Lego Nissan GT-R Nismo: The Build

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for a continuation of the unboxing and preview of Lego's Nissan GT-R Nismo set from their Speed Champions series. Earlier, I went through the contents of the relatively small Lego packaging. While today, I will be running through the process of this surprisingly detailed Lego kit.

The entire build is centered on the large black Lego piece which forms the "chassis" of the car. Together with the hood, front bumper and wheel arches, these are the only semi-custom pieces of Lego in the kit. Most every other piece can be found in a generic Lego kit. If you were to lose any of them, replacing it would be fairly easy.

Building a Lego is as simple as you'd expect and the detailed instructions only help to make the process smoother. The Lego GT-R does come with several stickers to apply. The first set are over the wheel archers. The instructions recommend applying the stickers after installing the part and for good reason. By applying the stickers second, you will get a good alignment of the sticker's pattern in relative to the piece next to it. Just make sure you lay down any adjacent Lego pieces first to get a good idea of their position.

Building from an inside towards outside process, I decided to make a small modification of my own to the car's layout. Instead of going with the original left hand drive layout, I switched it over to a right hand drive layout. The original world record setting car was a left hand drive model but, I liked the look of the right hand drive layout more.

Throughout the build, I was initially intrigued at certain build instructions including placing certain odd colored pieces in places that would not be seen. Such as the light yellow six piece block where the engine compartment would be. Only after assembling further did I realize that this was actually an actual reference to the GT-R's V6 engine!

Wit the first bag of Lego blocks depleted, the build was starting to approach some semblance of a the actual car. The four wheel arches and doors were in place but, nothing specific that would point out to it being a Nissan GT-R. Those finer details are the exact things that are saved for the second bag of parts.

Of all the parts that were assembled, I was particularly impressed with the rear bumper assembly which included the rear diffuser and exhaust pipes. The GT-R's signature quad tail pipes and the rear diffuser panel had many fine parts and the final product looked a lot better than I would have predicted.

Complementing the rear bumper are another GT-R staple, even more so in fact, with the quad-round "afterburner" tail lights. Just like the exhausts, the rear lights had a fairly unique build process. The use of clear red Lego pieces for the lights are simply spot on.

Because of the inherent design of cars, there were some interesting aspects that would be difficult to be recreated using Lego parts. As such, the team which designed the Lego kit has had to make some pretty interesting changes that would result in features not otherwise seen in the car itself. One of the most interesting ones is the rear window which can be opened up like a hatch!

The rear seats are completely omitted leaving only the front two seats. The fine red Lego planks alternating with the black planks formed the basis of the bucket seat's design. Another fine detail that was not immediately apparent when first building the car.

I was not expecting a functioning hood up front but, there was one too. This provided a pretty good view of the "VR38DETT" beneath it. It would have been really cool if Lego included a sticker of the engine itself but, that was not the case. At least, they got the number of cylinders correct.

One oddity with the front hood is that it cannot actually be opened once the full hood assembly is installed. In order to that, you will need to remove a small bit of Lego behind the hood which then allows for the hood to be opened. Otherwise, that piece blocks the hood from swiveling upwards.

On top of the four wheels provided, Lego also included 2 different set of rims for the GT-R. The one shown on the box emulated the world record setting car's 6 spoke RAYS NISMO rims. I went with the alternate five spoke design which reminded me of the iconic NISMO LM rims, something you never see on an R35.

I was initially skeptical about the stickers but, they turned out to be a really good fit. In fact, the entire car turned out to be much better than I had expected! Some details obviously could not be replicated in such a small model and a Lego one at that but, I am happy to report that the Lego design team really made sure to emulate the most iconic design aspects of the GT-R. In fact, I am so impressed with the entire Lego kit that I am already eyeing my next Speed Champions set, the new Toyota GR Supra!

Now that the Nissan GT-R is build together with its enthusiastic driver, all that is left is to do a full photo shoot and to find a suitable housing spot for it. And for that, I have just the spot in mind for it! In the meantime, if you have any questions about the Lego kit, do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section below. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!