Summary

The Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS is arguably one of the most controversial flagship sets Lego has released in many years. Personally, I also think it is one of the most good looking, and as a result has been on my wish list for a while. Seeing that it would go OOP and finding it for a reasonable price on Bricklink, I bit the bullet and ordered the set.

The big box was finally opened last week, and I have spent the rest of the week putting it together in smallish increments. The end result is IMHO gorgeous, close to stunning. That said, it is in many ways an Ultimate Display Model made of Technic, rather than a traditional Technic (play) set.If your are looking for a Technic play set, this is not the model to go for, and frankly a waste of your money. If you are looking for a pure display model, for which only the outside counts, again, there are many better (and cheaper alternatives) that could easily be improved for little additional cost. If you are looking for the Technic equivalent of a Star Wars UCS set, hours of building fun, and the knowledge of what his hidden inside, than this is the set to go for.

The build itself was fun, interesting, and the result looks very good. To me, for its purpose - an eye-catching display set that offers a lot of fun to build - it is a very good set, and worth the money.

Build experience

Building this car takes a lot of time; in total it took me some 10 hours or so to put the 2700 pieces together. For reference, the 6000 piece Hogwarts Castle (set 71043) took me about 13 hours or so to build. The build itself is not extremely difficult. There are some tricky sequences and tight fits, and one has to pay attention to the manual, as it is easy to 'misconnect' parts and some images are not completely clear.

The build itself was a lot of fun, and at no point became tedious. There are some stickers (take your time applying them) but their application was not difficult at all.The build sequence makes sense, and feels in many ways as if you are actually putting a car together. It is also broken up - or can be broken up - in segments, allowing for group builds or stringing out the builds over numerous days. I am not sure about the number of spare parts, as on one or two occasions I had more pins left in the end then I had expected. All in all I would say that the build process was one of the most fun I have experienced yet for any Lego set.

The build

As implied in the summary, this is in many ways a niche product. It is not a play set at all, the only 'play' features (using the term loosely here) being the ability to open the doors, the front and back boot, and a difficult top operate steering and gear shifting mechanism. This is a model for someone who enjoys building a set first and foremost, and for whom a big part of the enjoyment is provided by knowing what is hidden underneath. In many ways, it seems to be the Technic equivalent of Star Wars UCS or the Creator Expert car series (only on a slightly bigger scale).

The car itself is massive, much bigger than I had expected (and remembered, as I had seen a built up version in 2017). It is also surprisingly heavy, due to all the Technic hidden underneath the paneling. This - at least in part - explains the low ride height of the vehicle. It also looks like a Porsche. And honestly, the colour has actually grown on me.

I also like the use of regular Lego System parts, something which seems to offend some Technic purists, even if originally the Technic sets consisted of much Lego System, and a limited number (and range) of Technic elements (at least that is the Technic as I remember it from my youth). The curves, smooth surfaces, all seems to work quite brilliantly. Indeed, it would have been nice if there was an easy way to make the gearing or engine visible more easily. That - to me - is one of the few drawbacks to this set.

The verdict

"Is this model worth its cost?", that is the big question. Whether the answer is positive or not depends on what you are looking for. If you merely want a display model that looks good on the outside while what is underneath the skin is irrelevant, then the answer is clearly no. Then there are clear alternatives, like the Porsche 911 RSR (set 42096) with some slight upgrading (the wheels), the Mack Anthem (set 42078) and other (older sets). If you like a Technic set with lots of visible moving parts and more play, then again, there are many (older) alternatives in Technic out there. Most of these are also (considerably) cheaper.

If you like to feel a bit like a real life super car owner - knowing what is underneath without being able to see most of it - that looks good and will catch someone's eye as a display piece, then this set is for you. But even then, RRP is (very) steep, and I would look online for discounted sets. They are still out there, though I expect - with this set being retired - prices to steadily rise in the future.

At first i was skeptical of the price, but thought "why not, i have other large technic sets". The build was very enjoyable, and time consuming (a plus). I found 2 discrepancies in the paper instruction book, both of which i notified the LEGO help line about. Also the passenger door does not close fully despite reviewing the steps outlined 3x times. The presentation was, at-the-time, OVER THE TOP. It was wonderful to see the book that came with the set (as i think sets that are branded and require trademark tariffs to be paid) detailing exactly what it is that i am building. also gear shifts are not 1-2-3-4, minor youtube fix. The frame-on-chassis build design is a wonderful note.

I really like cars, so Ultimate technic cars is must for me and i wanted to start from beginning. So I was searching and searching until sniped one on Ebay for 310 + shipping. So I got used set pretty close to RRP with a box

Building/Parts:

The building process is beautiful you feel like on Porsche factory line working to assemble beautifully coloured Porsche GT3 RS. Really cool parts of the builds are in Box1 and Box2 Which include Engine, Gearbox and Chassis and Body marriage. (Which was pretty awesome)

Box3 and Box4 is a bit more body panel building, but you do it around the car, and it's really cool to seeing it coming all together.

There are a lot of parts that are new to me and got used in an interesting way to bring the build together

For me, it never got tedious and enjoyed every moment of it.

If you build it used like I did you will spend first day sorting parts. I did not time my self, but I think I built it in like 20 hours. Lot of the time went in to testing an awing how the technic systems work.

Aesthetics

Its absolutely beautiful lego set I like the colour, orange on black and the shape of it. The only downside is that you don't see any of cool stuff you build inside, but I kinda get it why it is so as it is accurate to real cars. These systems are there only for the builder to know, and it's cool too in some ways.

Playability:

I don't see this playable model at all.

1.It's too big.

2.Car is too heavy for its suspension.

3.It's a bit weak with some parts to handle it well.

As it's not important part for me, I won't consider this much in the final rating.

Value for money:

Now to the elephant in the room. It's price even when it was sold by lego. And now you basically have to pay double for it if you don't luck out with decent offer as I did but even then I would only recommend it for someone who has big collection and misses this one car as I want to collect all super cars eventually it kinda was must for me.

Overall

So I loved building it and look of it what else you want from lego set ? But still I can't Recommend it to everybody seems like a niche product for car enthusiast and serious collectors with money to spend. It's an ultimate display piece.

Summary

The 42056 is a new entry in a long tradition of super cars from LEGO:

• 853 from 1977: first Technic, iconic look
• 8860 from 1980: removing many of the original 853 flaws.
• 8865 from 1988: Adding an exterior to the chassis.
• 8880 from 1994: Ultimate super-car: true 4-wheel drive, 4 speed transmission, working steering, independent suspension. King of studded Technic super cars.
• 8448 from 1999: Awesome chassis with different cover options: no longer 4WD, but 5 speed+reverse transmission, fluent steering and gull-wing doors make it another ultimate for many.
• 8466 from 2001: You might argue whether this is one of the flagship cars. It's status as best ever Technic set means it belongs in this list. True 4 wheel drive with 3 differentials, 5+1 speed transmission, air spring gull-wing doors, independent suspension, this car offers it all. All time killer super car.
• 8070 from 2011: Modern paneled build car with power functions for moving doors that uses shifter to operate these functions (no transmission).

With the 42056 LEGO scaled up to a much larger size, the amount of pieces is almost double the amount found in its predecessor. You might expect this gives lots of room for technic functions. Somehow it does not offer much functionality.

LEGO focuses on looks first this time, trying to capture the shape of the original car as good as possible. This means functionality comes second. The car has a nice new transmission concept with peddle switches, yet the implementation is flawed, and usability is almost none. Same with the steering, it works, but don't ask how…

When I got the brochure of LEGO for 2016 H2, I was totally surprised this car is not in it. Maybe even LEGO does not see it as true entry to the Technic line, and treats it more as detailed Advanced Model. Or maybe it is a lego.com exclusive. No idea why it is missing from the catalog.

So this is not a model to build and showcase
This is not a model to deliver nice technical functionality and playability
This is LEGO that does what is most important: excel in delivering an awesome building experience.
You really get the feeling you are working on a true car assembly plant building a complete car with everything in it, and hiding all tech nicely behind dozens of panels.

Even better: this is the ultimate multi person built. It is perfect for dads with little kids. Since the building is very modular, everyone can take it share.

We played the following roles:

6 year old kid: chief assembly: he did the chassis and assembly of modules and most exterior cladding.
4 year old kid: space frame builder and part assembly: seats and rear wing
Dad: chief warehouse management: we did not buy the car as set, so I had to collect tons of bricks from our storage system. Assistant builder on dull mirror-parts: when the oldest built say the left door, I did the right door at the same time.
LEGO: just-in-time delivery of new parts. LEGO was very fast in bringing new bricks to its loose brick store this time!

The Box

We did not unpack the awesome looking box. We just happen to have all the needed bricks, thanks to LEGO for offering them so fast as separates! We paid 200€ for missing parts, but this includes a lot of spares for MOCing: extra wheel covers, extra flexrods, extra beams. The rims were ordered on Bricklink due to license issues.

The manual

Even if we had the original manual, it is irrelevant. Sorry to say, but all the work LEGO did on the physical manual is useless. Let me explain why.

LEGO tries to deliver an ultimate über-class product experience. The booklet is very well designed, but it remains a booklet. For the price, I would accept nothing less than a hard cover Smyth-sewed book. On Bricklink the manual does over 30€, where you can get a Volvo Wheel Loader or Merc Arocs manual for just 2€. Similar licensed high-brick-count builds. My experience is that even when you build a model from a new style thick manual with gloves, it still looks rubbish after one build. We had it with the 42030 loader, we had it with the 42042 crawler crane: nice books but wear kicks in right away. This model DEMANDS many builds. Your book will be ruined by it. The slight increase in paper weight will not help.

Then the way we build. The last very modular top model: the Unimog, has 5 separate booklets. For building in a team, it is a big pro, not a con.
This car shouts for separate manuals for the different parts. It would have been much cooler if you had a motor-manual, a transmission manual, a frame manual, tiny chair manuals, a spoiler manual and so on. It would really fit the building experience.

So the only solution is tablets: every builder a tablet, and download the excellent digital manual. On a Mac you can easily chop the digital manual up in parts using Preview.

Parts

New parts

• First the wheels. The wheels are awesome. It is by far the most beautiful set of big size sport car wheels. I really like the plain black rims. The real one has space grey coloured ones, dark grey would be a closer match. I'm glad LEGO choose black instead. Little flaw: they might be too wide. It really hampers steering (see playability).
• Another new part is the 7x3 curved panel in orange and black. They are exactly like the 11x3 curved panels, only shorter.
• Also new are the wheel case panels. You get 6: 4 in plain orange and 2 with a left and right air inlet print. LEGO ships all variants as separates.

Orange parts

This car has many orange parts. But few of them are new. Rebrickable told us we already had all the wing panels and most liftarms for example. No unique elements in there.

The parts that you probably don't already have in orange are:

• 51! pieces of Beam 1X2 W/Cross And Hole. This brick was introduced in the 42026 Black Champion Racer, now you need a lot more
• 10 pieces of Technic 11M Beam. This is not the first time LEGO uses this piece in orange, I already had 2 from an ancient model, but the price on Bricklink was ridiculous. Now it will certainly drop to more reasonable levels as LEGO sells it again in its loose brick shop.
• 10 curved panels. Same model as on the 24 hours car 42039, now in orange.
• 12 flexrods. Too bad there are no spares offered. The experience with former super cars is that these can go on the fritz, and that jacks up the prices of spares to ridiculous heights. You can replace many of them with normal orange beams though. Depending on your preference, you might even like the sturdier look.
• 15 connector bushes, not seen in orange before

Other special parts

• The suspension uses a new steering arm. Part 23801 Wheel Bearing Back W/ Cross Hole is included twice. The new 42054 tractor includes four.
• 6 red hard springs. Nice colour to have for the springs, but seriously, you can't see it when you're done.
• 11 red Cross Axle, Extension, 3M parts. You need a few of them for enabling a click-free gearbox, others are used as extra-long alternative to the usual extension bushes.
• 1 yellow 11 unit long cross axle: This was the one part LEGO did not have on sale, so I used a 12 unit regular black one. You totally wont notice the difference.
• 14 pieces Cross Axle 3M W/End Stop (24316) in reddish brown. This part is only needed in 6 instances in the assembly of the front wheel suspension. All other instances can be replaced by the old studded version without problems.

Building experience

This is where the 42056 set excels. It is a very rewarding build process. You want to continue on and on, even the kids had unusual long focus and wanted to continue every suitable moment. The orange and black might be one of the reasons. This thing looks and feels very well. Especially the feel is awesome. Behind glass in a cupboard, on pictures, you won't get it. Just lift it and feel the awesomeness of 2300 bricks.

The built is easily split up into many parallel building activities, just like in a real car factory.
Possible points to start parallel building activity:

• 1 base chassis
• 122 flipper transmission control
• 177 front suspension
• 236 rear suspension
• 324 body frame
• 499-510 chairs (you can make this twice, identical to step 516-527)
• 597 rear bumper bottom
• 623 rear bumber top
• 645 front hood
• 664 roof
• 680 dashboard
• 692 front bumper
• 718 wheel cover 1 (from 812 mirrored version)
• 725 head light (from 826 mirrored version)
• 781 spoiler
• 844 suitcase

Any person can start and join building at the mentioned numbers, it is wise to keep 1 person in charge of attaching all to the main body.
We did some things left and right at once. This is very well possible on the headlights, wheel covers, doors and chairs. Just grab double the needed parts, and build left and right at the same time.

We chose to made some slight modifications to the default design. I will show them below. Step 1 and 2 are critical in our opinion, because it really eases the rotation of everything. Step 3 makes the transmission more reliable, and effectively removing the urge to have a slipping gear.

1) Transmission line simplification

LEGO included a white slipping gear to prevent damage when riding the car. Since this solution is directly caused by a flaw in the flipper unit with the steering wheel, we removed it and simplified things quite a bit. The result is much less friction through the huge amount of transmission gears.

2) 90° rotation of the axle crossing

LEGO uses 3 gears to have the power axle from the motor cross the flipper mechanism shaft. We rotated it. The power axle needs as little friction as possible, it has more than enough gears in the forward/reverse and 4-speed transmission already. The flipper mech on the other side has no problems if the axle is cut up in 2. You only have to swap the orange 2M liftarm on one side to keep the sequence order correct.

3) Reverse of the flipper mech Technic Change-Over Catches

In the flipper mech you will find 2 red Technic Change-Over Catch elements. You need to rotate them 180° degrees. This will make the operation much more reliable. You will have less non-complete switch moments.

4) Taking scratch prevention measures

The car is very heavy, and the suspension is pretty weak. If you try it out on stone flooring, you will easily scratch the whole bottom of the car. The easiest measure to keep things scratch free is the insertion of connector pegs with knob. Fill all the empty holes with them.

5) Transmission order error

We unintentionally skipped the main promoted mod: the gear swap at the back. To be honest, it does not matter at all whether this is correct or not. Why? Because you don't see anything from the engine when finished. So it does not matter if the engine steps up nice in speed or not. Feel free to forget about this as well. Fixing point 1 and 2 are way more important.

6) Steering mech limiter fix

To get an acceptable steering circle, replace the 2 tan 1,5M bushes by the smaller blue or grey ones. Totally removing them is not recommended, the smaller ones work fine.

7) Slight design mods

We chose to change the 2x4 liftarm and the 3M liftarm that limit the door opening into black parts. It looks not nice in orange. We added a front license plate as well (yellow Dutch ones in our case, to reflect the paid posh car tax here). See how to do this nicely. Also we replaced two 2x4 light grey lift arms with black ones below the rear license plate. The grey peeps out and makes the back look less cool.

Building takes a lot of time, yet it is very fun. We were surprised how fast all was completed.

Playability

As said before, playability was probably not a design goal on this set. It is nearly unplayable. It starts with the weight. This car is so heavy, the suspension suffers from halfway the built already. After the car is finished, the play is only 5mm at the front and 9mm at the back.

Steering is nearly impossible. On a wooden or stone floor you can turn the wheels around if you accept a lot of lag due to over-use of gears. On anything softer, like carpet or a rug, totally forget about steering. LEGO made 3 mistakes here: the wheels are too wide, and LEGO used 7 gears to connect the steering wheel to the toothed bar. One gear and 2 cardan couplings is usually a lot better. With such wide wheels, Ackerman steering is also a must.

The paddle mech is a fun concept, yet the execution is not so nice. First problem is the paddles itself. You basically pull 2 yellow half-width bushes with rubber bands around them. To make the system work, you have to pull them uncomfortably far. It's like you are pulling the bricks apart. The unit is sturdier than you might expect, it won't go loose, yet it does not feel right. It is also clunky, and looks weird behind the steering wheel.

What do the paddles operate? In theory a 4 speed transmission. In reality: a bunch of invisible gears. You will feel change in resistance when driving, that's all.

Then there is a bunch of doors and covers. The rear one only exposes very little of the engine. It's just like with all modern cars: engines hidden with fancy cover plates combined with awkward accessibility for car mechanics.

You won't believe it, but the kids show the best playability is offered by the suitcase. Endless sessions of pulling it out and opening and closing the lid. Also the dashboard cabinet is very well done.

Looks

The finished car looks awesome. There is a lot of debate, but we think the orange and black is super cool. The colour scheme was introduced in technic with the 42026 Black Champion Racer, and here it works every bit as well. The way LEGO put together a car using technic is impressive. There is a lot of attention to detail. Nice parts are the front grill using 2x5 wings, the thighs, headlights, the chairs and the spoiler.

It does however look much more generic than the whole license thing suggests. Apart from the typical headlights, this could as well be a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. The edginess of the panels would suit a Lambo better than a Stuttgart inspired curvy car. I really would love to see someone make an unofficial B-model Aventador from this set. It is made for an orange technic conversion!

If it was sold as generic super car, like LEGO did with the 8070, it would be every much as cool looking, yet probably at a 100€ cheaper price point.

Conclusion

The most important stuff is already in the summary, as this review is pretty long. Lets sum up the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good:

• Awesome looking wheels, opening the doors to many new killer looking large scale MOC's
• Great set of orange parts, pulling many types out of obscurity.
• Huge, insanely big Technic car.
• Very nice detailing and good use of panels.
• Great feel: Heavy and very sturdy!
• Totally awesome building process.
• Suitable for multi-person building.
• The car looks more generic than the whole secretive licensing mambo-jambo suggests: it really invites to try to turn it into a Lamborghini Aventador.

The Bad:

• The car looks more generic than the whole secretive licensing mambo-jambo suggests. Why did we pay 100€ to Stuttgart?
• Errors in the transmission that can be fixed.
• License crap preventing people from ordering extra rims at LEGO.
• Flaky book not matching the overall set quality.

The ugly:

• Almost zero playability: Impossible to steer. Awkward paddle operation when the car is closed and finished.
• The price. In Germany you pay 100€ tax to Stuttgart. In the Netherlands another 30€ is added as BPM (vehicle registration tax). So here the set is 130€ too expensive. 200€ would have been reasonable. You can buy 2 42054's and a single 42040 for the same price! That includes 4533 parts (double the amount!) 8 similar awesome large wheels and power functions!

This is another set that wasn't high on my list, but the lure of limited edition, a good number of parts, and the sheer scale of it meant that when the price dropped to something acceptable, I bit the bullet and bought it.

This set exists in an interesting twilight world: It's almost a technic version of a Lego Ultimate Collector Series set. Aesthetics are clearly very important, along with some clever functionality built in.

The Box and Instructions:

The unboxing is also exceptionally nice, with the wheel rims presented face up and 4 individual boxes within containing each stage of the build. Easily the best instruction booklet I've ever seen from Lego. Pleasingly weighty, with nice introductory sections on the synergy of Porsche with Lego and the design process.

The Build

I was actually dreading this build. I don't really enjoy sticking panels on technic sets and much prefer the intrigue of complex gearboxes and cleverly implemented functions. So you can imagine my horror when I realised that after the first of the 4 'stage' boxes, the chassis is complete and you've used your last cog. Everything from gearbox to steering is finished in that primary stage. However, the build then goes on to add the body 'sub structure' (Mimicking the marriage between drive train and bodyshell on the Porsche production line apparently) and then move around the car adding panels and detail. It didn't feel like a chore, and the overall visual impression as you work around the car is impressive. As a Technic build I felt that this fell considerably short of the building experience offered by other sets. As a Lego set to produce a model, it is fun, and pleasantly straightforwards but there are few surprises beyond the clever (but under engineered) sequential gearbox mechanism.

The finished model

There are two distinct aspects to this model: How it looks and what it does:

How it looks:

This set looks great. I mean really truly gorgeous. They've captured the flowing and pumped up style of the GT3-RS shape remarkably well, within the constraints of Technic components. The level of interior detail is impressive, with complex seats and a fully formed dashboard and glovebox, as well as the structural roll cage. It also has the heft that reminds me as an adult of the feeling of solidity the 8880 Supercar had back when I was 14. It's huge! And that size lends it authority. This is a set that sits proud in any display cabinet.

Sadly, it's let down by what it does - or rather doesn't do. As pointed out by another reviewer, the core of this set, the 4 speed sequential gearbox, is completely redundant! Yes, it works well, and it's a clever mechanism. But it may as well do nothing. It spins an engine that is entirely enclosed at a variety of speeds. I know there are 'fixes' to make the ratios the correct order, but I haven't done them and I can't tell that it's wrong. The primary playability that my 5 year old son enjoyed was playing with the luggage compartment (and luggage) up front. And that is the saddest indictment of a set of this scale and ambition, in my opinion. That's why I've absolutely hammered it for playability. The £20 go-kart is leagues ahead in terms of amusement factor as a toy, and if you want a racing car with suspension, get the 42039 24 Hour Racer instead. It has working suspension and steering, an engine and more functionality, but way more playability and features.

The set also feels under-developed compared to flagship set offerings in recent years. When you open the engine lid, it pushes out the soft pipes that form the rear of the roofline, and then you have to reset them by hand. The front suspension sub frame feels 'lazy' in its design. Overall this set gives them impression of a static model, not a living machine. And that's why It'll be coming back to pieces to provide a basis for me to build all manner of other far cooler vehicles that me and my son can actually play with.

Conclusion:

This set is aimed at a somewhat different market than the regular 'large technic set' offerings in my opinion. It feels like the presentation is excellent, but the engineering is somewhat compromised. Heres how I feel about this set: It feels like it was conceived as a gift that Porsche would give to people who ordered a GT3-RS whilst they waited for their car to be built and delivered. And as such, it is an incredible promotional tool: I can imagine the anticipation and interest as an inexperienced Lego builder spent hours piecing together this little analog of their real 'toy'. But for those of us for whom the model is the 'toy', it feels half conceived and poorly delivered. Lots of style, but minimal substance - and for me at least, Technic sets must be defined by their substance.