Speed Champions

McLaren Solus GT & McLaren F1 LM

Two wildly different McLarens in one box, and the little jet-canopy one stole my whole afternoon.

Brick Rated Score

4.4/5

Set 76918 · 2023

Pieces587

Minifigs2

Year2023

Set number76918

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The verdict

This is one of those Speed Champions boxes where I expected a quick, tidy build and instead got genuinely surprised.

The Solus GT is the star, a single-seater with a sliding jet-fighter canopy, and it uses building tricks I didn't see coming. The orange F1 LM is the more familiar shape but it carries a pile of hard-to-find recolors. At its old $34.99 for two cars and two figures, this was some of the best value in the whole 2023 lineup.

Best for: car fans who want a clever, non-repetitive build for pocket money, not just a shelf piece

The full review

What it is

I went into this one expecting a fast, forgettable little pack and the Solus GT completely changed my mind. It's the track-only single-seater McLaren that started life as a Gran Turismo video game concept, and in brick form it has a sliding canopy over one central seat, which is such a strange and specific thing to recreate at this scale. The mix of colors is bright and the shaping is proper clever, LEGO pushed it to nine studs wide instead of the usual eight so the body actually reads as low and wide the way the real car does. Sat next to it, the orange F1 LM is the tribute act, a road-going homage to the McLaren that won Le Mans in 1995, and it's instantly recognizable in that loud papaya orange with the center-seat interior. Two very different McLarens, two different decades, one box.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about where it wobbles. Both cars are single-seaters, which is faithful to the real thing but does mean you can't pose a driver and passenger, and the two included figures end up standing around rather than riding along. The F1 LM is also the plainer build of the pair. After the Solus surprises you with its canopy and angles, the LM feels more like a standard Speed Champions car, competent but expected. And the honest catch now is timing. This set retired at the end of 2024, so that friendly $34.99 price is gone and you're paying a bit of a premium to still get one sealed.

Who it's for

If you like cars and you want a build that keeps you guessing rather than one that just clicks together, this is an easy one to love, and the Solus alone justifies it for me. Parts hunters will want it too, because the orange recolors here are genuinely useful in other projects. The people I'd steer elsewhere are collectors chasing display drama, since neither car is huge, and anyone who only cares about famous badges may not know the Solus at all. But that obscurity is part of why I found it so charming.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building the Solus GT is the good kind of unpredictable. It doesn't assemble the way you assume a small car will, and there are a few moments where you place something sideways or at an angle and only later see why. The sliding canopy is the showpiece, and getting that low, wide, nine-stud body to hold its shape is where the interesting techniques hide. The F1 LM is more straightforward, a steady, satisfying build that leans on curved slopes to nail its rounded 90s silhouette.

For parts people there's a lot to like. There's a new 6x4 windscreen with a subtle, generic print that's great for your own cars, plus new round-ended plates with holes and a 1x4 round plate carrying a printed McLaren logo. The headlights on the Solus are printed black wedge plates. On the recolor side there are around eleven, including brick round quarter domes and brackets appearing in white for the first time, and a stack of orange brackets, inverted brackets and paddles produced to skin the F1 LM. Those orange elements are the quiet reason parts collectors kept buying this one.

Fun facts

01The real Solus GT began as the 2017 Ultimate Vision Gran Turismo, a car designed for the PlayStation game Gran Turismo Sport before McLaren decided to actually build it.
02The Solus GT is a single-seater with a sliding jet-fighter-style canopy and a 5.2 litre V10 that revs to 10,000 rpm, and only 25 were made, all sold before the public reveal.
03The F1 LM celebrates the McLaren F1 GTR's overall win at the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans, and just a handful of the road-going LM were ever produced.
04Both minifigures in the set are exclusive to this box, and the parts include new torsos with McLaren hoodie and jumpsuit prints.