Vote for this LEGO Subaru Impreza rally car, it deserves a second shot
Fan designer TOMOELL has put a new 1,925-piece Subaru Impreza WRC up for a vote on LEGO Ideas, in Colin McRae's blue and gold livery, months after an earlier version of the same car reached the required 10,000 supporters and was still turned down at the official review stage
TOMOELL's new submission, “Subaru Impreza WRC & Colin McRae”, needs 10,000 public votes before LEGO will even consider it for production, the same threshold its predecessor cleared earlier this year before being rejected anyway. As of this writing it has already passed 2,400 supporters since going live late last month, on a design built around three swappable display scenes rather than a single static model.
The wrong year, the right car
Look closely and the design is not actually McRae's 1995 title-winning Impreza, which was a four-door sedan carrying the number 4. This is the WRC98 coupe, complete with its larger rear wing and bigger fog light housings, and the door number identifies it as the car McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist took to third place at the 1998 Rallye Monte Carlo, his final season with Subaru. It is a small factual mismatch that barely matters, because the 555 livery is doing all the emotional work regardless of which season it is attached to.
Built to be handled, not just displayed
The set opens up in several places: doors reveal a detailed rally cockpit, the bonnet lifts onto a replica turbocharged engine, and the boot holds a full-size spare tyre. TOMOELL has also built three reconfigurable dioramas around the same car, a drift pose with angled wheels and modular tan dust clouds, an elevated stance to suggest a rally car mid-jump, and a service park scene complete with jack stands, a hydraulic floor jack and a rolling tool cart. A Colin McRae minifigure is included, and the project page opens with one of his most quoted lines: “If in doubt, flat out.”
The 555 livery, minus the cigarette branding
The design keeps the yellow 555 graphics that made the Subaru World Rally Team car instantly recognisable, but drops the actual 555 name, since the original sponsor was a cigarette brand that has no place on an official LEGO product. LEGO's own dark royal blue brick is a close enough match to Subaru's World Rally Blue that the livery reads correctly even without the branding intact.
A second attempt after a real rejection
TOMOELL's earlier Subaru Impreza WRC project reached 10,000 supporters and advanced into LEGO Ideas' Second 2025 Review Stage as project number 142, only for LEGO to pass on it during the official review. LEGO's evaluation at that stage weighs whether a design is buildable at scale, how complex and costly it would be to manufacture, and whether the necessary licensing is realistic, including sign-off from Subaru and from whoever controls rights to McRae's name and likeness.
What actually happens if it clears review
A project that survives LEGO's review still needs the licensing deals finalised before it becomes a real set. If that happens, the designer receives credit on the packaging, ten copies of the finished product and a share of net sales. Successful past Ideas submissions in similar territory include the Caterham 620R, the DeLorean from Back to the Future and Ghostbusters' Ecto-1, so an officially licensed rally car would be joining an established pattern rather than setting a new one. LEGO's official car catalogue has been growing on its own besides Ideas too, from a Bugatti Type 35 gifted to just 250 people to a full Jaguar E-Type Icons set, so the appetite for a licensed rally car clearly exists somewhere inside the company.
AutoNext Take
Getting rejected after clearing the 10,000-vote bar would put most designers off resubmitting the same car. TOMOELL instead came back with a working engine bay, three separate dioramas and a proper minifigure, which reads less like stubbornness and more like someone who worked out exactly what the first attempt was missing.
The livery mattering more than the actual year of the car is the most telling detail here. Nobody voting for this set is checking whether it is the 1995 sedan or the 1998 coupe, they are voting because blue, gold and a rally-honed silhouette still mean something three decades on. The Impreza's era-defining WRC rivalry with Mitsubishi's own dreamed-about Lancer Evo revival is exactly the kind of golden-era rally nostalgia that keeps resurfacing across the industry right now, in brick form or otherwise. Whether LEGO agrees a second time depends on licensing as much as looks, but 555 Imprezas rarely fail to find an audience.
It costs nothing but a free LEGO account to help decide this one. Go add your vote, and send it to the one friend who still argues about who the greatest rally driver of all time actually was.
