Set Review ➟ 42236 Custom Garage Ford Mustang GT
Due to an extraordinary situation I’ve found myself in as a reviewer, I must begin this article on a rather different note than usual.
I’m sorry - I just can’t. Apologies to all of you readers, to the HispaBrick Magazine staff, to the LEGO Group, but I simply can’t. I just can’t apply 89 (yes, eighty-nine) stickers. When I will want to deal with that amount of stickers, I’ll buy myself a sticker album and feel like I’m twelve again, but my mid-life crisis has not struck me that hard yet. This sticker collection with a bonus LEGO set on the side includes approximately double as many stickers as the 42206 Red Bull F1 car, which was panned itself for its sticker inflation.
Atop other apologies, sorry once more to you, now for having had to read this rant, and I feel I need to supply a little clarification. Unlike some other reviewers, I am not an a priori opponent of stickers. Yes, they rarely look as good as prints, they can be very difficult to apply neatly (especially when static electricity gets involved, which happens often), and they sometimes have tendency to peel off after a while. But having lots of large prints could easily be felt on the price, and LEGO is not a cheap toy as it is. Furthermore, there is always an option to remove stickers, or not use them in the first place, and reuse the parts blank, especially if in a useful or an exotic color.
So, not everything is wrong with stickers, although I tend to criticize using them where they contribute very little, and where the blank parts already do a good job. But too much is too much. And this 42236 Ford Mustang GT is an impressive example of what too much is.
Which is a shame, because once we push the sticker incident out of the way, the set (the plastic half of it that remains, that is) is an interesting one - not just another 1:16 car squeezed out of the design lab to sit in the Technic portfolio.
To wit, this is one of the somewhat rare-ish sets which supplies parts for multiple major variants of the set. This is not an entirely new idea, to be sure, nor one restricted to Technic. Right as I am writing this, there is an example on a shelf behind me: a 21329 Fender Stratocaster, which offered the parts necessary to build its body in either black or red color. This Ford Mustang GT however multiplies the concept to a higher level, with an entire pile of alternate components, and sufficient parts to have them all built at the same time and exchanged whenever one desires.
More precisely, there are components for a standard, discreet blue version (to the extent a Mustang can be discreet), and the alternate components for a customized version with lots of yellow and pink accents. Notably, they don’t differ only in colors (and stickers!) but in design, too. Thanks to them being attached to the car through just a few standard connectors, exhanging them is surprisingly easy. A nice concept, and more than once I wished some other car sets offered the same when it came to the racing stripes along their bodywork, let alone other design options.
Of course, components of the Mustang that are underneath, like the engine, drivetrain, steering, and the chassis in general, remain unchangeable. And these do check the standard boxes: the working V8 engine connected to the rear wheels through a differential, the hand-of-God steering knob which can be easily removed, openable hood, and openable doors. The roof and the rear window remain fixed, which was likely necessary to keep the car sturdy enough at all times.
Speaking of which, let’s also mention the playability, which benefits from the exchangeable parts compared to many other similar vehicles in the Technic spectrum. This concept also encourages and shows how easy it is to mod the set (and by extension, other sets) which is often a good gateway toward full original creations for the builders who are just starting their bricky journey. I like both this custom garage components idea and the consequent benefits it brings. Nice!
(And then I have another glance at the ocean-sized sticker sheets and bite my lip. Ironically, the “non-custom” version of the car doesn’t look half bad without the stickers!)
The supplied parts are a perfectly fine collection of the standard building material, but it will be the colors that could particularly interest some - the significant amount of dark blue panels, with some yellow in addition, though yellow as such is not really an exotic color. Of course, one doesn’t say no to eight mini pistons, four crank discs, a differential, and four wide wheels.
Honestly, I’m quite uneasy about making an overall opinion of this set, with what I find a very significant annoyance on the one, and a very positive special capability on the other hand. I can imagine kids having great fun modding the car, and subsequently creating their own mods for such an open “platform” that this Ford Mustang is. I can also just as easily imagine them throwing the set through the window in rage after the 67th sticker which just didn’t want to lie down neatly.
Therefore, perhaps consider ignoring the stickers altogether, and enjoy the mechanical functionalities. That’s what Technic should, after all, be about.
We thank LEGO for sending us this set for a review. The opinions stated above are however purely HispaBrick’s.
Number of parts: 973 (1062 including stickers)
Age rating: 10+
Dimensions: 27 x 13 x 9 cm
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