A couple of weeks ago, Branko took a look at the 42174 Koenigsigg Jesko Absolut, in Dark Grey. He wasn’t overly wrapt with it, although it is certainly a functional car. The same car has been released in White as well. Will this colour his opinion?

The Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut will be available in Dark Grey and White! This is another example of a recoloured set, meaning that it is the same as the ‘original’ 42173 Grey Jesko except for the colour.

In this article, we set out to discover how much the colour has really changed between all of LEGO’s recoloured sets, and we will see how this one compares.

LEGO released another white Koenigsegg Jesko in the Speed Champions range (76900) in 2021, which was not an Absolut but still a very similar design. It seems only natural to wonder: would a minifig driver choose that version of this new bigger variant? What would you prefer?

This set is available from the 1st of August 2024 for AU$89.99/£46.99/US$49.99/€52.99 (affiliate link), which is exactly the same price as the dark grey variant. This set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes, but our opinions are our own.

Read on as we let our mind wander past some typical topics while exploring this white super-car:

Colour difference

LEGO first introduced alternative colours with the Fiat 500, original in light yellow and then released in a light blue (in limited markets). Since then we’ve seen alternative colours for a Bugatti Bolide, Exotic Parrot, Lamborghini Huracán, a T-Rex and now the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut.

To quantify the difference in colour between the sets, we have highlighted their colours on a colour wheel so you can see how far apart their colours are.

Starting with the Fiat 500 we see that their colours are almost opposite on the colour wheel and quite far apart, which would suggest this recolour would qualify as ‘very different’

Next up is the Bugatti Bolide, again showing drastically different spots on the colour wheel.

The Exotic parrot is interesting because the birds have two main colours, so they are all present on the colour wheel. The dots show up all over the wheel, apparently giving us a nice varied palette.

Three variants of T-Rex were available, almost in three primary colours, which can be seen on the color wheel, where they take spots on different slices of the wheel. Only if the blue T-Rex had been a bit more purple would we have had a better distribution.

Moving back into the realm of cars brings us the Lamborghini Huracán Technica in (green and orange), still available from LEGO (affiliate links). The colours appear quite different to the eye but are a bit closer to each other on the colour wheel. Note that the dots are quite far to the outside of the wheel, indicating that the colours are very vibrant (like most of the sets so far)

Wrapping things up with the two Jeskos shows us a very different picture. The two dots are very close together, and very close to the middle. It shows us a few things; the grey is indeed bluish-grey (the dot is in the blue region of the colour wheel), but they are also not really colourful at all. Not only that, but they are very close together, and there is very little difference between these two sets, making me repeat the question from the earlier review. Why?

I like that LEGO offers us a choice, but I would prefer if the choice is actually significant. The difference between this grey and white car is just not enough to excite me; I wish the effort would have gone into a bright colour or an entirely different set instead.

Comparison

What is there to say? Look at the pictures. The cars have the same shape, but the white appears a bit sharper due to the contrast between the white and black. The orange accents stand out a bit more on the grey variant than the lime accents on the white variant.

Because of the vertically opening doors, the cars can park very close together, and the driver can hop from one car to the other without touching the ground!

New parts! No, wait… oh yes (?!)

Having two recoloured sets makes it relevant to look at the parts provided in two colours between the sets, most notably the panels. After reviewing the grey car, I was asked if perhaps there are some new parts in the set to give it some redeeming values, and the answer to that turned out to be complicated. The parts shown in the photo are new parts (or at least new colours) in either dark grey or white, or at least so it appears.

A few steps can be taken to assess if a part is new. I will go through the steps I’ve taken and try to summarize a few parts of the conclusion. This is just to show an overview and the approach I’ve taken to look into this; I hope this makes you appreciate the value of the detailed work from the New Elementary crew, who tell us what’s new time and time again.

The first step is to consult my memory, but since that is not very reliable, we will just skip that step. We can then consult the part list on Brickset, which provides a neat summary of all the parts listed on the LEGO Customer Services website. At the top of this list, they provide a summary of the proportion of parts that are not listed. At the time of writing for the white Koenigsegg Jesko it shows 30 parts are not listed on the LEGO website, suggesting they are new parts that have not yet been added.[Ed. Compared to 775/801 parts listed in the Dark Stone Grey version.]

Next we can look at the part list in the back of the instruction booklet. Each of the listed parts has a number underneath which is unique for each part in a given colour (This is also referred to as the Element ID). The newest parts will have the highest numbers, and at a glance there are quite a few of those present here..

Unfortunately, this is where things get muddy. Take, for example, part 6510088 (not yet found on Bricklink or the LEGO website), but browsing through the existing parts brings us to the following part, design ID 2403.

This part looks VERY similar to the one used in this Jesko model, and it has appeared before, but with a different ID. So rather than flag this as a new part I would like to call this as a rare part, but strictly speaking it is an entirely new part to LEGO. The left counterpart of this piece has a very similar story.

An example of some pieces that are new this year in this colour and unique in white in this set (so far)

The large flat panels across the front wheel arches are a new design without the rectangular notches on them:

A few panels that are rare/new in dark bluish grey:

All this feels a bit exhausting and confusing, and I can suddenly understand why LEGO decided to remove part variants from Bricklink; life is already complicated enough.

To finish this arbitrary part exploration I’d like to highlight two parts that have previously only shown up in 42133 Osprey that was cancelled before it was officially released; so if you feel disappointed about missing out on those parts you can find them here:

I am confident there are other new or rare colours in this set which I will leave for you to discover.

Piston timing

By this stage I’m sure you are curious about the timing of the pistons in the engine of this car. After all, with 16 cylinder you can expect something exotic. I have found no reference for the real timing of the pistons, but the instruction manual very explicitly shows that you should mount the crank discs in only 2 positions. This means that at all times 2 pistons will be moving in sync. This seems strange to me and, more importantly, it doesn’t look as nice to me. For this reason I have mounted the crank disks in all four possible positions to create a more gradual wave across the pistons. See video for the results; what do you think?

Door opening issues (again)

After my mistake with the door mechanism while building the grey version of this car I thought I paid special attention to the doors in this one. As a result, BOTH doors could not close properly until I adjusted the mechanism. I may not be a very competent builder but with an age qualification of 10+, I would have hoped that the design would be a bit more fool-proof.

Speed Champions

In 2021, LEGO released a Speed Champions version of a Koenigsegg Jesko (76900), which was available until the end of 2023. This model was slightly different from the Jesko Absolut (notice the spoiler) but a comparison is still in order.

This smaller version captures the car’s shape in a way that appeals to me more than the new Technic version, but Mike the Minifig could not be stopped to show off his bigger car. (Apologies for the a-pillar being bent forward in the photos.) Seeing the Technic and system implementations of these difficult curves makes me appreciate the talent that goes into abstracting shapes into LEGO; Technic certainly has the edge when it comes to unusual angles, but the system vehicles feel more complete due to the lack of visible holes.

Which do I prefer?

Just comparing the 42184 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolute, white, with the 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, grey  (affiliate links), neither car really speaks to me. Both provide the exact same build experience, and I feel like they provide decent value for money, but the end-results miss something for me. I slightly prefer the white layout because it pops a bit more, but this is entirely personal to the location where it will be displayed. A little kudos that the car fits a minifig (and seems to be pretty close to minifigure scale than most Technic Vehicles), but my criticisms remain the same for both cars: colourless and somewhat soulless. This keeps my arbitrary praise stuck at 2 out of 5 units.

This set went on sale on August 1 2024, and has a recommended retail price of AU$89.99/£46.99/US$49.99/€52.99  this set was provided by the LEGO Group for Review Purposes, but all opinions are our own.

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Until Next Time,

Play Well!