Chevy debuts life-size Lego Batmobile at auto show

A life-size Lego Batmobile built from more than 344,000 Lego bricks will be revealed Saturday at the Detroit auto show just in time for public days.

General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet brand has a marketing partnership with Warner Bros. and is debuting a 17-foot long Lego Batmobile, inspired by Batman’s Speedwagon that is featured in “The Lego Batman Movie.” It arrives in theaters Feb. 10.

“We’ve been able to make it a Chevy Batmobile,” said Paul Edwards, U.S. vice president of Chevrolet marketing.

The Lego superhero car is almost 7 feet tall and more than 9 feet wide. It weighs 1,695 pounds, with each tire weighing in at more than 100 pounds.

Chevrolet said Lego Master Builders at the Lego Model Shop in Enfield, Connecticut, used 17 colors for the Batmobile. They spent 222 hours, or more than nine days, to design it. And building it took 1,833 hours, or more than 76 days.

The automaker unveiled the vehicle Saturday with the help of students from the Cody Rouge neighborhood in Detroit, A World in Motion and First Lego League. It will be on display in the Chevy show stand. Public days run through Jan. 22.

Edwards said the partnership of the movie and Lego fit with Chevy’s brand values of imagination, creativity and light-heartedness.

“It really made the perfect marriage,” he said. “What we get out of it is social conversation and people see the brand through a different lens. It shows that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Chevy also has created a new TV ad as part of its “Real People, Not Actors” campaign that marries its focus group idea with the new movie, said Edwards. The ad, which begins airing Saturday, includes Lego Minifigures discussing what type of person would drive the all-new Lego Batmobile.

“The premise is, it’s an actual focus group about the Lego Batmobile from Chevy,” Edwards said. “We have our same moderator, but he’s a Lego character. There are five different participants in the focus group, in addition to Batman. So he’s (the moderator is) asking the consumers what they think of the Batmobile. It’s a lot of fun.”

This is the first opportunity where we’ve got a scalable property that aligns perfectly with our brand values: imagination, creativity, fun, light-heartedness etc., are both true to Chevrolet and Lego. It really made the perfect marriage. What we get out of it is social conversation and people see the brand through a different lens. It shows that we don’t take ourselves too seriously,

During public days, kids and adults can build a small Lego Batmobile that they’ll be able to take home.

Consumers also can visit chevrolet.com to customize their own Lego Batmobile.

mburden@detroitnews.com

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