2023 was the year of Barbie with the billion Dollar movie catapulting the iconic toy into even higher levels of public attention. Also in 2023 – and less than a month after the release of the Barbie movie – LEGO released set 10321: Corvette.

Containing 1 210 pieces, this larger scale model car would surely be in pink to further capitalise on the Barbie hype right? I mean come on, LEGO even chose the 1961 C1 version of the classic Corvette as the model that the set would duplicate in brick form.

But this didn’t happen. Set 10321 is made in LEGO’s well known red colour which, while also a colour close to the Corvette’s history, is not the pink many were hoping for.

At this point some people may think that a pink Corvette would never been done as Barbie’s owner, Mattel, is a rival toy company to LEGO. While that could be the case, LEGO has been working with another rival in the form of Hasbro for some time now, producing sets for Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons and Peppa Pig is on the way too. While I don’t know the relationship between Mattel and LEGO, if any, it does seem likely that the two companies could have come to an agreement.

Another reason some cite for the lack of a pink Corvette is of money. If the Barbie licence was included in the Corvette set, LEGO would need to pay licencing fees to both Chevrolet and Mattel. While this is a definite possibility, again I have to point out how LEGO has already done this in the past. Take the LEGO ECTO-1 for example. It is licenced not just to use the Ghostbusters name, but also the Cadillac branding as the vehicle is based on the Miller-Meteor ambulance. Similarly the DeLorean is has licencing both for Back to the Future and DMC.

Regardless of the real reason we didn’t get a pink Barbie Corvette, we can at least see what one looks like… albeit digitally. It was a long road to make the images on this page but let’s skip ahead in the story and look at the final product and we’ll get back to the journey after the jump:

So the bad news here is that you can’t just go out and buy replacement parts for the red Corvette set and build it as a pink version. Many of the pieces used in the set are simply not made in any of LEGO’s pink colours. It’s not just the slope pieces which LEGO mentions in the instructions as being made just for the Corvette as even some common bricks and plates are not made in any shade of pink.

I’m sure some talented builder could engineer their way around this problem but at that point so many changes would need to be made that it becomes an entirely new project instead of a simple recolour of an existing set.

The good news is that Studio exists. Studio is a free CAD programme that LEGO offers and, through it, you can build just about anything you desire with an infinite amount of digital bricks. For this little experiment Studio can also display pieces that don’t technically exist, by taking a mould and rendering it in a colour that LEGO hasn’t made before and may never make in the future.

With this in mind I loaded up the parts of the original red Corvette and slowly built it as per the official instructions. Once done I could swap all the red for pink and finally we can see what this Barbie version could have looked like.

Except for one more hiccup.

For whatever reason the large windscreen piece that LEGO uses in its official set has not been added to Studio just yet. One downside of Studio is that, despite being an official LEGO product, it sometimes lacks certain pieces for no real reason.

Because of this I had to get creative. First I went through all the windscreen pieces that were available in Studio with no dice. Either the windscreen was too angular or too large to fit the Corvette. With the pre-made options not suitable I decided to use a trick that is fairly common for LEGO builders for both official sets and in the community, and that is not using a windscreen at all. Instead I build a frame to mimic the metal structure that would hold the imaginary glass.

You may also notice in the renders here that there are some small details missing. This is because the stickers that come in the original set are not present in Studio. This is just another limitation of Studio you need to work around when making digital products.

Lastly let’s talk about pinks. According to the colour guide on Bricklink, LEGO’s regular pink colour was discontinued in 2005. This leaves dark pink or bright pink as options for making a Corvette.

In an effort to see which pink would look the best I rendered the build in all three of these colours. In talking with people who saw this render, more people preferred the dark pink options and felt that is best represented the ideal look of Barbie’s Corvette.

But what do you think? Do you prefer the light pink or the now retired regular pink?

Hope for the future

Over the last few years LEGO has been experimenting with re-releasing certain sets and changing their colours.

Famously the Fiat 500 was originally released by LEGO in a pale yellow and then got swapped to a similarly pale blue in a limited release overseas. The Fiat 500 is actually from the same theme as the Corvette (Icons, originally called Creator Expert) so there is even precedent inside of LEGO’s own product lines.

Outside of Icons / Creator Expert, this kind of colour swapping has had more entries. The Technic Bugatti Bolide, coincidentally, was also released in yellow initially and then a blue version followed it.

The Mighty Dinosaurs set was recoloured not once but twice, and a parrot set released this year got two colour variants.

Returning to vehicles and the most recent car to be colour swapped is the Technic Lamborghini Huracán which was first done in a lime green and now will be released in April in orange – see below.

With all these recolour examples, and the Lambo one happening just a few days before this article was written, I am relatively confident that we could see a pink Corvette in the future.

Now with my work in Studio we have a decent idea of what that could look like and LEGO, if you’re reading this, I will take a lump sum, royalties based on sales or a job as a designer. Email me.

For more recoloured LEGO sets, and I promise this isn’t me fishing for a job at LEGO, check out my black recolour for LEGO’s red rose bouquet. Unlike the Corvette, the black roses can be built in real life using pieces that already exist in the parts catalogue. I’ve also remade the Optimus Prime set into Nemesis Prime and Ultra Magnus.