been used in any other sets, probably because LEGO hasn't produced any 'Racers' sets for store shelves lately.
40190 Ferrari F138
Here are the interesting parts from 40190 Ferrari F138, which is the 2013 version of their formula 1 car. The nose section is printed on its front edge and the wheels have a thin yellow line printed on the rim which looks great.
All four cars are sticker-heavy and to be honest, the cars look a bit plain without them applied so even if you're anti-stickers like me you'll probably end up using them.
The finished model looks pretty good. A lime green 1x1 plate is provided if you wish to have it driven by Massa rather than Alonso.
The yellow wheel rims really make a difference to the appearance.
Here's a shot showing it side-by-side with the 2012 version of the F1 car, 30190, Ferrari 150 Italia. It looks much better, doesn't it, particularly the rear spoiler.
40191 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta
40191 is a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, a current Ferrari model which can be yours for a mere £240,000/$400,000.
It makes use of the nose and canopy pieces first introduced in the Cars movie sets. They do look good but every car that uses them pretty much looks the same, and if you didn't know what this was supposed to be you probably wouldn't guess.
Here's a photo of the real thing, from Wikipedia. The model is a pretty good approximation; the sticker and printing on the front on the front certainly helps.
40192 Ferrari 250 GTO
40192 is a Ferrari 250 GTO, a racing car used in the 1960s. It's great that it's been made in blue for a bit of variety: blue Ferraris seem to be a bit of a rarity.
Like the F12, The nose piece is partially printed: the detail at the bottom and the headlights are printed, the yellow stripe on the top is a sticker. I wonder why they didn't print the whole thing? I can only guess that they did not want to produce printed parts with the Ferrari logo on them.
It's been pointed out in the comments at flickr that the bonnet and window pieces are new: I thought they'd been used in Cars sets, but that's not the case: this is their first appearance.
Here's a photo of the very car it's been modelled on, from ConceptCarz. Its distinctive long bonnet has been reproduced faithfully on the model.
40193 Ferrari 512 S
The fourth car, 40193, is a Ferrari 512 S, which competed in the 1970 Le Mans 24 hour race.
Here's a photo of the vehicle it's been modelled on, from a Le Mans website. Now I can see why the '12' sticker at the back has been applied skewy :-)
Of the four, I think the LEGO model of this is the least convincing, mainly due to the canopy not looking quite right. However, I appreciate it must be very hard to make anything even remotely looking like it, given all the curves, at this scale.
Overall, then, this is another great set of mini-cars that are definitely worth collecting. When are they going to be available in <insert your country here>? I've no idea, although I did make some predictions based on the speed the last Shell promotion travelled round the world.
I'll take a look at the other three sets tomorrow.
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15 comments on this article
I like the Ferrari 250 GTO the most.
I need friends like Huw's!
Holland next? Nice! So some filling up at Shell stations seems to be in order. Good thing I ride a lot for my work. Thanks for the review!
Huw, on the F12 the doors should be the other way around. Unless ofcourse you MOC-ed it to have suicide doors. ;-)
By the way, I like that you added photos of the real cars for comparison.
That's pretty odd, so far in Singapore only the F138 and the Podium and Finish Line sets have been released. I wonder where the guy got his from?
^^ The stickered pieces? Ah yes, they should be the other way round, thanks. I'll swap them.
too much cheat parts... What else you can build with that GTO nose? Another GTO (same color and same size BTW) I'm not sold on those...
Do you think if they are going to appear in Turkey ?
Did the last lot? If so, yes I expect so.
This review confirms what I suspected - the designs for this wave are leaps ahead of the first one. I'm impressed with how much detail has been packed into the F138, and the spoiler on the 250 GTO is pure genius. Can't wait to see more angles of the mini fuel tanker.
Lawd knows how long I'll have to wait for some nice car-owning person to put the lot up for sale, so that this poor bugger can have them. I'm pretty jealous of you right now, Huw!
Can't wait to see these appear in the Netherlands! My dad has a tank card from his job which allows him to tank at Shell for free. The 250 GTO has got to be my favourite Ferrari ever, but whow, the F138 and the Berlinetta have such nice models and construction! MUST. GET.
I still have an FXX polybag unopened from the previous series, i'm probably going to give it away on my YouTube channel in a while - i'm not trying to advertise at all, but still. Besides that one i have the entire series assembled, and an extra trailer built up for the truck.
That 1x1 lime green plate extra piece with the F1 car is the reason why I have 2 of the 150 Italia in my lot. However the F138 this time has only one sticker for the nose... Unlike the 150 Italia which had 2 stickers for the nose...
I hope this promo reaches Malaysia soon...
When it does I'll be getting 2 of the F138. And hope the F14T will be featured in the next promo...
Ooh. Those blue pieces look a heck of a lot more useful than the Cars 2 ones. The Le Mans looks really bad, though...
you can buy the sets at all german shell stations until 30th october 2014
To Huw and the rest, it seems the complete set has been released here ahead of schedule. I am not sure why they released the rest early when the last one to be released was the Finish Line set.