Following our preview earlier this month of the brand new H2 2024 LEGO Technic sets you may have been wondering where the promised fourth real-world vehicle was. Well today can we reveal all, starting – as the more eagle-eyed reader will have spotted – with the new 42175 Volvo FMX Truck & EC230 Electric Excavator not being one real-world vehicle at all, but two.
Following a long tradition of truck-with-trailer-and-vehicular-load Technic sets, 42175 ushers Volvo’s off-road FMX truck and electric EC230 tracked excavator into the Technic line-up, bringing pneumatics back in the process.
Aimed at ages 10+ and constructed from 2,274 pieces, 42175 features working steering, a tilting cab, and a six-cylinder engine on the truck, fold-down ramps on the trailer, and a 360° slewing superstructure and a two-stage pneumatically-operated bucket arm on the excavator.
There’s also a ‘charging station’ that can be lifted off the trailer by the excavator for when it needs some more electricity, which we can only assume in real-life would be a giant battery or – more ironically – a diesel generator. Either way it looks a bit pointless within the set, doing precisely nothing whatsoever.
The three other components (truck, trailer, excavator) look sufficiently playable however, if a little under-endowed aesthetically for the £170 / $200 asking price. This is particularly true for the excavator’s bucket arm, which uses two small buckets to create one of the correct size. If this approach isn’t to support a B-Model, it’s a bit of a corner cut.
Still, 42175 could be a worthwhile addition to the 2024 Technic line up, and you’ll be able to get your hands on it when it reaches stores in August of this year.
This is a Red Bull SMG Dakar Buggy, of the sort used by World Rally Champion Carlos Sainz (no not that one, his father) to compete in the world’s toughest enduro, before he switched to the works Audi RS Q e-tron that took him to the 2023 Dakar victory.
Built by previous bloggee gyenesvi, this superbly liveried creation has been constructed only from the parts found within the 42154 Technic Ford GT set, and features all-wheel suspension, a mid-mounted V6 engine, ‘HOG’ steering, and opening doors.
Building instructions and a downloadable decal sheet are available, and you can convert your own Ford supercar into a desert conquering buggy via both Eurobricks and Bricksafe.
The premier LEGO convention of the Pacific Northwest is back for the 23rd year! Taking place at theMeydenbauer Center Sept. 5th-8th, with the public viewing days Sept. 7th-8th, BrickCon hosts over 450 builders, creating upwards of 1,000 amazing exhibits for the 12,000 attending fans.
Foundations
This year’s theme is Foundations, and comes with a double meaning. BrickCon is celebrating the formation of the BrickCon Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to using LEGO bricks to educate and enrich the lives of children through science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). At the same time, we will be celebrating the iconic sets that Adult Fans of Lego consider foundational to the hobby. The convention will feature a special exhibit of these sets with contributions from AFOL attendees.
Registration is now open for BrickCon 2024
Registration is now open! To attend BrickCon 2024 as an Adult Fan of Lego, visit www.brickcon.org, where full event details, accommodation options, and tickets can be found.
Porsche are now an SUV maker, with a small sideline in sports cars. Lamborghini are the same. And so are Aston Martin, Bentley, and even Lotus. It was inevitable then, that Ferrari would cave too, and build a four-wheel-drive, off-road capable two-ton monstrosity for the terminally wealthy.
Of course Ferrari, like every other sports-SUV-maker, claim the Purosangue (which translates as ‘thoroughbred’*) isn’t actually an SUV at all. Which is of course nonsense. But it is fitted with a naturally-aspirated V12, so it does at least sound like a supercar.
This fantastic Technic recreation of the Ferrari Purosangue has one too, along with an 8-speed sequential gearbox, all-wheel suspension, four opening doors, hood and tailgate, and remote control drive and steering courtesy of a third-party BuWizz bluetooth battery and LEGO Buggy Motors.
New comer brictric is the creator behind it, building instructions are available, and there’s lots more to see of their incredible replica of Ferrari’s ‘not-an-SUV’ at both the Eurobricks forum and Flickr. Take a closer look via the links whilst we await a letter from Ferrari’s lawyers.
Longstanding readers of this stagnent puddle in the corner of the Internet will know that TLCB Elves – the mythical creatures whose unending and unpaid job it is to find the creations that appear here – have a penchant for extreme violence towards one-another. This usually takes the form of a hit-and-run (see here, here, here, here and here), and today normal service was resumed as one of their number found this.
‘This’, is a fully remote controlled replica of the wild ‘Big Foot’ monster truck from ‘Mad Max – Fury Road’, as built by TLCB Master MOCer Sariel, and powered by twin Control+ L Motors driving all four wheels. Said wheels are shod in huge non-LEGO RC tyres, plus there’s working suspension, a V8 piston engine, and two bed mounted guns for maximum movie authenticity.
All of which means that for the Elves that weren’t squashed, it’s probably the Best Creation Ever. And even for those that were, it was still the Best Creation Ever right up until the moment it smeared them into the office carpet. There’s more of the model to see at Sariel’s ‘Mad Max Big Foot’ album, you can watch it in action via the video below, and you can read the builder’s interview here at The Lego Car Blog by clicking these words.
The Lego Car Blog has published dozens of Mustangs over the years. But not all of them are the four-wheeled variety.
This is the North American P-51B Mustang III, built to bolster Allied fighter number numbers over Europe during World War Two.
Outfitted with the British Rolls-Royce Merlin supercharged engine, the P-51 Mustang scored an incredible 6,000 kills, many delivered by the Polish Air Force as they battled for air superiority over Germany in the final two years of the war.
This astonishing Lego version of the British-engined, American-designed, Polish-operated North American P-51B Mustang III is the work of JuliusZ D. of Flickr, who has captured the iconic fighter in magnificent fashion.
Accurate brick-built camouflage, an authentic livery, working control surfaces, and retractable landing gear all feature, and there’s more to see of JuliusZ’s phenomenal P-51B Mustang model at his Flickr album. Click the link above to fly over hostile Germany in 1944.
It was Stargate Day yesterday or something, and – what with TLCB always having a finger on the pulse of the social zeitgeist – here’s an appropriately spacey build in celebration of Captain Pickard’s adventures.
Built by Flickr’s Wynd, this alien-piloted retro-liveried Landspeeder is every bit as good as TLCB is bad at sci-fi, and you can boldly go to a galaxy far far away via the link above.
Our sneaky Elves, returning from successfully sneaking, have found yet more H2 2024 sets for us to reveal. This time it’s the turn of Technic, with no less than four brand new sets to be added to the line up. Each is an officially-licensed real-world vehicle too, which means in this writer’s case he may finally be able to afford a Koenigsegg!
LEGO Technic 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut
And here it is, the 42173 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut. Named after a bottle of vodka and theoretically capable of a top speed of well over 300mph, just 125 Jesko Absoluts will be produced, which means the real deal will be comprehensively out-numbered by its LEGO brother.
Aimed at ages 10+, the new 801-piece set includes a working V8 engine driven by the rear wheels via a differential, ‘hand of god’ steering, and the Jesko’s ‘dihedral synchro-helix door system’. Which basically means they open upwards.
Arriving in August of 2024, expect 42173 to cost around £47 / $50, and for bedroom floors everywhere to become the venue for some serious top speed testing.
…
LEGO Technic 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance
From the world’s theoretically fastest car, to LEGO’s actual fastest, this is the brand new Control+ powered 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance.
Also aimed at ages 10+ and with a similar parts count, 42176 claims to be the fastest remote control LEGO set yet. Servo steering and motorised drive are powered by a new on-board rechargeable battery, operated via the Control+ app.
Said app also controls the working LED lights (via some trick new lighting pieces), and provides ‘live data feedback’, so drivers can perfect chasing the cat.
A range of real-world sponsorship decals (gone are the days of sets wearing stickers saying such things as ‘Race’, ‘En-Jin’, ‘Fuel’ and suchlike) enhance a reasonable approximation of the GT4’s shape, and you’ll be able to get your hands on the fastest LEGO set yet for £150 / $170 when it races into stores on August 1st.
…
Lego Technic 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV
Some of the Lego Community’s very favourite things to create are lunar rovers, with hundreds of all shapes and sizes uploaded each year. All of them can can trace their existence back to this; the Lunar Rover Vehicle, or ‘LRV’.
Packed inside the Apollo 17 mission, the lunar rover carried scientific equipment and astronauts across the moon’s surface, and now – thanks to the new 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV* set – builders can reimagine this astonishing moment in human history at home.
Constructed from over 1,900 pieces, many of which are accurately coloured in gold and bronze, 42182 can be folded up just like the real thing (or, less exotically, a wheelchair), and features working steering and suspension, brand new tyres, plus tools, some ‘moon rock’, and three separate attachable equipment sets including the wonderfully named ‘Traverse Gravimeter Experiment’.
Which might not sound like much for £190 / $220, but with a black box aimed at ages 18+ and a description using phrases such as ‘a mindful project’, 42182 is targeted very much as a ‘display’ piece, despite its Technic billing. And – as a display piece at least – the 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV* is out of this world.
*Yes LEGO named 42182 twice. But if it’s good enough for Ferrari and Lamborghini…
…
But wait, didn’t you say ‘four brand new sets’? We sure did. We’ll be back with the fourth new addition soon, and it’s a goodie…
Famed for its once-patented stud-and-tube clutch power, glue is not only not required when building with LEGO, using it is borderline sacrilege. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make something beautiful with a little glue, and Airfix, Tamiya and many others offer near-exact miniaturised replicas via a little cutting, glueing and painting.
Cue Flickr’s Joao Nunes and his Speed Champions 76906 homage to glue-based model making. Joao’s brick-built paint, parts mould, brushes and glue are so realistic we can almost smell the fumes, and you can join the finicky assembly of a Ferrari 512 at his photostream via the link above. Just make sure you don’t touch your parents’ upholstery until you’ve washed your hands.
It’s that time of year again, when a crack team of Elven ‘volunteers’ are implanted into the LEGO Company’s HQ to uncover their latest sets. The return of the survivors heralds the arrival of three brand new Speed Champions sets for H2 2024, bringing even more real world cars to bedroom floors this summer! Read on to find out which cars are set to join to the 2024 Speed Champions line-up!
…
76923 Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT
Well, ‘Real world’ cars… except for this one.
Playstation’s ‘Gran Turismo’ series has deployed concepts alongside production cars for some years. Despite having the freedom to design literally anything, these ‘Vision GT’ cars all look rather similar, and the Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT (clearly taking inspiration from a certain moronically-named Ferrari) follows the same route, being both wildly conceptual, and also insipidly paint-by-numbers.
It’s not exactly our first choice for a new Lamborghini Speed Champions set then, and the resultant 230-piece 76923 Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT does little to change that. A funky colour and a new mini-figure torso aren’t enough to swing the balance; our £21/$27 will be spent on a rather better Speed Champions Lamborghini…
…
76924 Mercedes-AMG G63 & SL63
Are you a wealthy Londoner with no imagination? Now you can build your vanity-plated black Mercedes-AMG G 63 in LEGO form! The new-for-2024 76924 Mercedes-AMG G 63 & Mercedes-AMG SL 63 set recreates London’s default 4×4 choice brilliantly, and throws in a neat SL 63 too.
Two appropriately douchebaggy mini-figures, limited well-deployed decals, and some wonderfully accurate detailing on the G 63 in particular ensure 76924 is an excellent addition to the Speed Champions line. Expect to pay around £45/$50 for the dual-model 808-piece set when it arrives in stores in June, and half of Chelsea to own a copy immediately.
…
76925 Aston Martin F1 Safety Car & AMR23
The final addition to the 2024 Speed Champions line-up brings two more Aston Martins to the range, each of which played a starring role in the 2023 Formula 1 season.
The new 76925 Aston Martin F1 Safety Car & AMR23 set recreates F1-legend Fernando Alonso’s podium-placing AMR23 racing car (and that of his decidedly unlegendary, non-podium placing team mate), complete with authentic decals, replica Pirelli tyres, and a rather inexact colour.
The Aston Martin F1 Safety Car – often necessitated by Alonso’s aforementioned incompetent team mate – joins it, with a light bar, accurate be-sticked interior control panel, and the same loose approximation of the real car’s hue.
Aimed at ages 9+, expect 564 pieces, two mini-figures, and a £45/$50 price-tag when 76925 arrives in stores next month.
A catacomb of tenuous links, pointless vehicular facts, and wildly inappropriate Your Mom jokes, The Lego Car Blog Archives can be a forbidding place. Fortunately we have a succession of interns here at TLCB Towers, who – unable to decline our research requests – are routinely sent into the labyrinth to retrieve past posts. And only some of whom are now in counselling.
Today we can share Part 3 of the fruits of their endeavours, Find My Car in Lego, with the most frequently appearing car brands from M to R sorted into the neat list below. If you’ve ever wondered what your car looks like in Lego form, now you can find out!
…
M to R
Mazda
Japan’s left-field choice has appeared here a number of times over the years. Almost all of those times were RX-7s. Find them all by clicking here.
McLaren
Nearly one hundred McLaren images have appeared here to date, from home built F1s and F1 racing cars, to official LEGO sets, and even a couple of 1:1 life-size replicas of McLaren’s newest supercars.
Mercedes-Benz
The world’s first motorcar, supercars, trucks, Unimogs, SUVs, Formula 1 racers, Unimogs, vans, sedans, and Unimogs… over 170 images have appeared to date. Almost half are Unimogs.
Mini
First a model and now a marque, Minis of all shapes and sizes have appeared over the years, more recently including official LEGO sets. A few have even been driven via an armchair, string, and mop arrangement…
Mitsubishi
Boring trucks and boring cars… and a few rather more interesting ones. Plus Mitsubishi didn’t just build things with four wheels; several models in the Mitsubishi archive are rather more airborne than a Canter box truck.
There are probably as many Lego Paganis as there are the real thing. Those to appear here include huge Technic Supercars, beautifully detailed Model Team replicas, and even an official LEGO set.
Long-dead American car maker. The archive is packed with muscle cars, cop cars, and a car with a taste for human blood. Find them all via the link above.
Pontiac
Long-dead American car maker. On-screen highlights include Breaking Bad, Knight Rider, and Smokey and the Bandit, whilst more than a few models in the archive feature a certain signature giant flaming bird motif.
Porsche
Hundreds of Porsche models have featured here to date, including supercars, racing cars, official LEGO sets, tractors, and over two hundred 911 images alone. See them all via the link above.
Renault
Historic French vehicle manufacturer, with trucks, tractors, vans, Formula 1 winners, hot hatchbacks, tanks, and sedans all appearing in Lego form. Click here to take a look at everything to wear the Renault badge.
Rolls Royce
The best cars in the world, and their engines have powered a few iconic machines too. Find them all – including our pink six-wheeled favourite – in the Rolls-Royce archive here.
…
That concludes Part 3 of the Find My Car in Lego series, taking us from Mazda to Rolls-Royce. You can revisit prior instillments Part 1 (A to F) and Part 2 (G to L) via the links in this paragraph, plus of course you can be as specific as you like by typing your desired make or model into the Search box available on every page. If you can think of it, it’s probably been built from Lego. Next time, S…
That’s the most American title we’ve published yet. Apart from this one of course. If you’re into bro-country music then this post is for you, as today we have the perfect truck to go with your boots, jeans, girl, and boots.
Built by previous bloggee Jakub Marcisz, this fantastic 1990 Dodge Ram features opening doors, hood, and tailgate, working steering, a detailed interior and engine, and a superbly executed exterior.
Building instructions are available, with lots more of the model to see at Jakub’s ‘Dodge RAM 1990’ Flickr album and at the Eurobricks discussion forum. Plus if one truck isn’t enough (and it never is in bro-country), here’s another from Jakub’s back-catalogue. Truck, beer, girl, boots, truck…
Bored of your handlebar moustache, wearing leather jackets, and chewing a toothpick in an alley? Then it’s time to cease your Camaro ownership and switch to something far smaller, much lighter, and altogether more classy. Yes this superb Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk1 by TLCB Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber has been constructed only from the pieces found within the official LEGO Icons 10304 Chevrolet Camaro Z28, yet appears completely unconstrained by the set parts source.
Like the set that donated its parts, Firas’ Golf GTI alternate includes working steering, opening doors, hood, and trunk, plus a detailed interior and engine, and you can take a closer look via Firas’ photostream by clicking these words. Or you can keep growing that moustache.
We often feature vehicles with ginormous engines here at TLCB. Because we’re six. But there is much joy to be had at the other end of the vehicular scale, and nowhere is that more evident than the humble moped. Cheap, slow, and hilarious fun, 50cc is all you need for a good time.
This example is a Polish Romet Pony, produced from 1978 until 1994, with a top speed of just 40km/h, and with an engine smaller than most food blenders. And we love it.
Flickr’s Fuku Saku is the builder, and there’s more to see of this wonderful machine at his ‘Romet Pony M2’ album. Click the link to go for a ride.
