LEGO Speed Champions 1985 Audi Sport quattro S1

Part 0: Thoughts on the 2020 Speed Champions
The start of 2020 has brought with it a whole lot of new LEGO kits! There's new Marvel sets, new Star Wars sets, a new Creator building and; most importantly for me, new Speed Champions! I went ahead and and ordered three of the new kits along with the last 2019 Speed Champions set.

For anyone who haven't heard yet, these 2020 SC kits have changed from the standard 6-stud wide construction to a new 8-stud width. This should allow TLG's designers to more accurately design each vehicle and include more details. However the new width means more parts are used which means the price for the Speed Champions has been bumped up by $5.00...

As I mentioned the increased piece/price allows Speed Champions cars to look more detailed. Now each car have the proper two seats and a stick/e-brake in between the seats. So now our drivers aren't sitting in the dead middle of a weird single seat car. A great improvement!

However, I've had a few reservations with the new scale. Primarily the fact that the more curvy vehicles have looked off to me in the promotional materials. Because of this bias, I decided to begin my journey with the new SC width with the Audi Quattro S1. Since this vehicle comes straight from the 1980's I hoped the boxy proportions would translate well to LEGO.

Link to Speed Build:

Part 1: Main Build
I love the overall look of the Audi Quattro S1 in this new scale! The shape and colors were captured excellently by the designer. My favorite elements from the build are the rally headlights represented by a 2x2 right angle piece and three flat trans-clear pieces! Just like the old SC cars there are only a few large preformed pieces used in the build. There are two 2x6 modified bricks used for the axles, a large 6x8 trap door piece used on the bottom of the Quattro and a large chassis piece used to attach the door panels.

Pictures of Quattro After Bag 1

There are a total three printed pieces included with in the box, the hood and two 2x3 wedge pieces. Every other detail shown on the finished model is a stick. The stickers include:

• Audi logo on the front grill
• Audi logo on the roof
• Audi Team logo on the wind shield
• Audi sport logos on either side of the printed hood
• Quattro logos on the rear quarter panels
• grill detail between the hood and wind shield
• yellow stripe detail on the 2x2 triangular plate, 2x1 cheese slope, 2x4 plate (includes #5 detail)
• Audi Team logo on the rear spoiler 
• vent detail between spoiler and rear wind shield
• license plate on rear spoiler
• and rear bumper grill detail 

I know people complain a lot about Speed Champions and the amount of stickers required to complete the models. It seems that the 2020 cars have only increased the number of stickers required. Hopefully the larger size allows enterprising builders some leeway in substituting parts to make clean builds.

Finished Kit

The final build is really solid in the hand. I have very few fears of the Quattro falling apart, aside from taking a fall from a shelf. Two build techniques stood out to me after I finished the Quattro.  The first was the use of the clear mini-figure handle piece to attach the exhaust pipe to the bottom of the vehicle. The other technique was the sub build for the rear lights. The sub build is all kinds of SNOT and is placed on the final build so that it sticks out by less than a half plate. I think that's adds a really neat dimension to the rear of the vehicle!

Part 2: Mini-Figure
There's only one figure included with the Quattro, the driver. His race suit is majority white with some stitching and yellow detail provided by prints. Two facial expressions can be seen, one of happy confidence and another of utter terror. The terror face seems appropriate since this Quattro comes straight from FIA's old Group B races which were extremely dangerous. TLG outfitted the driver with a plain white helmet and an alternate brown hair piece.

Part 3: Conclusion
The Quattro ended up looking more like a small scale car model rather than a LEGO "toy" car. While I'm glad that the new scale allows Speed Champions to resemble the source vehicles better, I am bummed that SC will no longer fit in with the rest of the LEGO City cars. I currently have the two cars from the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and 1970 Dodge Charger R/T kit next to Quattro. The Quattro just absolutely dwarfs them. There's no way that these car will look at all in place alongside the 6-stud vehicles TLG has made for years. Oh well. In contrast, the quattro looks fine next to other scale model cars or each the larger Creator Expect vehicles, like the Mustang or Fat Boy.

Having more pieces has allowed each car to be more visually striking while on display. Because of that, I think I'm also at peace with the increase of the price for Speed Champions. I keep looking at both the Quattro and the newly completed GTR (review coming) and I'm struck by how much the just don't look like toy cars. I think that's a great trade for having to spend $5 more bucks per vehicle.

I'm also quite happy that none of the single vehicle kits this year include a side build. I've found myself not knowing what to do with the previous ones and end up just parting them out. Hopefully TLG keeps that trend going.

I'll also take the opportunity the new year offers to introduce a new aspect to these "reviews." From here forward I'll be adding a three value rating system. A kit can be either "Good", "Meh", or "Pass." These ratings may also be depicted pictorially by a thumbs up, shaky-hand and thumbs down from time to time. Initially the rating will just be for the overall kit but I hope to expand to a variety of categories.

Alright, drum roll please...

From imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/tlsNOJ8

The Speed Champions Audi Quattro S1 gets a solid "Good"!

Now I'm off to edit the GTR video and build the new Ferrari!