This is a Trabant 601, accurately resplendent in the colour of an old lady’s bathroom, and made from a similar material too. Created by László Torma in Speed Champions (ironically) scale, this neat miniaturisation of the rubbish East German people’s car captures the original wonderfully, and there’s more to see – including a ‘Combi’ station wagon version – at László’s photostream. Click the link above for more Hearing-Aid-Beige communist wonders.
It’s FebRovery, and this is an ‘NTERRA B400 MEGA HAULER’, the latest in industrial grade multi-directional rovers from the [ S E /\ Z Y ] corporation.
Able to service an entire moderately-sized colony*, the NTERRA B400 can take a gigantic load*, thanks to an enormous tilting deck with a 300 ton payload capacity and its ‘revolving mecanum wheels’.
Rendered in Bricklink Studio 2.0 with considerable post-production enhancement, [ S E /\ Z Y ]’s gargantuan design shows what’s possible when taking digital building to the extreme, and there’s more to see of his moon-based monster-mover on Flickr via the link above.
Alternatively, if enormous digital creations aren’t your thing, here’s a brick-built FebRovery entry of a similar aesthetic that’s altogether smaller…
*Just like your Mom.
It’s February, and that means the month-long annual rover-based building bandwagon of FebRovery has begun!
Not aimed at creating brick-built versions of the products produced by the defunct British car brand (although some members of TLCB Team wish it was), FebRovery entrants are instead tasked to create machines of a sci-fi complexion, capable of roving other worldly environments. Which means of course, that this site will comprehensively struggle to write anything about them whatsoever.
Anyway, this one comes from Flickr’s Frost, who is a fan-favourite during the contest each year, and there’s more to see of his FebRovery, er… rover at his photostream. Click the link above to start roving.
If you’re into building-a-house-in-the-wilderness type TV programmes, you’ll know that – along with having royally impractical work surfaces, owners who insist rather too much that the wood stove is so warm they’re glad they don’t have central heating, and that the whole build only cost half as much as a conventional house (although their parents did give them the land… and the power supply… and the labour… for free) – trendy off-grid lifestyle houses are absolutely all clad in Siberian larch.
Cue Vladimir Drozd’s excellent KamAZ 4310 logging truck, pictured here transporting a hefty of load of the finest cladding material known to the tiny house movement. Despite being only (kinda) mini-figure scale, Vladimir’s KamAZ is packed with features, including the jockey trailer thingy, posable steering, and a crane mounted behind the cab so the truck and can pick up and deposit logs without the need for seperate crane grab to be present.
He’s also photographed the model in ‘Vladimir Putin’ mode (i.e. it’s got no wood*) and there’s more to see of this fantastic build at Vladimir’s ‘KamAZ 4310’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to clad your own tiny house in Siberian larch, whilst insisting the wood stove really is warm enough, honestly. It is.
*Yes, we’re still making ‘Putin has a tiny penis’ jokes, because Putin does indeed still have a tiny penis.
Britain feels like it has returned to the 1970s. Inflation is ludicrous, everyone’s on strike, and it’s only a matter of time before brown patterned wallpaper makes a comeback.
Cue Jonathan Elliott, who has also returned to 1971 via this superb remake of one of the first ever LEGO vehicle sets, the 600 Ambulance. Whilst the original set is a somewhat low-res right-angled affair, Jonathan’s remake is a gorgeous, highly detailed, and surprisingly functional model, wonderfully recreating the station-wagon-based ambulances that were commonly used half a century ago.
There’s more to see of Jonathan’s beautifully presented 600 Ambulance Redux at his photostream, and you can head back to the early ’70s with the rest of us via the link above.
We’re back to cars, and what a car to return to our site title for. This is a ’68 Chevrolet Camaro ‘Time Attack’ racer, modified with a twin-turbo V6, side-exit exhausts, aero, and a full roll-cage, all built in miniature in Speed Champions scale.
Flickr’s Stephan Jonsson is the creator behind it, and there’s lots more of the Camaro to see – including excellent imagery showing the highly detailed engine and a radically extreme aero-package – at his ‘1986 Pro Street/Time Attack Camaro’ album. Click the link above to set your time.
After our, er… ‘success’ in writing yesterday’s sci-fi post, here’s another! Meaning more absolute incompetence from TLCB staff because anything without four wheels is some kind of witchcraft.
Cue OA KD‘s ‘Moon Escape’, about which we know nothing except that if there’s an image that goes ‘Pew Pew Pew!’ more than this one, we’ve haven’t seen it.
A ship formed of a pair of rubber bands and a Belville triangular window piece is dodging the trans-yellow lazers, and you can join in the pew-pewing on Flickr via the link!
Uh oh. TLCB Elves failed to find any cars this weekend, but they did unearth some sci-fi. Which means the vehicular competence you’re used to, and the eloquence of our prose, are about to take a nose-dive. And the bar was already very low…
Here are two spaceships. Swoooosh!
The first (above), entitled ‘The Nurikabe’, is the work of Flickr’s noblebun, whose spectacular image is reminiscent of those annoying online gaming ads that frequently appear on questionable websites (cough…). Noblebun’s photostream is bursting with exquisitely rendered spacecraft like that pictured here, and you can make the jump to hyperspace or something else science-fictiony via the link above.
The second creation giving TLCB Staff difficulty today comes from previous bloggee Oscar Cederwall (aka o0ger), and is a ‘Light Space2Surface Shuttle’ or ‘L-S2S’ for short. The Neo-Classic Space aesthetic looks the business with the downward-facing cockpit, which – come to think of it – probably makes sense as you’d want to see the planet you’re landing upon rather the sky you’ve just descended through above it.
Crikey, did we just write some sci-fi-related sense? We’d better end there before we ruin it! See more at Oscar’s ‘L-S2S’ album via the link above!
The claw is our master. The claw chooses who will go and who will stay. This one also moves pieces of scrapped spaceships around a junk yard, according to builder David Roberts. Point upwards and say ‘Ooooo!’ via the link above.
The Lego Car Blog is not the best place to find intricate techniques for realistic castle walls, thatched roofs, or ocean waves. This is because the aforementioned items rarely appear on vehicular creations, and if they did we wouldn’t know how to talk about them. A flat-plane crank V8 or the subtleties between super and turbo-charging – yes, the finer points on lifelike rock-work – not so much.
Except today, where here at The Lego Car Blog is the most spell-bindingly beautiful – and somewhat haunting – brick-built landscape we’re sure you’ll see in brick form. Constructed from over 50,000 pieces, this is Huynh Khang and Ky Duy Phong’s ‘Kraken Shadowy’ pirate ship, and the astonishingly real ocean beneath it.
A literal sea of transparent 1×2 bricks and plates, layered over a rolling base varying in hue and elevation, Huynh Khang and Ky Duy Phong’s creation is perhaps the finest example of a brick-built ocean it’s possible to conceive. Jagged rocks stretch out of the waves like a hand from the depths, looking perilously close to the wonderful mini-figure-crewed pirate ship navigating the waters around them.
Beautifully lit, photographed and presented, there’s a whole lot more to see of the ship – and the spectacular ocean it sails upon – at Khang Huynh’s ‘Kraken Shadowy’ album. Click the link above to jump into the ocean.
…is coming, and it won’t be sentient Matrix or Terminator-style death machines that bring it. No, it’ll be the humble mechanised workers that will rise up against their human overlords, bored of fetching, carrying, and operating under Amazon’s working practices.
Cue Tyler (aka Legohaulic)‘s pair of DHL robots; the self-explanatory ‘Autonomous Forklift’ and the mysterious ‘Locus Bot’. Each is a brick-built replica of a soon-to-be-terrifying DHL warehouse robot, constructed for DHL conference attendees that are unaware of the pandora’s box they’re opening.
There’s more to see of both builds at Tyler’s photostream, and you can take a look via the link above whilst this TLCB Writer hoards canned foods in the basement of TLCB Towers.
After spending some time with your Mom over Christmas, she said we needed ‘more endurance’. Well today’s post will rectify that (we assume this is what she meant), with no less than five glorious historic Group C / Endurance racers.
Each is the work of TLCB debutant SFH_Bricks, who has recreated an array of classic Le Mans racer winners wonderfully in Speed Champions scale, with some of the best decals (courtesy of Brickstickershop) that we’ve ever seen.
From the iconic Rothmans Porsche 956 (top), the wild V12-powered Jaguar XJR-9 LM, the Sauber C9 (above) that was so fast along the Mulsanne Straight that chicanes were added the following year, the Mazda 787B (below) – still the only car to win Le Mans without using a reciprocating engine, to the Peugeot 905 Evo (bottom) that took victory in ’92, each is a near perfect Speed Champions replica of its amazing real world counterpart.
Each model is presented beautifully and all are available to view at SFH’s ‘Le Mans Collection Series’ album on Flickr, where you can also find links to building instructions at the Rebrickable platform. Click the link above for even more endurance.
Cyberpunk is just one of the many sub-genres of Lego building about which we know nothing. Sci-Fi? Nope. Steampunk? Nope. Sky-Fi? Nope. Cyberpunk? Hard nope. To be honest if it isn’t a car built after about 1955, we’re going to struggle. In fact we’re constantly amazed that this site functions at all. Still, these two cyberpunkesque vehicles do look deeply cool, even if we have no idea what they’re for or do. Flickr’s incredibly talented Tino Poutiainen owns the mind behind them, and you can get the answers that we don’t have at his photostream. Click the link above to make the jump.
That lump of rock orbiting 550,000 miles above us all has only been landed on by one nation, the USA. But what if the Soviet Union had made it there too? Well the two countries would have fought over it, obviously.
Cue Shannon Sproule’s ‘Battle for the Moon‘, a retro-futuristic lunar conflict in which wind-up mechanoids, barely one step above pots-and-pans-robots, ‘battle for the ultimate high ground’. There’s more to see on Flickr, and you can blast off to pick a side via the link above!
*Link. Naturally.
Whilst both part of the General Motors empire, America’s Chevy ‘Nova’ was rather different to the Vauxhall one we got… Still, we have the cool one today, courtesy of IBrickedItUp and this neat recreation of the third generation Chevrolet Nova SS in Speed Champions scale. Racing stripes and an unnecessary hood bulge add to the image (again, somewhat different to what we got…), and there’s more to see via the link!
