For a few years now, I’ve been in the habit of buying myself a Lego set to build over the Christmas holidays. Most years, I pick up a Technic set, but this year, I decided to purchase the Lego James Bond Aston Martin DB5 set, item #10262.
I recently finished building the model, and was very impressed with it. This is the first traditional Lego set that I’ve built in quite some time, so I have surprisingly little experience with models like this, given that I have a large Lego collection.
I was particularly interested in the building techniques that the designers used to model all of the curves and angles on this vehicle. Throughout the build, I was thinking about how designing a set like this must be a constant negotiation between the scale of different parts. Not only does the scale of the finished vehicle have to make sense relative to the diameter of the tires, but the curves on the hood need to be appropriate relative to the overall size of the model, and there are a limited number of Lego pieces to choose from when making those decisions.
As an infrequent builder of traditional Lego sets, I was also really impressed with the construction of the set. Even elements like the vehicle’s doors that you would think are straightforward to build are actually constructed from dozens of small pieces arranged in a really clever manner to achieve the shape that’s required.
The angles that make up the dashboard, windscreen, and trunk of the vehicle are all established by connecting clips and handles together at an angle that isn’t typical to Lego. This means that many of the bricks that make up these parts are at strange angles to the body of the car, instead of everything being built parallel to the ground.
Building techniques aside, I really enjoyed building this set as a James Bond fan. A couple of years ago, my wife and I watched every Bond film in chronological order, and the Aston Martin DB5 is a vehicle that features heavily in canon. True to the films, this model has a number of sneaky spy car features, including a working ejector seat.
