Review: 75871 Ford Mustang GT
Posted by CapnRex101,
The first wave of Speed Champions sets focused primarily on European supercars but the second wave has crossed the Atlantic in search of some American sports and muscle cars. 75871 Ford Mustang GT is one such set, priced at £12.99 or $14.99 and containing 185 pieces.
This was the first of the new Speed Champions sets which I purchased and I am delighted with the results. Read on to find out why...
Minifigure
As with all of the Speed Champions sets a driver is included and this one is printed with a white racing suit on the front and back of the torso. This is the first time that the Ford branding has appeared in a LEGO set and it looks splendid.
The contrast between white and dark blue used on the uniform looks great and the minifigure wears a crash helmet with a standard flip-up visor. It would be nice to see some printing on the helmets in future, although plain white looks perfectly fine. The driver is equipped with a spanner which can be used to remove the wheel alloys from the car.
The Completed Model
This is the first Speed Champions set to feature a predominantly blue colour scheme and I like it very much. The shaping of the bodywork is quite impressive considering the scale and it looks good from almost every angle, with a suitably beefy but sleek profile which is faithful to the real car.
The nose is one of my favourite sections of the model and is decorated using several stickers. The radiator is inset slightly and looks particularly authentic with the famed Mustang emblem also included. A white stripe runs from the front of the car all the way to the rear and there are very few breaks in the design along with way, with only very tiny gaps. These are caused by minor spacing between the stickers, 18 of which are included. I should also mention that some brightly coloured elements are used for the internal structure of the car and most of this is not visible but the edges of a green 2x3 plate can be seen beneath the stripe, which is slightly irritating.
The white slope at the front is actually a new element: a 2x3 curved slope. This is not entirely necessary here as a pair of 1x3 slopes would have been just as effective but I am sure this slightly larger piece will prove useful in other scenarios. The 1x2 baby bows on either side of the white stripe are very successful in forming a curved shape around the headlights which are represented using stickers on either side. When looking at the vehicle from the front these headlights are hardly visible which is a bit of a shame, although I cannot think of an alternative to rectify this.
I like the view from the side as well, particularly thanks to the inset 1x4 tiles which represent the curved bodywork of the real car nicely. Some models were criticised for their excessive length in relation to their height and width last year but I think the designer of the Ford Mustang has found an appropriate balance.
Inside the cockpit is a steering wheel and a seat. The driver would look a little better if he was offset to one side in my opinion but this might impact upon the external appearance of the car so I am satisfied to seat him in the middle. The windscreen looks fantastic and the stickers representing the rear side windows are reasonably effective. Three more stickers are used for the rear windscreen and this looks fine, although there are a couple of noticeable gaps between the stickers which cannot be avoided.
The rear profile is typically impressive on Speed Champions cars and this one is no exception. The twin exhausts are represented nicely using 1L Technic connectors and I like the stickers which are applied to form the taillights and Ford Mustang GT branding.
A lap time indicator is also included. This is a very simple assembly consisting of just six pieces but it might provide some additional play value so makes a nice addition to the set.
Overall
I had mixed feelings on the first wave of Speed Champions sets but this one is off to an excellent start. The Ford Mustang GT is a well known car and I think this model replicates its design quite well on the whole. The headlights are not perfect and I would have preferred to see the driver seated towards the left, but those are minor issues and I certainly recommend this set.
More Speed Champions reviews will be posted in the coming days and we will also be covering the new Elves and Super Heroes ranges, so keep an eye on the homepage!
35 likes
20 comments on this article
For me, these are the perfect go between for someone that is into both LEGO and scale model cars. I've always loved scale modeling, but either through lack of patience, lack of skill, or lack of confidence, I'm simply never happy with the end result of a model kit - it never meets my expectations. To me this is sort of like a very mild take on scale model cars, as envisioned by LEGO. I love seeing the variety of car brands, and with the Drag Race and Model A sets, I'm psyched to see some older hot rod cars in the mix as well. I'll cross my fingers for some more old rides, though I doubt we'd see any non-hot rod vintage cars.
I was hoping to buy two Mustangs and two Corvettes, and to MOC a blue Corvette. Hoping there's no pieces that are unavailable between the two colors (as I'd make a yellow Mustang then as well).
Good set, even though it looks bad directly from the front.
It's a shame that Lego got the Ford branding, but didn't utilise it properly. I mean, if you're going to make FAST fords, the first things somebody who knows the brand well (or any car enthusiast) would think of is a Mustang, a GT and some type of RS. They made a Mustang, but not the others. It would fit perfectly too, what with the new GT and Focus RS going on sale soon.
Hopefully the Ford branding means that the 2017 Ford GT might be coming to the SC or Expert lines...
The entire Speed Champions line is inherrently flawed by the narrow windscreen: the 4-wide windscreen on the 6-wide body looks just awful.
It is really difficult to understand why a new windscreen was not designed for this new theme.
How good the car could look with a wider windscreen is demonstrated by the very nice profile of the car.
Hey guys, I found the angry birds movie series sets at store in Poland
The flaw with these is that they're all based on the same chassis. In this wave the Mustang, Audi R-8 and Corvette look pretty good. But the R-18, although looking interesting, needs to be another 2 studs wider to really capture the right look, as did the La Ferrari in the previous wave.
It was only the twin-pack of Porsches that really got it right last time, and this time, the red Porsche 917K in the pit garage set looks like the best of the lot.
@bok2: Both of the windscreens used on Speed Champions sets (except the one in the hot rod set) were made for this theme last year.
I go back and forth in wanting these. While the cars look good for what can be done in LEGO scale, they have too many stickers. I think the only thing that would make these a must have is if MOPAR is in the next wave.
I'm not a fan of stickers, but on these car builds, they are perfect! This makes these sets more like models [eg: the plastic ones you'd put together and glue/snap together and apply decals to]. It makes the LEGO build process a completely different thing, though, as you have to pause quite often to take time to apply the stickers [the two Porsche set has something like 80 of them!]. I can appreciate that, though.
What I can't appreciate or understand is the use of bright green! You can see the green bricks under the white tile on the hood and it's distracting. Why not use the same blue, since tile pieces don't sit flush? [or better yet, white!]
I really don't like the gaps in the stickers, and the color scheme is just... dull. No buy for me.
I just can't get past the way the stickers for the headlights are being used.. I know on the real Mustang the headlights are visible from the sides, but the aggressiveness from the front view is completely gone on the Lego version..
Literally the only thing that bothers me about these sets is their lack of rear view mirrors on either side. They just look... off, without them - like rolling boxes. I would probably collect many more of them otherwise. Haha
Since I live in China and it takes a while to get things here I made it using the photos I could find and the parts from my Ferrari. Check it out here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BCLLX_hGIig/?taken-by=77westy
I love this line. The pieces and wheels are a great jumping off point. I would really like the wheel wells in more colours, like black!
I wonder if it will contain part 6105731 like the other speed champion sets do? If it does, I will be buying this set 4 parts as I am trying to build set 5004590 BAT POD from spare parts for myself and it uses one of these pieces in its build.
I loved the Speed Champions sets, last year, and I really like the look of these as well. I'm not fond of the stickers (so IIRC I only used half of them and didn't bother with the rest of them), but the designs are so beautiful. I hope they end up available in Australia (because I haven't even seen them on the website). But the Mustang looks great.
Awful color to have. And it looks ugly with the stickers for the lights. A quick google and I see better sticker-less MOCs.
The problem with this theme is that pretty much only the Porsche branded cars are identifiable. If you remove the branding from the others it's almost laughable that these are meant to be the cars they claim to be. The F1 cars are recognisably F1 cars and the Hot Rod is pretty good but the rest are just Lego cars with branding.
This is honestly not a bad set at all. The only issue I got with this one is the tiny 5.0 stickers lol You made need help sticking those on. And a good thing about the Mustang being here is that you DO NOT have to build this as a Mustang.... Since now these Vehicles similarize in Body Style like the Aston Martin Vantage and Jaguar XKR have been compared as look-a-likes to the Mustang. Even the Porsche's 911 has the same build structure as the RUF's and even the Ginetta's. Since both of these are ALSO used in racing in real life, I'm looking to acquire some pieces and self build more. I may buy more of the small sets and work on possibly more of these but with different styles and names on them. If you know how to customize and make your own stickers and such, you can make your own Speed Champion Cars. I've already gone through 3 of the 7 sets and so far have yet to really be disappointed in any of these.
I would have been all over this entire series if the pieces were painted instead of the stickers. I would have even been willing to pay a bit more for them too.