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What’s Lego and when did it start making cars?
Lego is a Danish toy firm started by carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen in 1932 – he began making toys after tiny mock-ups of his furniture turned out popular. He sold them out of his shop in Billund, smack in the centre of Denmark, then expanded to plastic after ordering an injection moulding machine from the UK in 1946. The Lego brick arrived in 1949 with a patent that built on the design of Brit Hilary Fisher Page.
When Ole died in 1958, his son Godtfred took over – the company is still owned by the family despite having become a behemoth with a £5bn annual turnover – and plastic took over in 1960 after a fire in the woodworking department.
Plastic cars had been included with Lego sets since the mid-Fifties to go with the company’s petrol station and home garage kits, but the first wheels were manufactured for Lego sets in 1962, allowing children the opportunity to build their own cars. Lego Technic came along in 1977 – you could build a scale model go-kart – and the first minifigure
