LEGO explains how Speed Champions is influencing LEGO City in 2024

LEGO Design Manager Chris Stamp has moved from Speed Champions to LEGO City for 2024 – and he’s taken his mindset and approach from the racing theme with him.

Already legendary among the LEGO community for his work on LEGO Speed Champions, Chris Stamp switched to LEGO City for the second half of 2023 and beyond. This year marks his first full 12 months of new sets on shelves, and veteran LEGO fans will already be able to see the ways in which Chris’s experience on Speed Champions is informing the current assortment.

Chief among those, as Chris told YouTuber RacingBrick in a recent interview, is his focus on not just the finished model – but also the way you put it together.

“On Speed Champions one of the big priorities I always pushed was the build experience,” Chris said. “And that was saying just because this looks like a chair, it doesn’t mean we should only use it as a chair. I always use the example of the NEXO KNIGHTS axe as a tail light – [it’s] having that wow factor when you’re building through something, ‘I didn’t think you could use that element in that way.’

“Build experience is a priority for us. It is probably one of the things we spend most of our time talking about, outside of just the visual expression of a product, especially on City because we cover such a wide scope.”

The most obvious place to look for the effects of that mindset is in LEGO City’s vehicles, of which there are of course plenty among the theme’s 2024 range.

“We’ve taken a lot of the design aesthetics and approach from Speed Champions,” Chris added. “So if you take for example 60406 Race Car and Car Carrier Truck – it comes with the little race car, and they are in LEGO City proportions. However, the way we’re using elements is just a little bit different. There’s a lot more side building.

“I’m so proud of the work that Corvin [Stichert] has done with this. It doesn’t feel like what you would normally think of from a LEGO City build experience, but it looks like it can fit into that LEGO City world. So again it’s the same racing truck that you might have seen from LEGO City many times, but the way we’ve used elements is a little bit different than what you might have become used to.”

That unusual element usage comes full circle in 60420 Yellow Construction Excavator, which cleverly employs a piece from LEGO Speed Champions to create the particular shaping of the construction vehicle. It’s one of several bold new construction sets from LEGO City this year, sitting alongside the massive 60409 Yellow Mobile Construction Crane (see our review here).

“An element we all know very well is the old cockpit from the six-wide Speed Champions sets,” Chris explained. “Colour-changing that to black and then using it sideways to create this really gorgeous bodywork on the side [of 60420 Yellow Construction Excavator], you’re really capturing this curvature, and then the use of diagonal lines to work with the colour blocking. We spent a lot of time really figuring all of that out.”

The level of detail in this year’s City sets actually goes even further than Speed Champions, using the theme’s slightly younger demographic as an excuse to incorporate a long-overdue play feature: accessible engines for its vehicles.

“Engines were something we talked about in the first half of the year, but we didn’t know if it was the right thing to do,” Chris said. “[For the] second half of the year, [we said] ‘Let’s just do it.’ So all of the vehicles in the second half of the year you can access the engine – even the tourist bus. We’ve done several buses in the past in LEGO City, like we’ve done several police cars, fire engines and helicopters.

“Why have we never been able to access the engine in LEGO City? Why have we never been able to lift [the bonnet] if the engine breaks down, or say, ‘Okay, the electric battery’s dead, we need to replace it – let’s call in the tow truck, or let’s call in the local electrician or whoever, to come and fix it.’ It’s such a small detail, being able to access the engine, but from a child’s perspective that adds an extra hour of play.”

That’s in step with Chris’s wider approach to LEGO City in 2024, as he guides the team towards making the sets feel like part of a complete world with a collective story. But on a more granular level, there’s one more design motif he’s brought with him from Speed Champions to City – and it’s addressing a pain point he’s very familiar with having spent years on the racing theme.

“City this year is starting to use [fewer] stickers and more prints,” he said. “That’s something we’re really conscious of, same as [we were] on Speed Champions – if we can build it, we’re not going to add it as a graphic, because that kind of defeats the purpose. We’re a building system. So that’s something that we’ll always push and we’ll always lean towards.”

The fruits of Chris’s work with LEGO City Creative Lead Simon Lucas and the entire design team are on shelves now, and we’ve already reviewed a handful of this year’s sets (including this summer’s 60426 Jungle Explorer Off-Road Truck). You might call it the second phase of a reboot that started in 2023 when Simon first took charge of the theme. Chris calls it a ‘journey’.

“We’ve definitely taken the design team on a journey this year,” he added. “As we’ve got to the end of that journey and we can sit back and look at the full 2024 assortment, I think everyone will feel that where we’ve ended up is in a really strong place.”

Head over to LEGO.com to check out the full range of LEGO City 2024 sets now. You can find RacingBrick’s full interview with Chris over on YouTube.

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