When I think of LEGO builders in the 6 to 8 stud-wide “Speed Champions” scale, one always immediately comes to mind: Jonathan Elliott. He’s an extremely talented builder whose vehicles make constant appearances on various community blogs such as The LEGO Car Blog and The Brothers Brick. A great many LEGO car builders, myself included, cite his work as an inspiration.

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to speak with Jon on behalf of BrickNerd and pick his brain about real cars, his building style, his earlier work, and his constant drive to push the envelope of what a LEGO car can be.

Tom: Why don’t you start by telling me just a little bit about yourself?

Jon: Ha! The classic opener. Yeah, wow, that’s a difficult way to start, I suppose. I’ve been around quite a long time, so there’s quite a lot to tell. I am a lifelong car fan. Also a lifelong LEGO fan! I’ve told this story before, but one of my earliest memories was when I was in kindergarten. I used to bring LEGO home because I just kind of thought that was what you did with it—it was there to be had. I didn’t realize that it was technically stealing.

When I got to the age of 14, I decided I was a bit too cool for LEGO, which was sad in hindsight. I sold everything, which I think is a common story amongst people in the adult LEGO building community. I sold it to buy a racing bike which seemed like a good idea at the time. And it was a good idea! I’m a lifelong fan of bikes as well, and I’m still really into that.

From my early teens, I had definitely decided I wanted to be a car designer so I spent a lot of time working on my drawing skills and building up a portfolio. I was lucky enough to do a degree in industrial design, in car design, so I kind of got 90% of the way to fulfilling that dream of being a car designer. Unfortunately, when I graduated, a global recession in the early 90s—and me being probably not quite as emotionally mature as I should have been—meant it didn’t really turn into anything. I fell into a not-great job that turned into a better job, and that into a better job, and so on. Fast forward to now, and I actually do something half decent for a living, although it has nothing to do with cars and nothing to do with building LEGO.

Tom: After you studied car design, you had a work placement with Ford. What were you doing with them?

Jon: It was really cool, actually. I guess it was the top half-percent of that 90% I mentioned earlier on. When I was in my third year of a four-year degree course, we got a chance to do a work placement. Certain car manufacturers offered them, and I was lucky enough to pass an interview with Ford. I was the only person who was taken on by Ford that year. I did eight months in total working in the UK design center on interior and exterior concepts.

I guess it was long enough ago now to say that I was working on the original Ford Ka as well as a European version of the Ford Cougar. I remember the American guys patronizing us a little bit by explaining what a cougar was. I remember that being quite funny because I’d said “I don’t really know the Cougar that well,” meaning the American car, the XR8 from the ’60s, and I got an explanation of a mountain lion.

Tom: I’d like to explore your relationship with cars a bit more. What would you say is your favorite car?

Jon: That’s hard. It’s always difficult because it’s like being asked what your favorite food is. There’s so much nice stuff to eat, and there are so many great cars for so many different reasons. If I had the lifestyle I wanted, I would say it would be a Maserati Khamsin.

Tom: Which you have built!

Jon: I did finally get around to building it, yeah. It was one of my most recent. It was a big leap of faith. It has a very 1960s, front-engine, GT proportion to it. Long bonnet, with really short overhangs. The proportions on it are wonderful. It’s so 1970s as well because it’s very wedge-shaped, and it’s got a lot of very sharp crease lines in it. It’s subtle. To try to pull that off with the limited shape palette that you have at that 7-wide scale was going to be difficult, and I love it so much, I wanted to do it justice.

I need to take a picture of the rear end because the really cool thing about it is that the tail lights actually sit in a vertical glass panel, just above the rear bumper—on the European models, anyway. They ruined the American one. I did build it so that you can see that, but I didn’t quite get the rear shot that I wanted to in the amount of time I had to photograph it.

Tom: It seems that you’ve built a little of everything: supercars, European classic sports cars, American muscle, commuter traffic cars, utility vehicles, and everything in between. Is there anything in the automotive world that you dislike? What do you especially favor?

Jon: I’m not as much of a fan of modern sports cars, and I’m not as much of a fan of modified cars. But then, I’ll completely contradict myself because there are some of both of those types that I really like. For me, it’s really about how the overall design and aesthetic work, rather than the type of car or genre that it fits into. I think some of it is from being really into the design of things and pretty obsessed with all of the details.

I am a huge fan of base-model cars. This is my guilty pleasure: I always prefer the absolute cheapest, no-frills version of any car. I’m a massive fan of the Renault 4 and Citroën 2CV because those really basic, utilitarian forms of transport tick all of those base model boxes for me. But then, I also love classic supercars, off-road trucks—again, classic ones float my boat more than the more modern ones—and all sorts of things. Just anything car-related does it for me.

Tom: You had an extended dark age from 1985 to 2014. During that time, did you stay aware of LEGO and its advancements over the years?

Jon: I had half an eye on it, I suppose. I’d seen a few things coming out. I do remember the kind of stuff where they went a bit off tangent at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the 2000s. I remember seeing a lot of really weird stuff coming out with chrome on it and things like that and thinking, “What are they doing?” And then some of the more interesting Technic stuff started to come out from 2010 onwards which I’d seen a little bit of but I hadn’t followed in particularly closely.

I would regularly dream about building LEGO. It kept frustrating me because I’d wake up, and in my half-conscious state, I’d think, “Oh, finally, I’ve solved how to make front wheel steering with 1970s Technic pieces!” and I’d build it. Then, I’d become fully conscious and think, “Hang on a minute, that was a dream. I can’t do it, and I don’t have any LEGO.” This would happen a few times a year. Eventually, I thought, I’m an adult. If I want to have ice cream for dinner, I can have ice cream for dinner. If I want to buy some LEGO, I’ll buy some LEGO. So I did and stumbled back into it again.

LEGO set 6739 from 2002. Image via JANGBRiCKS.

Tom: You got back into LEGO in 2014, and there weren’t any MOCs posted to your Flickr until late 2016. Did you spend those years practicing and getting back into the swing of things?

Jon: Yeah. I bought a large-scale sort of Toyota Hilux set in yellow—probably highly collectable, though I’ve destroyed most of it by now. I messed around with that for a bit and then bought a few more pieces on eBay before discovering BrickLink. My partner got me a Technic helicopter for my birthday, and I remember her being really dismayed because she got me this thing thinking it was gonna keep me busy for a week, and I built it in about two hours!

I discovered BrickLink and started buying more things. I was just building whatever I wanted to at the scale I wanted to. I posted a few of those larger-scale things on Flickr in the early days, around 2016.

Jon Elliott’s first model posted to Flickr in 2016, a Porsche 911.

Tom: Those earlier models are tremendously impressive. They have detailed interiors, functional steering, suspensions, gearboxes, all of it. I know that’s not the scale that you build at anymore, but have you ever had the urge to return to that style and scale of model making?

Jon: 100%. It’s just time, I think. This sort of alludes to the vanity project that Flickr and Instagram became. It’s relatively easy to turn out a small-scale build on a weekly or fortnightly cycle. The larger stuff takes a lot of time. Trying to fit that into everyday life with a career and social life is difficult.

This time last year, I decided to build a large-scale motorcycle. It was something I could build in individual units, like a series of modules almost, and then have the fun of trying to connect them all together. That was a huge amount of fun to build. I didn’t want too much of the Technic to be visible, so I tried to avoid beams and other things that may have strength but don’t look realistic. It’s a delicate thing. It’s still in one piece in a cupboard.

Tom: Tell me about the transition from building these larger models into what we would call the “Speed Champions” scale.

Jon: I think it started because I wanted to build a few things quickly. I hadn’t built any City or Speed Champions sets at all, and I was just messing around building some smaller stuff. I built some Renault 5s, and I think I built a small Citroën DS and the feedback was really cool! It’s funny looking back on them now—the techniques I used are so alien to me. On the Renaults, the structure underneath them is Technic. I used it to hold them together and just built stuff around it. There’s very little that is “Speed Champions” about them because I wasn’t really aware of Speed Champions, to be honest.

Jon Elliott’s 1972 Renault 5.

Someone got in touch with me through MOCPages and said they were going to do a Speed Champions building competition and would I like to take part? I was like, “What’s that? What’s Speed Champions? Oh, these are quite cool.” This was back in the 6-wide Speed Champions days. I thought they’d be fun to have a go at, so I built a couple of things for that.

Jon Elliott’s Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.8 Race Car, entered into the MOCPages Speed Champions contest in 2017.

Tom: It’s interesting that your introduction to Speed Champions was through somebody in the community seeing your work and reaching out to you. What is your relationship with the greater LEGO community like?

Jon: It’s patchy, but it’s good. I’m not hugely into the community in that I don’t go to conventions and things like that. Certainly there are a lot of people I’m aware of. I probably should interact with more of them. There’s a hardcore contingent who I interact with quite a lot, fellow small-scale car builders for the most part. I’ve done a few build-offs with a couple of different people because they’re quite fun. It’s a nice way to switch things up when building.

Jon Elliott’s Volvo 240 Wagon, the result of a build-off with fellow LEGO car modeler pleaseyesplease.

I’d like to do more. The LEGO stuff is so all-consuming for me that I feel I don’t have a great deal of bandwidth outside of the time that I’ve put into achieving what I want to personally. I’ve always wanted to put together some kind of building competition for other people because I’ve taken part in a few now and they’re great. I also donated a model, something I already had, to Creations for Charity this year. Maybe next year I can design something just for it, like a one-off.

Jon Elliott’s No Time to Die 1984 Aston Martin V8 saloon, donated to Creations for Charity 2022.

Tom: Let’s talk about your building style, which is very distinctive. How would you describe your particular style or approach to building a car?

Jon: To me, it’s all about the proportions. Then it’s about making sure you throw in enough details that work at that scale to make it identifiable. If the proportions aren’t right, you’re always going to struggle to make it look recognizable. You’ve almost got to imagine it through half-closed eyes. If you look at it with too much focus, all you’ll see are the things that aren’t like the real car. You’ve got to trick people into seeing what it is, and the best way to do that is to get the proportions right.

There are certain things I always try to include like door handles. But I think laboring over the exact positioning of a vent or side light or air intake or something like that is not worth it. Stick to the proportions.

Tom: Are there any cars that you’ve wanted or tried to build but haven’t been able to quite accomplish yet?

Jon: The one car I’ve been trying to build again and again is the Chevrolet C4. I absolutely love them. I think they’re great. I’ve tried building one about six times and I can’t get it. It’s something around the curvature of the front because I’ve only gotten as far as not being able to build that. I’ve got ideas for the back, and I think I can do it, but the issue is the curvature ahead of the front wheel arch that goes into that angled front bumper with the lights in it. If I can’t get that part right, I can’t make it work.

Tom: I doubt it would shock you to hear that some other builders have tried that car. When you talk about the C4, I immediately think of my personal favorite one, for instance. Do you go looking for inspiration from other builders who have attempted the same car?

Jon: I do tend to have a look from time to time at what else is going on. I’m sure I’m influenced by what other people are doing. Increasingly, even since just 2016, the amount and the quality of builds out there have grown and grown. There’s so much good stuff nowadays that it’s hard not to see it.

To that degree, I will occasionally have a look—a very quick look—at how somebody else has built a car if I’m struggling. But I won’t keep it in front of me and go, “Oh, they did it with one of those, connected to that,” because that doesn’t seem fair to me. I’ll take snapshots that go in the mood board in my head, but that’s as far as I go.

Jon Elliott’s AC Shelby Cobra, which credits lichtblau’s model as its influence.

Tom: Arguably your most popular model is your Lamborghini Miura—I even have my own copy in front of me right now. Since you first posted it in 2017, you’ve updated it a few times, not even including the 7-wide version. In your opinion, when is a model “done?”

Jon: It’s tough. I think it’s when it feels like it’s done. I say this all the time to people at work, but sometimes you need to accept the fact that you’ve gotten to 80% or 85% and it’s enough to step off the curb and move forward. There’s always a tendency to keep going over something to check it, to make sure it’s right, to make sure you’re 100% happy with it, and sometimes you just have to say “that’s it, that’s enough.”

I don’t know what it is with the Miura. I think it’s the rear end of it. If you look at a Miura from the side, the rear overhang is quite long. But if you look at it from the front ¾, it’s got a really neat, short back end on it. It’s the rear end that’s resulted in most of the rebuilds. The front has just been massaging some of the details and incorporating some new pieces, like the 1 x 1 brackets when they came out. So how do I know when something’s done? I think it’s when little bits of it stop bugging me. That’s the easiest answer.

Jon Elliott’s 1971 Lamborghini Miura P400SV, as posted in 2018.

Tom: You updated the Miura yet again some four or five years after you first published it. It was still bothering you at that point?

Jon: When I first built it, I was very much building it as a Speed Champions model, not that I ever really build things for minifigures. I think you’ve since proved that you can get a minifigure in it (Note: Jon is referring to my slight modification of his design). I did go back and rebuild it with City wheels instead which was more in proportion to the size and scale of the car. I’ll be honest, I probably will come back to it again because of the back end—yeah, I haven’t posted a rear view of it for a reason.

Jon Elliott’s 1971 Lamborghini Miura P400SV, as posted in 2022.

Tom: Is there a model of yours that you’ve posted that’s really surprised you with the feedback or response it’s received?

Jon: I built the Unimog logging truck during the lockdown, and it was the result of a conversation with a friend about, “What am I going to build? I’ve got to build something,” and between us, we came up with the idea of doing something like it. A truck with some kind of mechanism or something more interesting or different on the back of it. It’s by far my most-liked post on Instagram. For some reason, something happened where people engaged with it—or the algorithm did—and it was just such a nice surprise. It was one of the earlier commercial or agricultural vehicles that I’ve built, so it was really nice seeing it do well.

Tom: That one in particular is very well aided by your photography, by the way.

Jon: Thank you. It took a few shots to get it, but yeah, I was very pleased with how it came out. I also built a Peugeot 404 pickup. As far as I’m aware, it’s not a vehicle that was ever sold in America. It wasn’t particularly ubiquitous in the UK, either. It was something I’ve always liked, speaking of base-model and utilitarian vehicles, so I built it. I expected tumbleweeds when I posted it, but it actually did just as well as anything else I’d done, so that was really nice, to see people engage with something that probably wasn’t very familiar to them.

Tom: In an interview you did two years ago with DrivePact, you stated that you had, at the time, started learning BrickLink Studio in order to make instructions for your models, but that you didn’t use it for design. Last year, in your Back 2 Brick interview, you said, “I’ve come fully around to digital now.” What caused this change?

Jon: I think laziness is the answer. I do still enjoy building in the proper way with physical bricks. For me, Studio means I don’t have to get all of my bricks out, I suppose. I do find that quite liberating.

With every single thing that I put together in Studio, if I complete it, I will build it for real, because I always prefer to see real models over renders. Nothing against people who do renders, and some of the renders out there are amazing, but I always prefer the same thing in real bricks and I always do that myself, anyway.

Sometimes, Studio stops being a friend. You build something, and it’s not highlighted that there are any issues with any of the colors that you’ve chosen. You think you’ve got a reasonable understanding of which parts are available in which colors, and then you go to buy it and you find out that you’ve chosen something that was only ever in one set. If you want that in bright light blue, you’re going to have to go to somebody in Mozambique and buy one for $20.

Jon Elliott’s Bullitt utilized pieces that were rare and expensive at the time, such as dark green 1 x 2 and 2 x 4 tiles.

Tom: You said you “enjoy building in the proper way with physical bricks” which might feel controversial to people who mainly build digitally.

Jon: It’s probably just me being a little old-fashioned. To be honest, I would say that 95% of all my output in the last two years has been done in Studio. What I tend to find is, when I go to build for real, there will be some issues that I hadn’t realized. There will be instances where I’ve thought a connection should hold on just fine and it doesn’t, and there are things where the tolerances start to mess with you. You think that two pieces should end up flush with each other and they don’t. Once I get into the horrible rabbit hole that is photography, those things come back and haunt me.

I find that I have to re-engineer with physical bricks to fix issues—to close a gap up, to stop a piece from bending, to make pieces fit flush—and then I’ll go back to the Studio file and change it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but maybe one in ten models there’ll be something fundamental that doesn’t work with physical bricks.

Tom: You are a bit of a household name among minifig-scale car builders. Do you feel any pressure to maintain a particular pace of output or level of quality with your builds?

Jon: To be honest, I think I do feel pressure. There are so many great builders out there and there are more and more coming out of the woodwork. I’d like to think, in part, I’ve pushed the envelope a little bit with some of what I’ve done, but I’m well aware that there are a dozen other people doing the same. I’ve seen those people developing, and LEGO’s own output with Speed Champions sets is becoming more realistic.

I’m also a deeply competitive individual, although it pains me to say it sometimes. But it’s a self-competitiveness, more than with other people per se. I look back at things I was building two or three years ago and realize that I can’t build something like that anymore, because I personally feel I’ve moved on. And the pool of subject matter I’ve got starts to erode because I’ve built a lot of the things that I’m into the idea of building. I’m starting to have to build things that I’m less familiar and comfortable with, but at the same time, I’m trying to up my game and make them better than the things I’ve built before. It can be a bit stressful sometimes.

There’s a way that I build where I get to a certain point of familiarity, and I try to disrupt that from time to time by deliberately challenging myself to tackle things in a different way. The more you play around and the more you experiment with some of the new pieces that come out, the more you can learn new and different ways of doing things.

Jon Elliott’s Toyota FJ40, deliberately built in a rare and limiting color.

Tom: Let’s go out with a very simple, fun question—what is your favorite LEGO piece, and why?

Jon: 1 x 2 plate. I’ve never built anything without one. You said “a simple question,” so there’s a simple answer!

You can check out more of Jon’s work on his Flickr or Instagram pages, as well as his personal website, JE Brickworks. I hope you enjoyed a look at the man behind these incredible car designs, and who knows? Maybe he’ll inspire you in the same way that he inspired me and so many others in the LEGO car world.

What car should Jon build next? Let us know in the comments!

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