Grand Veneer

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From one nuclear-armed Cold War superpower building a 1960s design for about two decades too long to another, and the Jeep Wagoneer.

Launched in 1963, the first generation SJ-Series Wagoneer was built all the way until 1991 and – despite it being as American as hot dogs and unnecessary gun ownership – it was also produced in some interesting markets outside the US, including Argentina (military dictator), Egypt (military dictator) and Iran (military coup d’etat). America’s veneer as the leader of freedom is about as thin as the Wagoneer’s wood.

This splendid Model Team recreation of the ’91 ‘Grand Wagoneer’ from its final year of production comes from Flickr’s Jakub Marcisz, who has replicated the luxury 4×4 brilliantly in brick form. Opening doors and hood, a dropping tailgate, working steering, an excellent interior and engine, and wonderfully authentic faux-wood panelling all add to the realism, and there’s much more to see at Jakub’s photostream via the link above.

Back to dodgy dictatorships, and what with there being a rather more strained relationship between Iran and the USA today, the Iranian company that built the Jeep Wagoneer for over a decade in the ’60s and ’70s now builds Renaults instead. The same Renault that just lost $2billion pulling out of Russia. Perhaps with those morals they deserve to lose £2billion after all…

Red Square

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Russia isn’t exactly a bastion of commercial opportunity at the moment. Unless you’re a citizen able to buy a departing western brand at a knock-down price. Back in the 1970s though, Russia – and the wider Soviet Union – was seen as a land of opportunity. If you were Fiat anyway.

A range of obsolete Italian designs were sold to the Soviet Union, with the most famous being this; the Lada 1600 / VAZ-2106. Like the 2103 that preceded it, the 2106 was based on the 1967 ‘European Car of the Year’ Fiat 124, although now updated with the deletion of the chrome brightwork (dull black plastic was far more appropriate at ensuring the population knew its place) and a larger engine of Lada’s own design

The 2106 was hugely successful, becoming VAZ’s most numerous product, and being built in several factories across the Soviet Union including in both Russia and Ukraine. Production finally ended in the early-’00s, after which Renault became a majority stakeholder in the company and Lada designs switched from Italian to French.

Which brings us back to Ukraine and knock-down prices, as last year Renault sold their majority stake in the Avtovaz / Lada company for just two roubles ($0.026) due to Russia’s ongoing war with its neighbour. It cost Renault around $2billion, and created the bargain of the century for a lucky Russian buyer.

That lucky buyer is of course the Russian State (aka Vladimir Putin), who has Lada back in Russian hands, and with $2billion of modern French technology thrown in too. Who’d have thought we’d be longing for a Lada built from bits of old Fiat in Cold War Soviet Ukraine, rather than a re-badged Renault stolen via a vicious illegal war.

We are though, so here’s Legostalgie‘s superb Lada 1600 / VAZ-2106, which is not only wonderfully realistic visually, it includes four opening doors, an opening trunk and hood, a beautifully detailed engine and a lifelike interior, all presented via top quality imagery.

There’s lots more of the model to see at Legostalgie’s ‘Lada 1600 / VAZ-2601’ Flickr album, and you can jump back to a time when Ladas were old Fiats rather than stolen Renaults via the link in the text above.

Uh Oh – Ads!

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On TV, at the cinema, in magazines, on radio, on billboards, in social media, on buses… advertisements are everywhere. Including this decaying back-alley in the corner of the internet.

Following this site’s one-and-only upgrade in a decade of operation two years ago, a greater degree of advertising has been permitted at The Lego Car Blog, with colourful boxes trying to sell you stuff appearing in the side bar, in-between posts, and between paragraphs.

As we don’t ask our readers for money nor receive any kind of endorsement or sponsorship from LEGO (and rightly so – they’re a reputable organisation), these ads are what keep the lights on at TLCB Towers, and they do a little good in providing revenue that we can give away too.

Amazingly, The Lego Car Blog’s success has meant we’ve appeared on the radar of an award-winning publishing platform, who have somehow not noticed our gross incompetence and instead focussed on the number of eyeballs (like yours) that this site receives.

Therefore we’re currently undergoing a trial with said publisher to explore additional advertising revenue, more tailored to our readers, and with far greater granularity. This will allow us to exclude advertising themes we’re not happy with (gambling, sexualised content, get-rich-quick schemes and so forth), although of course the ads that you see here at TLCB (like any site) are mostly based on what your search history reveals about you.

For a while this means you might see an increase in the number of adverts as the publisher optimises where and how they should appear. Please bear with us through this stage, and if you have any comments on your user experience here at The Lego Car Blog, do please let us know so we can feed this back.

If it all goes wrong we can revert back our previous (and more-than-adequate) advertising solution, whilst if it works you should see more targeted advertising that also generates us a greater revenue stream that we can do some good with : )

Thanks for visiting us

TLCB Team

Icons 10317 Land Rover Classic Defender 90 | Set Preview

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Land Rover may have released a new Defender, as have LEGO with the officially-licensed 42110 Technic version, but this is the Defender we want! Yes, LEGO have finally created a ‘classic’ Land Rover Defender set, and doesn’t it look good? This is the brand new 10317 Icons Land Rover Classic Defender 90.

Of course the real car isn’t called ‘classic’ anywhere in its title, but we suppose both LEGO and Land Rover are keen to remind us that there is indeed another Defender on the market. Replicating the short wheel-base ’90’ hardtop, 10317 does wear Land Rover’s marvellous heritage green colour (as re-used on the final run of ‘classic’ Defenders) superbly though, with a good proportion of the set’s colossal 2,336 pieces in the hue, including the wheels and the new wheel-arch parts similar to those that first debuted on the ‘other’ Defender set some four years ago.

Working steering and suspension, opening doors and hood, and a really beautifully detailed engine account for some of that chunky parts count, as does a degree of customisability, because – as per the recent 10304 Chevrolet Camaro, 10300 ‘Back to the Future’ Time Machine, and 10265 Ford Mustang sets – 10317 can be built in a number of configurations.

Two different engines and three different hoods can be constructed, but the bulk of those extra parts are there should you wish to build your Defender to look like every single one in London; with a huge array of totally unused off-road accessories. These include an uprated front bumper with a working winch, side rails, jerrycans, a toolbox and jack, a shovel, pickaxe, hammer and axe, fire extinguisher, roof cage, snorkel and traction plates.

Of course any real Land Rover Defender driver wouldn’t be within 100 miles of those items – with their vehicle instead carrying a flask of tea, a roll of duct-tape, and a sheep – but you can always build these at home for true Defender authenticity.

The new LEGO Icons 10317 Land Rover ‘Classic’ Defender 90 will reach stores in April of this year, is expected to cost around $240 / €240 / £210, and we’re in the queue. We’re already working on our brick-built sheep.

Swoosh! Or Something.

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Uh oh. Sci-fi. It’s been four posts without a car, and our Elves are getting hungry. So here’s a spaceship, a genre about which we are heroically incompetent. However, TLCB debutant Loysnuva‘s creation does include quite a few wheels and has a racing stripe, which somehow makes TLCB Staff less nervous about it. It’s also – as you can see here – excellent, both in terms of build and presentation, and there’s more to see of Loysnuva’s top-quality space thingammy at their photostream. Click the link above to swoosh your way there.

A Claas Act

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It’s not all supercars and hot rods here at The Lego Car Blog. Mostly this is because we’re pretty rubbish at sticking to our brief, but it’s also because we rather like trucks, diggers, tractors, and other workhorse-like machinery. This example was discovered by one of our Elves on Bricksafe, it’s a Claas Axion tractor by mpj, features working steering and rear hitch mechanisms, and there’s more to see via the link. Plus if you’re as into green farm machinery as we are (frankly it’s a miracle we have partners…) you can check out LEGO’s own officially-licensed and throughly brilliant Claas tractor set by clicking here, and its smaller brother here, back from the earliest days of this website. We’ve clearly been nerding out over tractors for some time…

White Space

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No, not what your Grandfather calls the country club, but this, a rather humungous DAF FT CF 430 Space Cab truck, and an even more humongous twin-axle box trailer.

Constructed by DAF-building specialist Arian Janssens, the CF 430 Space Cab is one of three equally excellent Model Team recreations of modern DAF trucks published by the builder simultaneously, and there’s more to see of each at his photostream. Click the link above to take a look.

It’s Be-Hind You

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This is a Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship, a 1970s product of the Soviet Union that remains a formidable aircraft even today.

The MI-24’s speed, size, troop carrying, and attack capability have led to its use in a depressingly long list of wars, conflicts and insurgencies over the last five decades, with over fifty operators worldwide, including countries in direct conflict with one-another, and some less-than-reputable dictators, despots, and militias.

The U.S even have a few, as does much of the former Soviet Union, with this excellent brick-built example by Flickr’s Steffan Johansson flying in Ukrainian colours. Ukraine’s former Soviet comrade Russia flies the greatest number of Mi-24’s of course, with many currently deployed in the ‘Special Military Operation’ (read ‘Illegal War’) in Ukraine.

At least five Russian and one Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters have been lost in the conflict to date, which is a number that is at least the right way round, and you can see more of this one at Steffan’s ‘Mi-24/35 Hind’ album on Flickr.

Click the link above to take a look, or here to donate to those whose lives have been devastated by Russian aggression against their former ally. Both sides may be deploying the Mil Mi-24 Hind in the current conflict, but one deserves your support.

Kookie Kar

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This is the ‘Kookie T’, one of the all-time seminal hot rods, and the inspiration for very probably a thousand hot rods that have followed. Built by hot rodder and actor Norm Grabowski, the Kookie-T exploded into magazines during the mid-’50s, creating such a stir that the car was chosen to make a starring appearance in the ’50s TV show ’77 Sunset Strip’.

Norm’s custom car prowess led to further TV and movie contracts, and eventually allowed him to appear in several productions himself, acting in films including ‘The Monkees’, ‘Batman’, ‘The Towering Inferno’, ‘The Cannonball Run’ and… er, ‘Sex Kittens Go to College’, amongst others.

This fantastic replica of the iconic hot rod comes from previous bloggee Andre Pinto, who has recreated the Kookie-T brilliantly in brick form. Stunning presentation matches the excellent brickwork, and there’s more to see at Andre’s ‘Norm Grabowski’s Kookie Car’ Flickr album. Click the link to take a look, unless you’re already Googling that last film title. You are aren’t you…

Bricking Bronco

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There’s a new Ford Bronco out. Which of course means a TLCB post saying ‘we’d prefer the old one’. But we would, so here it is, courtesy of TLCB regular 1saac W. Jump back to 1970 via the link.

Coles Express

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We’ve featured thousands of cars here at The Lego Car Blog, but very rarely do we feature the places where they fill up. Of course the days of the gas station – at least in their currents forms – are numbered, but for now they remain one of society’s few remaining meeting places.

Wealth, gender, and race matter not at the gas station, where the entire spectrum of humanity congregate by hoses full of ancient zooplankton, over-priced bags of sweets, machine-served coffee, and last-minute flowers.

This superb brick-built recreation of one of the last bastions of physical interaction comes from Kale Frost who constructed it as a commissioned piece. Click the link to join us standing at the pump pondering which over-priced bag of sweets to buy at his ‘Coles Express’ album on Flickr.

A Supercar. Only Smaller

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Japan’s wonderful ‘Kei car’ class, which restricts size, weight, and power in favour of tax breaks, is one of our very favourite things in the automotive world. The antidote to the SUV arms-race, it includes vehicles of almost every type, from one-box people movers to off-roaders, fire engines, and tipper trucks. Back in the early ’90s, it even included a supercar. Kinda…

This is the Autozam AZ-1 / Suzuki Cara, a gull-wing doored, mid-engined, turbo-charged coupe built in collaboration between Mazda and Suzuki, that took all of the ingredients of a ’90s supercar, and miniaturised them.

With a government-mandated 67bhp, the speed was miniaturised too, but then would you really want to do 180mph in something the size of a large shoe?

This one is even smaller, being a Speed Champions recreation of the mad ’90s original, it comes from Ilya M, there are free building instructions available, and there’s more to see on Flickr. Shrink a supercar via the link above!

Drift Tax

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Do you own a Japanese sports car from the 1990s? If so, your retirement is paid for. Because at the current trajectory, previously near-worthless Japanese metal will be valued at around $1billion a piece by 2030.

Supras, worth under £10,000 in TLCB’s home nation just a decade ago, are now up to £50,000. MR2s, which were scrap value just a few years ago, now make £10,000. And the humble Nissan 240SX – even a knackered ‘project car’, now costs five figures, with good examples north of £20,000. For a thirty year old Nissan!

We don’t pretend to understand it, but we suspect much of the hype is down to the video games Gen-X-ers and Millennials played two decades ago, which were awash with modified Japanese metal.

The resultant phenomenon today is a boom in ’90s Japanese sports cars, with all of them ending up looking likes this; 1saac W.’s superb modified Nissan Silvia / 240SX. Wide wheels, silly camber, a phat exhaust, and huge aero tick all the drifty boxes, and you can take a closer look at 1saac’s immensely valuable Nissan at his photostream.

Click the link above to pay the Drift Tax, whilst we rue the fact that Gran Turismo didn’t feature the sheddy old Rovers that make up TLCB carpark instead of ’90s Japanese sports cars…

Pack-Away Peril

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If this is a glimpse into the future of urban mobility, we’re on board! A speeder bike that packs away into a handy cube, Dan Ko‘s design looks the perfect tool for the scooter subscription service of tomorrow.

Expect these to be dumped across pavements, doorways and bus stops, ridden with almost comical disregard for safety, and chucked into city canals within fifteen minutes of service commencing. Join us in definitely not doing any of the above via the link!

Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday

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Motor racing has long been used to change brand image. Or, in the case of the tobacco industry, market cigarettes to children.

Audi’s ‘What Dieselgate?’ hybrid Dakar racers, Inifiniti, then Aston Martin, and next Ford, all pretending they have something to do with the Red Bull F1 car, fictitious energy drink company ‘Rich Energy’ sponsoring Haas F1, without having any money… or even an energy drink… Yes the world of race sponsorship makes about as much sense as a LEGO website staffed by Elves.

Fast-forward to the future of racing (or is the past? We’re never quite sure with Star Wars), and the Galactic Empire is still using the same tactics to transform its brand image / market itself to children. Because what better way to convince a sixteen year old to die* on a far away planet than to go racing!

This marvellous ‘Imperial Pod Racer’ is the work of Rubblemaker of Flickr, who has imagined what it would look like if the Galactic Empire went racing. TIE Fighter aesthetics, top-notch building techniques, and stellar presentation have us ready to enlist at the Stormtrooper recruitment office, and you can join us there via the link above!

*And yes, this is actually happening. Still, it’s better than Marlboro.