Dave Collins built a Renault out of 1,200 LEGO bricks because he wanted to.
Forty-four days after the project went live, 10,000 people had voted to make it a real LEGO set.
The 47-year-old civil engineer from Newton Abbot, Devon, spent around 100 hours on the Renault 5 Turbo 3E model in his spare time, fitting it around life with his wife Addie and their 13-year-old daughter.
He built it for love of the car. Nothing more.
It was Addie who told him to stop admiring it on the shelf and send it to Renault.
Renault came calling
The carmaker liked it enough to put it in the window of its flagship Oxford Street store, next to the real Renault 5 Turbo 3E.
Support for the build on the LEGO Ideas platform then took off worldwide.
“I just love that something I did purely for fun has been picked up by a car manufacturer and they’ve gone, ‘That’s pretty cool’,” Dave said.
10,000 votes in 44 days
LEGO normally gives creators 32 months to reach 10,000 supporters. Dave’s model did it in 44 days.
That puts it into LEGO’s official review process and one step closer to a shelf in a toy shop.
“Watching the numbers climb so quickly has been surreal,” he said.
“People from all over the world are getting behind it, sharing it and voting for it. It’s turned into something far bigger than just my model.”
He wants the full thing. “I’d love to see it become an official set on shelves one day. That would be absolutely mind-blowing.”
Adam Wood, managing director of Renault UK, said the model reaching the review stage “says a lot about the connection people have with the Renault 5 and the excitement around the Renault 5 Turbo 3E.”
Fans get another look this summer. The model goes on show next to the real car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed from 9 to 12 July.
The £140,000 version
The car Dave recreated in plastic is a 555hp electric hot hatch that starts at around £140,000.
It does 0 to 60mph in under 3.5 seconds and tops out near 170mph.
Renault will build only 1,980 of them from 2027, a nod to 1980, when the original Renault 5 Turbo first appeared.
Dave does not own one. He drives a Ford Focus and rides a motorbike when he wants speed.
“A man can dream,” he said.
“Growing up, every teenager, including me, wanted the Renault 5 Turbo.
They’ve had cracking cars from classics through to modern styles.”
He rates the electric one too. “Some electric cars don’t look great but the Renault 5 Turbo 3E is stunning.”
Why It Matters
This is the LEGO Ideas pitch working as designed, and then some.
Anyone can submit a build, and if 10,000 people back it, LEGO considers making it.
Most fan projects spend years inching toward that number.
Dave cleared it in six weeks because a brand decided his hobby was good marketing and handed it a stage.
That is the quiet lesson for anyone making fan content. The build was his.
The reach was Renault’s.
A good idea travels furthest when a company with a shop window and an audience decides to carry it.
Brands have spent years chasing exactly this kind of organic fan-made content, the sort that reads as passion rather than advertising.
Renault found a man who had already made the ad for them, for free, out of LEGO.
Now it sits with LEGO’s review team, where plenty of 10,000-vote projects quietly stall.
Clear that, and Dave gets his shop shelf. And, he reckons, a cake.
“My wife will bake me a Lego Renault cake, too, I’m sure.”
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