Built in Bricks: LEGO Honda Civic Type R

‘I’m gonna pick up the pieces and build a Lego house…’. If you aren’t familiar with these popular lyrics, this is from Ed Sheeran’s song "Lego House". We’re not sure if Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught is an Ed fan, but he has picked up thousands of Lego pieces and built a Lego Honda Civic Type R car. He isn’t called "The Brickman" for nothing.

Weighing in at almost 2,900 pounds, the one-off version of the Honda Civic Type R is made entirely of Lego bricks - 320,000 to be precise!

So what is the story behind this ‘bricktacular’ masterpiece? 

Honda is the major sponsor of the recently launched show Lego Masters in Australia. To promote the series and Honda’s involvement, the giant car manufacturer decided to unveil the world’s first ever life-sized LEGO version of their very own icon – the Civic Type R.

Unlike previous Lego car builds like McLaren Senna and Bugatti Chiron, this Lego Honda Civic Type R is entirely made from the plastic modular pieces. Its wheels, tires, brakes, headlights, brakelights, and fog lights are all accurately replicated using Lego pieces, and are backlit and controlled through an iPad.

Spearheaded by Ryan McNaught, he and his team of lego brickies put each and every Lego pieces in place during a grueling process that took more than 1,300 hours to finish. Initially McNaught estimated there would be around 250,000 pieces, but they ended up using around 320,000.

Creating any life-size object is already a challenge, so to build an exact replica of the popular Honda Civic Type R hasn’t been a walk in the park. McNaught’s team took into account the car’s unconventional design given it's overly-designed hatch. To make sure they stayed true to the car’s design, McNaught build a digital version of what the car was going to look like via Lego Digital Designer. The team also had access to an actual Civic Type R when building its equivalent in bricks. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a smooth process. There were times when they needed to change and pivot the plan. Need less to say they created more than just one revision of the car.

The actual selection of the bricks was totally in the moment. What’s most impressive, is that they used standard Lego pieces only. Not even a single customised piece was used. According to McNaughts's creative team, the most challenging parts were recreating the Civic’s wild rear wing and its wispy windshield wipers.

The level of detail in this replica is spot on with its functional sporty look. After all, McNaught’s team pride themselves in being spot-on with Lego. However, no Lego replica can replace an actual car. 

If you're wanting to experience this epic creation in person, the car will be making appearances across the country over the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more details.