Five cars that you can build at home

This year, more than ever, we’ve become comfortable with our homely surroundings. And don’t worry, you’re free to replace ‘comfortable’ with ‘sick of’ if you want to. But one thing that can spice up your time at home is a project. And we’re not talking the medieval Portuguese poetry you promised to learn in Lockdown I. Rather a car build project. Because nothing is quite as equally frustrating and rewarding than not paying someone to build a car for you, rather you blindly doing it yourself, regardless of skill or talent.

So click on and pick your poison. We mean project. And don’t worry, we’ve got all bases covered; from infuriating papercut ridden fun to my-partner-will-divorce-me full-scale assemblies – so there’s something for everyone.

You can tell how old someone is by the toys they played with as a kid. If they rolled a hoop down a hill with a stick, they’re probably 100. If they spend their spare time wiggling around to please a front-facing camera, they’re on TikTok – so 10. But if you mention the word ‘Tamiya’ to someone and they go all giddy, they’re childhood was dominated by the 80s. It was a time before PlayStations, so if you wanted to know how cars worked, you didn’t turn to Gran Turismo, you turned to another Japanese great: Tamiya radio-controlled cars.

Tamiya models are cult classics, famous for their immaculate detail. Unlike these modern days of plug-and-play you had to build all the intricate details – from gearboxes to diffs – as some sort of immaculately machined jigsaw, then paint and sticker them up to then smash them into the skirting boards and scenery at great speed. There was a chance you’d even learn a bit of kanji, having had to follow the Japanese instructions.

You’ll need a steady hand and patience during the build process, but the reward of thrashing the nuke-proof results around will produce smiles and memories that’ll last forever. Just ask Chris Harris. Better than that, there’s something for everyone; from trucks, to race cars or even what's on your drive. And the chassis can be transferrable. There doesn’t seem to be any slowing down of cool things coming down the pipe, with Tamiya just releasing a GR Yaris, new G-Wagen and this iconic Nissan GT-R. It’s a detailed replica of the R32 Skyline that raced under the brilliantly bonkers psycho-camo colours of tuning company HKS in the 1993 Japanese Touring Car Championship. That car certainly wasn’t the most successful racer ever, in fact it only won one race that season and the title was taken by a different Skyline altogether. However, a livery this cool is clearly the one you want to have immortalised in model form. The pint-sized GT-R comes with a polycarbonate body, four-wheel drive and double-wishbone suspension, as well as slick tyres for maximum grip. In short, it’s a properly serious bit of kit. The electric motor and battery are also mounted low down in order to keep the centre of gravity as close to the kitchen floor as possible.

So prime your wallet and check out the excellence that's available here.

Lego never leaves you. If you’re not a kid building it, you’re an adult going for a midnight wee and standing on it. But luckily Lego has massively expanded into Car World over recent years thanks to its fantastic Speed Champions and Technic line. They go from miniature and magnificent blocky iterations of cars we know and love, to magnificently complicated blocky iterations of the cars we know and love, including; Porsche’s 911 GT3 RS, Lamborghini Sian and the Bugatti Chiron. Speed Champions gives little nippers an introduction to Lego and cars with simple 300-odd piece builds of McLaren, Porsche and Ferraris. Affordable too, around the £20 mark or free with Top Gear Magazine subscriptions.

But if you want to up your game and sacrifice pulling your hair out, head for the Technic line. These many, many thousand-piece projects turn into works of engineering complete with functioning dual-shift gearboxes, steering and engines. They’ve even made one for our 2020 Car of the Year: the Land Rover Defender. Technic’s Defender has packed in some serious functionality too – so grown-ups can justify buying it too. Included is an independent suspension set-up, operable steering and a six-cylinder engine. The four-speed sequential gearbox is also super-detailed and can switch between low- and high-range, for those really steep staircases. Plus, you get the roof rack, winch and storage boxes from the options list. The best bit? Open the rear door and, when it’s riddled with mud and sand, you can simply hose it out.

Want a middle ground between the two? Then we’re here to help. Literally. Earlier this year we polished up our GCSE Danish and joined forces with the folks over at Lego to bring you an app-controlled rally car. The Lego Technic TG Rally Car begins its life as a 463-piece model, which includes an XL motor and a Bluetooth-controlled smart hub. Then, once you’ve built the thing and downloaded the Lego Technic Control+ app, you can pretend your living room is a rally stage, thanks to full driving functionality along with multitouch and gyro controls. The app also features a number of different challenges, records your achievements and even lets you play inspirational videos to help you feel like a mini Sébastien Loeb. The car, which we helped design, offers a satisfyingly challenging build for ages 9+, or competitive dads who’ve had a difficult day and need to take their minds off it. Fancy one? It’s available here. Or check out the full Lego lineup here.

Here’s something for the black belt builder or clinically insane looking for an excuse for their loved ones to hate them: the Caterham. If you’ve graduated from Tamiya and Lego successfully this is a challenge every petrolhead should take on if they’ve got the means. Don’t worry about having space, we once built one in the office… badly.

Even though a Seven is so small and simple compared to anything else on the road, the number of bits from which it’s made comes as something of a surprise. Especially when those pieces arrive on the back of a lorry in several dozen large cardboard boxes. Half of all Caterhams sold in Britain are home-built.

It’s claimed that, armed with just a simple set of tools and 70 hours of free time, even the most mechanically deficient human should be able to transform Caterham’s pile of boxes into a road-legal car. To make sure there’s no room for artistic interpretation, all kits come fully wired, with the instruments in place, the fuel and brake lines fitted and all essential safety equipment secured. Essentially, all the other parts are just bolt-ons. It’s like an Ikea flat-pack with an exhaust. The main problem was the instruction manual, which is as thick as a Bible. It’s as old as the Seven – which in turn is as old as the Bible – and bizarrely laid out, with indistinguishable diagrams, usually on the wrong page. But after much squinting and a bit of swearing eventually you’ll have a car. A car you can drive yourself. And what a car to drive. Even if you hate the building experience, you’ll quickly forget it as soon as you go for a drive. As long as you remembered to tighten all those wheel bolts up properly. Otherwise you’ll remember that first drive for other, painful reasons.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a driving licence or any mechanical skill - you can still build simple cars at home. All you need is some paper, patience and dexterity. Yep, we’re talking about origami. Just like Tamiya, it’s Japanese – therefore complicated. But the results can be amazing.

If you hop on to YouTube there are plenty of ways to fold paper into interesting car sculptures. What they don’t tell you is just how many pints of blood you can lose from the papercuts associated with your creation. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can try and make a full-size car as Nissan did with a Juke as a flimsy PR stunt. All you’ll need is 200 hours and to steal over 2,000 pieces of paper from your parent’s printer tray.

If plastic bricks, paper or actual metal components don’t float your boat, there is one car building option left for you: wood. And this is a build-your-own kit that takes woodwork to the next level. This isn’t your sanded down balsa wood bottle rocket, oh no. Beautifully crafted with wooden components, the U-9 Grand Prix Car model set produces a fully functioning and moving machine with a transmission switching the modes between idle, reverse, and race ahead. Under the bonnet you’ll find a delicately crafted 16-valve V8 engine, plus spring-mounted suspension fork and rubberised wheels ensuring smooth but rapid acceleration and a long driving range. All things your pet hamster will appreciate from the driver’s seat. The perfect present for them. And yours for £50. Bargain.