Clever bricks recreate Mt Panorama
/Honda has laid claim to a Holden versus Ford battleground.
BUILDING a Lego race car … well, who hasn’t done that?
Creating a famous race circuit with those plastic bricks is a different story.
As a promo for its Lego Masters television programme, Australia’s Channel Nine has team with our neighbour’s Honda distributor and a professional assembler to create the Mt Panorama circuit at Bathurst, New South Wales, out of the interlocking materials, but with a twist to suit the backer.
Mount Hondarama is a neat follow-up to last year’s commission involving the car brand and Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught, a life-sized Civic Type R hot hatch, as just on a year ago former Formula One champion Jenson Button set a benchmark lap time for a front-wheel drive production car around the famous Bathurst layout.
Obviously Mt Hondarama isn’t to the same life-sized scale as the real thing, but its still pretty substantial, being 3.3 metres long and 1.8 metres wide, weighing approximately 210kg and involving a team of eight builders, who used more than 150,000 bricks and were working for more than 650 hours.
So, a big job, but still rather less of a challenge than the Civic Type R, which used more than 320,000 bricks and took more 1300 hours.
Adding to the special flavour is the use of extremely rare LEGO remote control cars.
“The biggest challenge for us this year is the fact that we’ve got lots of moving pieces. Moving parts are very challenging to do with LEGO, let alone having cars actually racing around a LEGO model,” said ‘The Brickman’, who is credentialed as a ‘LEGO Certified Professional’.
“Our mantra is to grab people’s attention with something obvious and then hold their attention with lots of special details and fun things. One of the great things about LEGO bricks is that you can bring dreams to life and that’s exactly what we’ve been able to do with all of Honda’s products.”
Robert Thorp, Honda Australia’s general manager of product, customer and communications, views the work as being “a Honda dreamscape, a graphic representation to reflect Honda’s values and the joy of creating.”
Mount Hondarama includes many of Honda’s most recognised products transformed into LEGO, including its latest cars, motorcycles and power equipment, along with some iconic cars from years gone by. There is also a Honda dealership and service centre, a F1 car to represent Honda’s global motorsport activities, as well as the truly unique HondaJet, which is the fastest, highest-flying, quietest and most fuel-efficient jet in its class. But no sign of bogans along Skyline.
