This ‘Smooth Coupe’ was discovered by one of our Elves on Flickr today, coming from Slick_Brick, making their TLCB debut. An opening cockpit, two mini-figures and some nifty ‘SNOT’ all feature, and you can slide over to see more via the link.
We’re often guilting of favouring enormous million-part creations here at TLCB. This is because we’re eight, and also because ‘subtlety’ isn’t really in the TLCB Elves’ vocabulary. To be fair to them though, very little is in their vocabulary. Anyway, today we are going small, because Thomas Gion has produced this lovely micro-scale railway vignette, complete with the tiniest trees, teeniest tracks, and littlest locomotive. All look wonderful despite their miniature size and there’s more to see (although not that much more) at Thomas’ photostream. Click the link above to go on a teeny tiny train ride.
Not entered into TLCB and BrickNerd’s Festival of Mundanity contest, but gosh would it do well it if it were, is Michael217’s magnificent Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.
The height of ’90s crappy Americana, the Fleetwood was a near six metre long, two ton barge propelled by a 5.7 litre V8 with less power than a Parish Council.
We love rubbish cars like this here at The Lego Car Blog, because… well, we’re poorly engineered, badly steered, and shoddily built too.
Despite both TLCB and the ’90s Cadillac Fleetwood sharing these characteristics, Michael217’s wonderful Model Team recreation certainly doesn’t. Both beautifully made and presented, Michael’s model captures the enormous boxy Brougham brilliantly, with a superbly realistic engine bay and interior too.
All four doors open, as do the trunk and hood, there’s independent suspension (which is likely considerably better than that used by the real thing), plus full remote control drive and steering courtesy of twin L Motors and a Servo.
It’s a glorious build and one that’s definitely worth a closer look; head to the Eurobricks discussion forum or Michael217’s ‘Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham’ album at Bricksafe for all the imagery.
These days a cream station wagon would be a rather interesting vehicular sight, surrounded by a sea of grey SUVs. Back in ’60s America however, and they were the byword for boring.
Even the name of this one was uninspired. American car companies are usually quite good at exciting names, but – whilst this would eventually be called the ‘Nova’ – to begin with it was simply known as the ‘Chevy II’, which is almost Sovietly insipid.
Flickr’s Tim Inman is the builder behind this marvellous Model Team recreation of the Chevrolet Chevy II station wagon – which he’s created for the ongoing Festival of Mundanity competition – complete with a beautifully built interior and exterior, opening doors, raising hood, and a life-like engine. Which appropriately is not the optional V8. That would be too interesting.
It’s a fabulous build – although we’re not sure how many mundane points it will earn seeing as today a Chevrolet Chevy II station wagon would be a rather cool sight – and there are lots more images available to see at Tim’s photostream via the link above.
If you’d like to enter your own boring build there are still several weeks of the contest left to go, and some awesome prizes on offer for the winners, with Tim entering into both the Vehicle and Object categories. His object entry might just be the most default and uninspired item in the history of mankind too. Excellent!
When Austin/Morris launched the Mini in 1959, other car manufacturers couldn’t believe the ingenious packaging of Alex Issigonis’ masterpiece.
They also couldn’t believe how Austin/Morris were building it for a profit, and thus Ford bought one to take apart to see how they had done it.
What they found was definitely ingenious packaging, but also that the Austin/Morris profit was literally unbelievable, in that they, well… weren’t making any.
The British car industry was a weird place.
Austin/Morris corrected this rather crucial issue with a price rise (not that their incompetence would disappear of course, causing the companies to do so themselves eventually), and the Mini became one of the best selling small cars of all time, along with becoming a design icon.
If you fancy taking a classic Mini apart yourself as Ford did you can now give it a go, thanks to Pixeljunkie‘s ‘exploded’ Mini Cooper, instructions for which are available so you can explode your own!
There’s more to see at Pixel’s photostream, take a look via the link above, whilst we rue not titling this post something along these lines…
Unlike Vladimir Putin, Dawid Boczek has a most excellent erection.
This is his spectacular Liebherr LTM 1070 4.2 mobile crane, a 7,000 piece, nine motor masterpiece with a frankly huge boom. Unlike Vladimir Putin.
Those nine motors power everything from the remote control eight-wheel-drive and six-wheel-steering to the boom slewing, elevation, extension, winch and pneumatic outriggers, making it really very clever indeed. Unlike Vladimir Putin.
Dawid’s incredible creation also features a few mechanical functions too, including opening and lockable doors, and live axle suspension, meaning it’s both secure and stable when things get rough. Unlike Vladimir Putin.
There’s lots more of Dawid’s brilliantly-engineered build to see at both the Eurobricks forum and his ‘Liebherr LTM 1070’ album on Flickr – click the links above to get it up!
Also, Vladimir Putin has a tiny penis*.
*Facebook unpublished our Group on their platform without warning for stating in a blog post that we’ve received threats in the past when we’ve criticised Putin (we have), so screw ’em, we can say what we want now!
The Soviet Union, for all the terror, oppression, and poverty meted out on its inhabitants, achieved some amazing things. Uniting almost all of Eastern Europe, it spanned over 22,000 square kilometres and eleven time-zones before its collapse in 1990, heralding a freedom long-awaited by millions.
The two largest countries within the bloc were the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, where collaboration on military, vehicle and aircraft manufacturing was particularly close.
Which makes it all the more awful that Russia has decided to invade and bombard its brother, despite a shared history, language, people, accomplishments, and that Kyiv is actually even older than Moscow. It’s a war to revive the Soviet Union, in a time where – thankfully – such oppression is incredibly hard to achieve, and is – we hope – doomed to fail.
Today’s creation captures the shared history of Russia and Ukraine beautifully, being a Russian Lada Niva constructed in Ukrainian colours. Flickr’s PalBenglat is the builder, answering our call to build in blue and yellow, and there’s more to see on Flickr. Good luck Ukraine.
Having just posted a hugely valuable exotic car built from another hugely valuable exotic car, you might be surprised to learn that at The Lego Car Blog, we rather prefer the ordinary. So much so we’re running a building competition in search of boring vehicles.
You see, it’s easy to make a squillion-dollar supercar that precisely eight people will buy, not drive, and park in a garage hoping it will one day be worth two-squillion dollars, but it’s much harder to make something hum-drum fun.
It’s even harder these days, when the only thing that sells are angry-looking crossover-SUVs with too much power and too little handling finesse, but back in the 1980s, a number of affordable, interesting, fun cars could be had from car manufacturers who today wouldn’t know fun if it ran them over.
Honda were one such company, who – at the peak of their engineering brilliance – created a small 2+2 front-wheel-drive coupe built from standard economy-car parts and powered by a dinky (but clever) 1.5 or 1.6 litre engine. And that was the ‘sports’ model, base versions had a 1.3!
The result was fabulous, and a car that was infinitely more fun to drive than a BMW X7M or whatever the hell they’re trying to pass off as as a ‘sports’ vehicle this week.
Flickr’s Mihail Rakovskiy has captured the humble CRX beautifully in Creator style, recreating its ’80s aesthetic brilliantly and including opening doors, tailgate and hood, a superb interior, and a realistic brick-built version of the little Honda 4-pot that powered it.
It’s a fantastic homage to a Honda’s proof that power and price are no match for cleverly engineered affordable fun, and there’s much more to see at Mihail’s ‘Honda CRX’ album via the link above.
Usually found on cars that are very much at the other end of the vehicular spectrum from the Stuttgart product they’re referencing, it’s certainly never a trade-up from the Porsche that wears the ‘My Other Car’s a Porsche’ bumper sticker. Except today that is.
Yes, this glorious Ford GT40 is constructed entirely from the pieces found within the LEGO 10295 Porsche 911 set, and whilst there aren’t many cars cooler than a ’70s Porsche 911 Turbo, the Ford GT40 is surely one of them.
Built by TLCB Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber, this wonderful 10295 alternate includes as many functions as its donor set, including opening doors, hood and engine cover, plus working steering and a detailed interior too.
Best of all, if you own the 10295 set and fancy trading up to a GT40, Firas has created building instructions too.
There’s much more of Firas’ superb 10295 B-Model to see at his ‘Ford GT40 Mk1’ album on Flickr, and you can find instructions to build it yourself (plus many more alternate models besides) at Firas’ ace website by clicking here.
Sometimes, and particularly if you’re a TLCB Elf, you just want to drive around in a big red truck. That’s what one of our smelly little workers is doing today, having found this beefy looking remote control truck courtesy of Berthil van Beek.
A suite of Powered-Up components equip the aforementioned ride with remote controlled steering, drive, fifth-wheel hitch and trailer legs. Not that there’s a trailer, which is probably a good thing as the Elf at the controls is crashing enough as it is.
There’s more to see on Flickr and you can do just via the link above.
Renault are weird. They’ve made wonderful cars, dull cars, terrible cars, and this… a supermini with a mid-mounted 1.4 litre turbo that produced – in race trim – around 380bhp. Back in the early ’80s!
That remarkable figure propelled the Renault 5 Maxi Turbo to the top step of the podium on its maiden event, at the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally.
This WRC success was to be relatively short-lived though, as the arrival of Group B and all-wheel-drive meant the Maxi Turbo was quickly outclassed on anything that wasn’t tarmac.
When an event was on tarmac though, the little Renault continued to be a formidable racer, finding success for the next two decades.
This lovely Speed Champions recreation of the legendary ’80s rally car was found by one of our Elves on Flickr, coming from Fabrice Larcheveque who has updated (and beautifully presented) a model he first created several years ago.
Authentic bespoke decals, a realistic interior, life-like engine bay, and even a roll-cage make for an exceptionally detailed Speed Champions creation, and there’s more to see – including a link to building instructions – at Fabrice’s ‘Renault 5 Maxi Turbo’ album on Flickr.
Click the link above to take a look and maybe recreate the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally on your desk at home. Not that we’re doing that right now of course, we’re much too grown up…
The 1972 Collins ‘Crusader’ Type-II Ambulance – or ‘Boo Boo Bus’ – was Ford Econoline-based ambulance produced for domestic use by America’s emergency services.
We love humble, useful vehicles like this here at The Lego Car Blog, and this one has been built beautifully by regular bloggee 1saac W. of Flickr. Everything is LEGO, including the decals used to create the window frame and (parts of) the red stripe, and there’s more to see of 1saac’s Boo Boo build at his photostream.
Click the link above to dial 9-1-1 in 1972.
Things were different in the ’80s. Shoulder pads, ‘greed is good’, florescent clothes, cassette tapes, and Russian totalitarian oppression. Wait, that last one’s making something of a comeback…
Ferrari were big in the 80’s too, but whilst we’re glad they’ve stuck around today (unlike Russian totalitarian oppression), we still think they were better in the decade of parachute pants and the mix tape.
The reasons for this are three-fold; 1. Ferrari were more interested in selling cars than merchandise, 2. they hadn’t even thought of making an SUV, and 3. their cars were fabulous.
The 308 GTB, Testarossa, and – of course- the magnificent F40 graced countless ’80s bedroom walls, and Flickr’s Laszlo Torma has recreated all three beautifully in Speed Champions scale.
Laszlo has used the same cockpit piece for all three, yet with clever building techniques and smart attention to detail, each car resembles its real-world counterpart brilliantly.
There’s more of the classic Ferrari trio to see at Laszlo’s photostream, where a link to building instructions can also be found so that you can recreate these iconic ’80s supercars for yourself!
Brilliant though the Porsche 911 is, it can be criticised for looking, well… almost exactly the same for the last six decades.
What lies underneath the repetitive exterior however, has evolved hugely over the years, with turbo-charging, all-wheel-drive, and soon even electrification packaged inside the iconic body shape.
And that’s sort of the point of the 911 we suppose; a myriad of different engines, drivetrains, and technologies united by a common exterior.
And that’s never been truer than with today’s creation; this epic G1 Transformers ‘Jazz’, a ginormous funky robot hidden completely within the official Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 set by the sheer force of Adrian Drake’s considerable building talent.
Using the 10295 set as a base, Adrian’s ‘Jazz’ Transformer unfurls out of it via a brain-busting manoeuvre of folds and hinges, all of which is unfathomable to the minds here at TLCB.
You can see if you can figure it out at Adrian’s photostream, where there’s more of his amazing creation to view; click these words to watch a Porsche 911 become a robot.
This quirky classic cabriolet is a Panhard Dyna Junior, a car about which we know absolutely nothing besides that it’s French. And therefore probably weird.
Built by previous bloggee monstermatou, this lovely ’50s two-seat convertible is constructed from the parts found within the LEGO 10290 Creator Expert Pickup Truck set, and like its donor set includes working steering, opening doors, hood and trunk.
There’s more of monstermatou’s excellent alternate to see at his photostream on Flickr; click the link above to head to ’50s France.
