Well, one of the two of them is the evil twin, I'm just not sure which is which...

Not a good era for City. The cars, I swear, look like boats with wheels. 50 pieces is within the polybag part size range, yet it is stretched between two cars.

Unfortunately, we're headed down this same direction, with 4+ now in basically every theme, as opposed to split off as its own theme.

Abomination in ABS. How Lego car design could fall so far in two short years baffled my child brain as it does now. I mean, look at the cars in 1994's "Hot Rod Club" and now look at this thing from four years later. Four more years of advancement? HAH! How cruel!

Look at Mr. "V8 POWER" first. No headlights or tail-lights. No doors whatsoever. Lame, one-piece chassis that the wheels perfunctorily pop on to. Heck, you could argue the "V8 POWER" printed brick is a lie as well, since the "engine block" (to describe it in impressionistic terms) only has 6 "pistons" (read: studs).

The police vehicle fares no better. Now we have PRINTED headlights! Oh great! Just what I always wanted! Who wanted a more engaging build experience and some cool translucent plates or studs? Not poor children discovering Lego Town in 1998, I suppose. Did the focus/test groups in Germany all come back to say, "You know, my child doesn't really understand why cars have doors or headlights or any variety of shape beyond a standard 5-year-old's crayon doodle. Better make the cars like that"?

Thank Kjeld we at least had Insectoids, Adventurers, and Cyber Slam that year. That, and extended shelf lives for sets pre-1998. It was a rough one, but at least Star Wars and Throwbots/Slizer was on the horizon for 1999. It would be many, many years before I picked up a current-year Town/City set after the horror of 1998.

@Lego_Lord_Mayorca said:
But tell us how you really feel.

By all estimations a pretty terrible set from a company that at that time had lost its way.

So glad Lego hit this low point when I was in my Dark Ages. Town sets became Juniorized and undesirable and lead to the near bankruptcy of the company.

What excellent value. Not just race, but chase as well.

I had this set. And while they may be some of the ugliest Lego cars ever made, I sure got a lot of play value out of them.

I grew up in this time of LEGO so I surprisingly like these bad 90s sets. I’m fully aware they are poorly designed, but nostalgia holds strong

@skypilot22 said:
"I had this set. And while they may be some of the ugliest Lego cars ever made, I sure got a lot of play value out of them."

Ditto! Despite what everyone is saying, yea it got a lot of play for sure. Most details? No. Free gift from grandma? Yes.

Building sets for kids who don't like building.

I wonder what happened to the set designers of this era. They must be about 27 by now.

@Rimefang said:
"Building sets for kids who don't like building. "

I mean... you're 100% right. This was the time period where Lego believed that kids were losing interest in Lego in favour of video games because video games gave a sense of "instant gratification", while Lego didn't. Trying to compete with that, they deliberately scaled back the designs, making them simpler in the hopes of - like you say - appealing to kids who they believed had no interest in building.

(I think the most extreme case of this was the Xalax Racers sets which comprised a grand total of FOUR PIECES (and a giant one-piece slammer-launcher) each. While I love those guys, regardless, for the interesting alien character designs, the building experience was frankly non-existent.)

It was only when they caught on that kids liked video games because of the sense of accomplishment they gave, rather than for the "instant gratification" thing, that Lego builds started to pick up again.

On another note... these remind me of the Sandy Bay cars from Lego Racers 2. These two weren't in the game, but they all displayed this same simple building style; and I played that game all the time as a kid, so it's really the only relevant memory I have to connect with these.