Review: 42161 Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica
Posted by Huw,
42161 Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica is the latest in a line of 1:16 scale supercars which are easy to display and relatively affordable.
Unlike the similarly-scaled 42151 Bugatti Bolide introduced earlier this year, this vehicle has a more conventional appearance so is likely to have broader appeal.
Summary
42161 Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica, 806 pieces.
£46.99 / $49.99 / €52.99 | 5.8p/6.2c/6.6c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
A compact model that's easy to display, but marred by colour matching issues
- Displays well with other recent similar scale supercars
- Not reliant on stickers for aesthetics
- Some yellow-y pieces
- Limited functionality
- Inaccurate wheels and tyres
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The prototype
The 5.2 litre V10 630bhp Huracán Tecnica was introduced last year and is said to be the last iteration of the Italian manufacturer's best-selling model before it adopts hybrid technology for its sports cars.
The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50) will set you back around £212,000.
Stickers
As this is a road car and not a racing vehicle covered with sponsor's logos the sticker sheet is minimal, with most of them being used inside to provide details on the dashboard and seats.
The completed model
The model measures 28cm long, 12cm wide and has a wheelbase of 16cm which makes it approximately 1:16 in scale, the same as 42123 McLaren Senna GTR and 42151 Bugatti Bolide.
The small panels introduced over the last couple of years have made it possible to create cars at this scale which resemble the vehicles they are based on fairly well, and this is no exception.
There are a few unsightly gaps, most notably above the rear wheels, but I think it's pretty good otherwise.
The real vehicle has distinctive wheels which have a hexagonal pattern, so it's unfortunate that generic ones have been used here, with tyres that have too large a sidewall. I guess the budget for development did not cover investment in new moulds that would have little use elsewhere.
The model is very much style over substance and there is not much functionality. The right rear wheel is connected to the pretend cylinder heads which thus go up and down as the vehicle is pushed along, and steering is accomplished using the gear on the roof.
Other than that, the doors and bonnet open.
Lamborghinis are available in a range of colours, but you wouldn't know it from LEGO's models, which always seem to be lime green, or Verde Mantis, as the manufacturer calls it.
Unfortunately, the colour matching issue which plagued 42115 Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 three years ago has not been resolved and certain pieces, most notably 6326619 (SINGLE BUSH 2 MODULE, DIA. 4,9) and others like it, look much more yellow-y than they should as you can see in the photo below.
This detracts considerably from the overall appearance, and it's disappointing that (a) the problem has not been resolved and (b) knowing that it hadn't been, or can't be, that this model was produced in the colour when there is a whole palette of others that the vehicle is made in to choose from. Giallo Inti, or yellow to you and me, would have been my choice.
Verdict
This is a decent model that captures the shape and curves of the sleek supercar fairly well. Its compact size makes it easy to display, so is ideally suited to having on your desk at work or a bookshelf, for example.
It's not a model for those who are looking for functionality and a fun play experience, but that's OK, there are other sets in this year's assortment that offer that.
It's unfortunate that the colour matching problem remains but other than that there's not really much I can fault given the nature of the model.
It looks great next to the yellow Bugatti, and no doubt next to the blue variant too, once I've built it!
The 806-piece set is released on 1st August priced at £46.99 / $49.99 / €52.99.
67 likes
29 comments on this article
Great review. As someone who isn’t a car fan and knows nothing about them, these all look the same to me haha.
I have a few of these scale but they just dont look quite right, its the scale and the parts pack (technic) but no doubt ill get one at the £30-£35 mark when its discounted.
Umming and arring about the Mustang even at that price.
Where did you get cheaper from? its £2 more than the Bolides?
Once again, I think to myself, man, these sets would be way better with windshields, though must concede that making screens for these types of sets would be ultimately very difficult to make the screens not just a onetime use.
As someone that repairs and reworks old Matchbox cars(for fun), green is one of my least favourite colours to use or try to colour match, so I can sympathise slightly at the miss matched colours.
Saying that though, a darker shade is definitely needed for this one, I wonder what fans of this car think about it.
I'm not a Technic guy but I like the look of this. I like the scale and the panelling appears to do a better job of approximating the bodywork than a lot of other Technic cars I've seen. The bright green looks great too!
I am growing to quite like this size of Technic supercars, but boy does that colour mismatching jump out and poke you in the eye. Might have been better to have used contrasting colours, and claimed that it was a feature!
@monkyby87 said:
"Great review. As someone who isn’t a car fan and knows nothing about them, these all look the same to me haha. "
I used to be a car fan, back in the day when supercars could indeed be told apart.
Nowadays they all look the same to me too.
Show me the current Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini etc. lineup, and I probably couldn't tell you which was which.
Now display these cars next to one another:
Lamborghini Countach
Ferrari F40
Porsche 959
Jaguar XJ220
And tell me these look anything alike.
Or even just a manufacturers lineup like Ferrari back then:
F40
Testarossa
288 GTO
348
Again, each one distinctly different from the next.
I love Lamborghinis!
And I think this one looks pretty good - I’ll eventually pick it up on sale.
To me, from those photos, the colour mismatch is not particularly noticeable. Maybe it looks worse in the flesh.
In any event, I agree with Huw that LEGO should try a range of colours - purple would be amazing, or orange! Failing that, red or yellow works just fine too.
@lemish34 said:
"I love Lamborghinis!
And I think this one looks pretty good - I’ll eventually pick it up on sale.
To me, from those photos, the colour mismatch is not particularly noticeable. Maybe it looks worse in the flesh.
In any event, I agree with Huw that LEGO should try a range of colours - purple would be amazing, or orange! Failing that, red or yellow works just fine too."
I guess red=Ferrari and orange=Porsche/McLaren as far as LEGO is concerned but purple would indeed be amazing!
This isn't Technic.
Does it fit on 42098 Car Transporter?
If so, then that's my one pretty much full!
@lemish34, Huw: My mom is in no way a car person, but definitely loves purple, so I think she'd agree with you there. Blue's my favorite color, but I think it would look striking in white.
@jh84007 said:
"Does it fit on 42098 Car Transporter?
If so, then that's my one pretty much full!"
It does... It would be rather good if they launched a new updated one!
“The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50)”
Bit of a flex there?
We can’t all have electric BMW’s Huw.
@PolarMammoth said:
"“The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50)”
Bit of a flex there?
We can’t all have electric BMW’s Huw. "
No, but more people can than own a Lambo :-)
I was surprised how sluggish this car is given its price and credentials. Of course it has a higher top speed and will handle better on the race track, but in a standing start from traffic lights I could just about keep up :)
These all seem to seriously blend together. Didn't we get that black and yellow car just this year too? It really doesn't help that they keep doing sport cars and that this one (and I believe the orange one) both exist as a car of this scale and as a 'supercar' gigantic set with premium box that they make at least one of every year now.
C'mon, whatever happened to keeping an (apparently succesful) set around for longer if it's (apparently?) popular. Do we need a new one of basically the same set so often?
It doesn't help that we've also had Speed Champions for (again) nearly 10 years now. I understand that I'm not a car fan, but are there not more 'kinds' of car they could do at least?
@PolarMammoth said:
"“The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50)”
Bit of a flex there?
We can’t all have electric BMW’s Huw. "
I didn't read it that way. I've read it like Huw was surprised by the tiny difference between a "low production car" and a "mass production" car.
As I was too.
If LEGO doesn't want to make certain Technic Pins in various colors (Lime and Black in car at hand), at least they could make simple caps in those colors to cover the distracting blue pins.
Cool idea or?
@ineedabrick said:
"If LEGO doesn't want to make certain Technic Pins in various colors (Lime and Black in car at hand), at least they could make simple caps in those colors to cover the distracting blue pins.
Cool idea or?"
That is a good idea, but that would create protrusions that might look odd.
To some of the comments about supercars, there is actually decent variety across the past 5 years of this class of Technic vehicles, which I'm roughly defining as $50US, 500--900 pieces, fits a Technic figure, look ok together scale-wise:
Lamborghini Huracán
Bugatti Bolide (blue + yellow)
NASCAR® Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Jeep Wrangler
Ford Mustang Shelby GT500
McLaren Senna GTR™
Formula E® Porsche 99X Electric
Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
First Responder
And that's excluding the blue muscle car included with the Car Transporter, which I dearly wish had been a separate set.
I'd argue that even if you made them all in the same colors, there are 5 distinct shape forms among those 9 sets:
Huracan & Bolide
NASCAR & Mustang
Wrangler & First Responder
Corvette & Senna
Porsche 99x
The ~$100 cars also have a decent mix, arguably just the Batmobile and Dom's Charger lumping together:
Ford GT
Batmobile
Ford F-150
Dom's Dodge Charger
Rally Car
The ~$200 cars from the past 5 years are largely pretty distinct from each other, arguably just the 488 and 911 lumping together:
Peugeot 9x8 Le Mans
McLaren Formula 1
Ferrari 488
Porsche 911 RSR
Land Rover
And those last two lists are both setting aside the Concrete Mixer, Heavy Duty Tow Truck, and Mack Anthem, which are also very broadly similar scale vehicles that you could imagine seeing on the street and are in those price ranges, as opposed to the more esoteric construction and other technical vehicles.
@PhantomBricks said:
" @ineedabrick said:
"If LEGO doesn't want to make certain Technic Pins in various colors (Lime and Black in car at hand), at least they could make simple caps in those colors to cover the distracting blue pins.
Cool idea or?"
That is a good idea, but that would create protrusions that might look odd."
They would have to be really thin at the top. I was thinking of some rubber (and lots of extras because of disassembling) , similar to those attachments they did for better traction on the links (part 24375).
But yeah, it wouldn't work in certain places, but would work in some others. In this car I think that Lime caps would work on the mudguards neatly.
@Huw said:
" @PolarMammoth said:
"“The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50)”
Bit of a flex there?
We can’t all have electric BMW’s Huw. "
No, but more people can than own a Lambo :-)
I was surprised how sluggish this car is given its price and credentials. Of course it has a higher top speed and will handle better on the race track, but in a standing start from traffic lights I could just about keep up :)
"
Electric cars have higher torque than ICE vehicles because they essentially have one gear - the vehicle is basically at full torque the moment you turn it on.
Thus, even the finest-tuned ICE supercars will struggle against even mass-market electric vehicles from a standing start. They may have a higher top speed or more power overall, but they have to move up through 3-4 gear changes before they can really get going.
Apologies to actual gearheads if I’ve gotten any of this wrong, my knowledge is a bit limited.
As quick as EV's are, fun is rarely a straight line. And that's where every EV (well, apart from maybe a Rimac) will struggle against a proper sports car, mostly just because of their weight.
A Dutch car magazine does a yearly "Supertest" at the Assen TT Circuit with a wide variety of performance cars. In the latest edition, a humble Toyota GR Yaris with just 265 horsepower not just beat but downright annihilated every EV in the test, including an i4 M50 and a Taycan Turbo S. And for what it's worth also a bunch of ICE-powered heavyweights like a Cayenne with more than double the horsepower and a few performance saloons. One of the very few cars that was quicker around the track than the Yaris? Indeed, a Huracán....
Also keep in mind this Huracán has just two wheels to put all of it's power on the track. 3.2 seconds for any RWD car regardless of power source is just blistering fast, even F1 cars aren't that much quicker. It sure will be relatively slow off the line, but will make up for that in the later part of the sprint. En then it's just getting started. From 100 to 200 the Huracán is almost twice as fast as the i4 M50. Dare I say checkmate? Performance of such sports cars starts where even most high performance "normal" cars end....
But back to Lego, I think this set looks pretty good, and apart from the lack of a differential, there's just not much more functionality to expect at this scale. So okay set at an okay price. It's just a shame that Lego can't seem to solve its quality issues, or worse, simply doesn't seem to care. And considering the number of sports cars they make, you'd think they could come up with some more appropriate rims and tires. And then maybe with some inserts similar to what they do with Speed Champions?
@PolarMammoth said:
"“The supercar, which reaches 60mph in 3.2 seconds (just 0.3s less than my electric BMW i4 M50)”
Bit of a flex there?
We can’t all have electric BMW’s Huw. "
Indeed. Some of us have to make do with a Tesla.
;-)
@AustinPowers said:
"Indeed. Some of us have to make do with a Tesla.
;-) "
...or with an old Alfa Romeo that's slower from 1-100 than that Huracán from 0-200. Or a Koenigsegg Regera from 0-300.....
(yet it's too fast for the i4!)
I have a few of these cars now and they display well together on a shelf, as well as quite playable with a group of toddlers who enjoy the steering, moving pistons but find it quite frustrating that they cannot break as easily as City cars.
I see that @Huw has discovered the perfect way to 'generate engagement' with any performance car Lego set review - describe how similar his own car's 0-60 is to the real life version of the set, and act surprised that people think it's a flex.
I too knew it was a bit of a flex, just wanted to make sure someone who actually knows cars to explain the real difference between a hypercar and a 'fast-ish' electric. And the answer to that is nowhere near the 0-60 number.
I love Lambos. I'll probably get this eventually. I haven't got the Sian yet though, so I'll wait until it goes down in price...
Viola pasifae would have looked outstanding, using the same color as on the Arctic Extreme tracked truck. Too bad they chose ugly green.
Fantastic set, but in Ukraine not everyone buys a TOY for 1846 hryvnas (Because that's a lot!), so I'm sad i can't buy it. But hey, i can say this for almost all Technic sets larger than polybags. Just too expensive :( . By the way, good review!