Believe it or not, the Lego Bugatti Chiron moves

Andy Wallace famously set a world speed record in a McLaren F1. On 31 March 1998, he strapped himself into the three-seat, V12-engined hypercar, set the steering wheel straight along VW’s Ehra-Lessien circuit, and floored it.

He managed a whopping 240.1mph, scoring a top speed world record in the process. Though that figure has today been eclipsed by the likes of Bugatti, Hennessey and Koenigsegg, it remains the fastest top speed for a car powered by a naturally aspirated engine.

Scary run, too, according to Andy. “The car only had 626bhp,” he tells TopGear.com, “so therefore it had low drag, and low downforce… and really started to wander. When you watch the video, you don’t really see a lot, but if a car’s wandering at 200mph+, it’s really quite scary.

“There are a lot of trees along that stretch. If anything goes wrong, you’re in trouble,” he adds.

The reason he’s recounting this story is because he’s now driving something altogether a lot slower at Ehra-Lessien. And less terrifying. He’s driving a full-size, movable Lego Bugatti Chiron. Yeah, that one. The one with over one million bricks, nearly 3,000 Lego Power Function Motors and 5.2bhp.

“Honestly, I spent so many hours messing around with Lego when I was younger. And then to hear that when you’re older, you’re going to drive a full-size Lego car you think ‘yeah, whatever’. When they first contacted me about driving it, my response was ‘duh, yeah’.”

So what was it like to drive a one-off, non-glued Lego Technic hypercar?

“Sitting on Lego bricks, with your feet way up high wasn’t very comfortable,” he laughingly tells TG. “Though it wasn’t falling apart and shaking. And the electric motors were actually quite smooth.

“It was alright.”

It’s capable of a theoretical top speed of 18mph… though they’ve not yet reached that figure just yet. Head over to Lego’s YouTube page to see it in action (external site).