Bartybum

Racingbrick's theory about the colour choice is interesting to me, but I offer two main alternative reasons as to why they chose the AMR25 despite AM's low finish in the constructors' championship. First, AM had a recent streak in the past couple years where it looked promising, and secondly, the Aston Martin brand name is more recognisable for car fans than Williams or Racing Bulls. I still think they could have used teal for this set and it would've looked good.

Nice work so far! I think the proportions are more or less okay. How does the fuselage cross section look front-on?

Mm looks quite nice! I like that the fairings are removable, and I appreciate that they've tried to do a brick built exhaust. But oof that price is quite steep. $80-90 AUD for less than 500 pieces, nearly all of which are straightforward... The Panigale V4R came with a gearbox, 40% higher piece count, and a lot of large panels. This is far too barebones for its price. I wonder if the combined high price and Ducati licensing will actually make the sales numbers suffer?

Given the Z-link is an anti-roll mechanism, a properly working one would not affect the stiffness of the suspension during normal operation, like pushing the car down. It would however make it harder to roll the car sideways

I mean sure, but to what end is it a useful discussion to apply such reasoning? This one small detail doesn't work? Well then why didn't you do something earlier to make sure it would? Are you not clairvoyant? Perhaps the designer already tried. The anti-roll linkage is just one of dozens of individual subsystems that need to be fit into the model. A MOCcer may be able to figure out a way, but they aren't subject to anywhere near the same constraints that a set designer working under project deadlines is. Perhaps the solution is actually really easy, and the designer just happened to miss it because they got distracted by something else, or the solution didn't happen to occur to them at the right moment? Maybe it happened once they already had a rear axle design 90% finished and implementing it would require a fundamental redesign of the axle architecture? Maybe they're hitting themselves in the head whenever they see it now because it only occurred to them in the shower one week after the instruction booklet design was signed off on and handed to production? One could ponder till the cows come home on this. Open to hearing any ideas you've got, but probably not, since the issue here is one of the pivoting pin position. This is an architectural problem, and not something I'd argue is worth solving with a single custom piece. There's already like 15 new moulds in this set to boot, all of which have far more justifiable reasons to exist. It's hard to justify a very specific piece design that has exactly one application, which is to represent a single part of a linkage that let's be real, not many people are going to nerd out over. It also doesn't help that this part is probably not going to fit within the broader geometry of the Technic system. Pretty much It's one small component of a suspension subsystem for a shelf queen that'll never go fast enough on Buwizz motors for the suspension geometry to matter, because even once you do make it work you realise that your now-technically-working anti-roll bar doesn't do anything because its functionality gets immediately drowned out by the slack in the ball joints of not just the roll bar, but the double wishbones as well. In short... Absolutely nothing that's worth dedicating your limited time on this blue marble to.

Not so baffling to be honest. Note how one side is nearly twice as long as the other side. When you weigh down the suspension, one half of that split link will want to rotate nearly twice as much as the other half - if you used a single part, it would experience a large bending force, and that's just from sitting on a shelf. It goes without saying that this isn't acceptable for a plastic consumer product, which is likely why they didn't implement it. Another thing to consider is that again, this has to align within the Technic system. In the real world, designs associated with linkages will often naturally have irrational characteristic lengths just due to basic trigonometry/geometry. A lot of these linkages rely on strict alignment tolerances to achieve precise dynamic behaviour. There's a hop skip and a moon landing between what you can achieve with a modular plastic construction system and what is possible in the real world, and this is one of those cases. To make it work in this set, you'd have to find a way to move the pivot point to be centred around both links. The main hurdle to doing this seems to be that the right side needs to navigate around the yellow damper subassembly. If you don't want to remove the damper, you'll have to find some alignment combination that makes sure that when one side moves, the other side moves the same amount. You might be able to get close enough within the slack of Technic parts, but I doubt it'll be exact.

The centre link is actually just two independent links, so motion from one side doesn't transmit to the other side. Fortunately for anyone who cares, they can replace the two black connectors with a #2 connector and it'll make the Z-linkage functional - it'll just be extremely rigid. I've timestamped RacingBrick's video review below so you can see him build and actuate it:

Caster can be done with a typical parallel wishbone suspension setup by mounting one of the links at a half-stud offset, but it'll mean that the tyres don't sit flat when posing with the wheels steered, and it'll also induce a tiny bit of camber. Might look a bit strange with wide and flat tyres. Camber is harder to achieve and would likely require them to introduce parts that leave the precise geometry of the Lego system, which is at odds with the idea of creating functional parts that can be reused in future sets. It could be done but if I were Lego I don't think I'd want to.

Dear lord that hurts to look at lol

Technically speaking reliable Technic stepper mechanisms have been possible for well over a decade now. The reason this part likely exists is so that they have an immediate way of having nine gears, since that's how many the gearbox has.

Man, it's CRAZY to me how many new moulds they're willing to allocate to the 1:8 cars, and yet apparently it's too much to ask for a new driven steering hub for the Unimog...

I'm surprised that they haven't made a leaf spring that's just a spring steel strip dual-over-moulded entirely with softer rubbery plastic for the middle and harder ABS at the centre and tips. Pretty trivial problem compared to coil springs

Sure, why not? Like I said, I like the added visual complexity. Taste is subjective after all

Ah I didn't realise they were using SLS specifically, neat!

I reckon it's pretty cool. Adds some extra visual complexity