Painstakingly Detailed Lego Volvo Wagon Goes Beyond Every Other Build You’ve Seen

The definition of a project car is nebulous, and a Swedish enthusiast just stretched it significantly by building a life-sized replica of a Volvo V70 wagon using Lego bricks. While that’s a Herculean task (you can’t buy this kit from the nearest store), this build becomes even more impressive when you discover the long list of functional features included—it might be the best-equipped Lego car we’ve ever seen.

The project is fully documented on an Instagram page called Brick Scale, and the first post is over four years old. This tells you the amount of thought that went into building a life-sized Lego replica of a V70. It starts pretty much the same way every Lego build starts: With a whole lot of loose bricks. The difference between this build and, say, the F1 cars is that the bricks come in cases, not in little plastic bags.

Brick by brick, the Volvo comes together. The builder uses his real V70 as a reference point, but there are no building instructions available, so the project is entirely improvised. With that said, the proportions are astonishingly accurate. The steering wheel is spot on (it even has a little Volvo logo in the middle!), the rear lights are functional, and the door mirrors are both power-adjustable and power-folding. The so-called Waterfall center console, a gorgeous styling element that Volvo put in many of its cars in the 2010s, is accurately replicated as well.

Not every part of the wagon is made with bricks. The body is attached to a custom-built steel frame, which presumably gives the car the structural rigidity it needs to stay together. There’s no engine, though a remote-controlled electric motor allows it to move slowly under its own power. And, the wagon rolls on real wheels wrapped with real tires. Brick Scale took the V70 through Sweden’s safety and emissions inspections just for fun. The results? “They didn’t like the fact that a 3,300-pound car lacks brakes.” At least it probably passed emissions.

For context, a European-market 2010 V70 weighs between 3,454 and 3,974 pounds, depending on how it’s configured. Volvo offered three engines, including a much-missed 2.5-liter turbocharged five-cylinder. The Lego is not much lighter than the real thing, then, which is impressive considering it doesn’t have a drivetrain, a suspension system, air conditioning, and so on. Adding a remote-controlled electric motor was seemingly a wise decision. We still have so many questions. For example, how many bricks does it take to build a life-sized car?

Brick Scale’s V70 is currently on a little tour with several stops across Sweden and one event in Riga, Latvia. What happens after that isn’t clear, but we’re hoping the car either ends up in the Volvo collection, which already includes a first-generation XC90 made out of Lego bricks, or goes to Lego headquarters, where it would look amazing. And, who knows, maybe it will spawn a (much) smaller V70 kit!

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