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Mark Richardson in the driver’s seat of the pink Cadillac Lego car during media day for the Canadian International AutoShow on Feb. 12, 2026.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It’s not an exact replica of any one car, but the Lego Cadillac at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto is unique in its own way.
“We can’t make another pink one – I think we used up all the pink bricks,” jokes its chief designer Lubor Zelinka. Of the 418,556 Lego elements used to build the car, more than 123,000 are pink bricks, but there are probably still some to spare – the company makes an estimated 60 billion bricks a year for its model toys.
The car is intended to be a replica of one of Elvis Presley’s pink Cadillacs, and Zelinka says it’s closest to a 1954 Fleetwood Sixty Special. It was built last year to carry the three winning drivers of the Las Vegas Formula 1 grand prix to the podium and it drives with an electric motor and a top speed of 20 kilometres an hour.
The must-see cars at the 2026 Toronto auto show
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Chief designer Lubor Zelinka in the pink Cadillac Lego car at the 2026 Canadian International AutoShow.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It was conceived last June and had to be ready for the race in November, so a team of 17 people at Lego’s plant in the Czechia worked night and day on its assembly. First, it was designed and built as an actual Lego model on a 28:1 scale and then recreated as a life-size, driveable vehicle.
The Cadillac is not made entirely of plastic Lego pieces. It’s built on a steel, ladder-frame chassis and is powered by a 17-kilowatt motor and battery; there’s power steering but no suspension. The steering wheel is made of real wood and metal, for safety, while the wire-rimmed wheels have whitewall tires and there’s even a spare wheel in the trunk. That’s one of the details Zelinka is most proud of – the trunk lid opens with a special Lego key, though it’s doubtful the spare tire will ever actually be used.
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Podium finishers Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and George Russell are driven by actor Terry Crews in a Lego pink Cadillac during the F1 Grand Prix of Las Vegas on November 22, 2025.Simon Galloway/Courtesy of manufacturer
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Actor Terry Crews drives a Lego pink Cadillac in parc ferme during the F1 Grand Prix of Las Vegas on November 22, 2025.Clive Rose/Courtesy of manufacturer
The finished car is huge, at more than five metres long and weighing more than two tonnes. It’s never been crash-tested, but every brick is glued in place. Even so, it’s accurate to the original model that is 28 times smaller and the detail is astonishing. For example, Lego is well-known for repurposing its elements among its many models: a tiny teacup used in one set might be a car mirror in another set, as they were with the Cadillac, where the full-size wing-mirrors recreate the shape of that teacup. Stickers often don’t quite touch the edges of the bricks, and the giant Cadillac, which recreates those side stickers with grey bricks, leaves a thin line of pink bricks at their edge to demonstrate this.
“It displays that Lego is the ultimate creative medium,” says Zelinka. “We are just big kids playing with bricks, but on a different scale, to put it bluntly. And we are showing here that if you can dream it, you can build it. You can build this with regular bricks in your home and we just build it much larger with an insane amount of bricks.”
There’s another life-size toy at the auto show outside the Hot Wheels pop-up store, where designer Craig Callum is proud to talk about the Hot Wheels Mercedes-Benz CLA. It doesn’t drive and nobody can sit in it – it’s sculpted from a solid block of heavy foam – but it rolls on its wheels and it’s impressive nonetheless.
The car was designed by Hot Wheels in California, and then built by Mercedes in Germany.
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Designer Craig Callum in front of the Hot Wheels Mercedes-Benz CLA on display at the 2026 Canadian International AutoShow.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
“We’ve collaborated with Mercedes-Benz and created the ultimate dream car for kids,” says Callum. “We’ve taken the CLA and asked the question, ‘what would a kid do with this car?’ I don’t think anyone in the design team or at Hot Wheels has grown up properly – we’re all kids still – and that’s what this project is about, retaining that inspiration and creativity from being a kid to adult.”
Like the Lego Cadillac, the Hot Wheels CLA was designed first as a toy and then sculpted by Mercedes using 3D printing, in the same process as a concept car. The 64:1 scale model is about to join the thousands of others for sale at stores around the world.
