Category Archives: Lego

Take Me Home, Country Roads

We’re back! With the alcohol in our blood gradually being displaced by hazy memories and regret, The Lego Car Blog Elves – imprisoned over the holidays – have been released, and are keen to recommence their hunt for the best Lego vehicles on the ‘net. By which we mean, they’re keen to earn something to eat.

One of their number was super quick off the mark, already returning to TLCB Towers with this gorgeous vintage truck diorama entitled ‘Country Roads, 1933’ by Flickr’s Nicholas Goodman. With beautiful presentation and photography matching the superb construction techniques, it’s an excellent first blog-worthy creation, and you can take the country roads home via the link above, whilst we award an Elf a well-deserved meal.

*Today’s title song.

Christmastime

How does Santa get around the whole world delivering toys on one night? He doesn’t of course. He’s magic, and it’s probably a year-round job. But if he did have to visit every house in one night without his magic to help him, this is the vehicle he’d need to do it.

Able both to fly and time travel, the DeLorean time machine from ‘Back to the Future – Part II’ is the only car we can think of that could compete with Santa’s sleigh, and to be honest the luggage space is rather more limited, what with it being filled with a flux-capacitor and whatnot.

Suggested by a reader, this awesome Speed Champions recreation of Doc’s DMC-12 is best suited to time-travelling then, so we’ll leave the yuletide present delivery to Father Christmas and his twelve levitating reindeer. Head to barneius‘ photostream to see more of the DeLorean though, including in its BTTF Part I and Part III forms.

On Green… I’m Going for It

The immortal words of Dominic Toretto, back in 2001 when he was a common street-racing thief and not an international spy or whatever the hell he’s supposed to be now he’s ten movies in.

Of course things didn’t end well for Dom after the lights did turn green (there’s a lesson there kids; real racers keep it at the track. And they don’t just race in a straight line), but fortunately Brian O’Conner was on hand to resupply the overgrown baby with another ‘ten second car’.

And fortunately for fans of the franchise (or those of you simply wanting to smash into a Dodge Charger with a freight train) previous bloggee IBrickedItUp has created both of the star cars from ‘The Fast and the Furious”s final scene in 6-wide Speed Champions form.

Building instructions are available so you can recreate the aforementioned scene at home, and you can live your life a-quarter-mile-at-a-time via the link above.

Orange Squash

This incredibly low – and incredible orange – car is a 1972 McLaren M20, one of the stars of the Canadian-American Challenge Cup (or Can-Am) racing series that ran from 1966 to 1974. With no limit on engine size (in fact, with few regulations at all of any kind), Can-Am became an almost unrestricted racing series, with the cars even out-performing Formula 1.

The results were wild, often using the largest engines available (usually Chevrolet), and with many drivers coming from Formula 1 and Le Mans, including a few that would become champions of each.

McLaren won the series five times, with Bruce McLaren himself taking the driver’s crown twice. The M20 didn’t make it a sixth Can-Am championship for the British team however, as its 1972 debut coincided with the arrival of Porsche’s monstrous 917, powered by a 900bhp flat-12 that was rumoured to make up to 1,500bhp in qualifying trim.

The M20 still took two wins during the 1972 season however, finishing a distant second in the championship behind the Penske-Porsche, before McLaren left the series as a works-team to focus on Formula 1.

This spectacular Model Team recreation of the final McLaren Can-Am racer comes from Luciano Delorenzo, who has captured the M20 brilliantly in brick-form. The accurate bodywork includes authentic decals, there’s working steering, and a highly detailed replica of the 8.3 litre Chevrolet V8 is fitted underneath the removable rear section.

There’s more of the model to see at Luciano’s ‘1972 McLaren M20’ album on Flickr, and you can jump back to the mightiest racing series there’ll probably ever be via the link in the text above.

You’ve Received a Gift Car!

Not the Mazda Demio… Not the Mazda Demio…   ‘2015 Mazda Demio’.   Damnit!!

A cycle of disappointment familiar to anyone who’s played ‘Gran Turismo Sport’. However today’s ‘gift car’ is not a 2015 Mazda Demio, and is in fact rather good.

Cunningly created by previous bloggee K P and suggested to us by a reader, this neat vintage Dodge Coupe comes packaged inside its own brick-built case, aping the format commonplace with metal scale models.

A clever two-colour ‘ribbon’ wraps around the box encasing the Dodge and there’s more to see of K P’s uniquely presented creation at their photostream via the link above, plus you can click on the following links to check out our reviews of IDisplayIt and BOXXCO‘s cases for rather larger LEGO models…

Work of the Devil

Ferrari’s naming convention sucks. A collection of numbers, it’s almost Soviet in its unimagination. Which is probably because when they do pick a name, it’s properly stupid. Lamborghini on the other hand… they know how to name a car.

Fighting bulls, plague, poison, and the Spanish words for ‘Bat’, ‘Hurricane’ and – in the case of today’s car – ‘Devil’, we’re not sure why an Italian company chose Spanish words, but they sound awesome.

Produced from 1990 to 2001 and powered by a near-500bhp V12, the Diablo was the first Lamborghini to hit 200mph. Which would make it cool even without its devilish name. This brilliant brick-built version of the ’90s supercar icon is the work of previous bloggee László Torma, whose recreation is instantly recognisable in Speed Champions scale.

Instructions are available and there’s more of the Diablo to see on Flickr – click here to to jump to a devilishly good build.

The Future of Racing. Kinda.

The days of petrol-powered racing are numbered. As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the need to race with them is declining also. But electric racers… er, let’s just say they don’t match internal combustion yet.

Retaining the noise and spectacle of motorsport is therefore at forefront of organisers’ minds, with several options including synthetic fuels and hydrogen combustion being explored to replace petrol.

Cue SFH‘s superb recreation of the ‘Forze IX’ hydrogen endurance racer, which – being a fuel cell rather than combustion – solves precisely none of the noise and spectacle issues that plague electric motorsport. Oh.

But what a fuel cell does do is enable electric racing without the need for a giant heavy battery. A battery that requires recharging, taking hours to do so (or – as per early Formula E racing – changing cars half-way through the race, which was profoundly stupid), nor the mining of rare-earth metals to create it.

Able to refuel in roughly the same time as a petrol racing car, a hydrogen fuel cell allows for endurance racing without the need to blow-up dead dinosaurs. And that’s awesome.

It’s just not quite as awesome as blowing up the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which creates all of the noise of petrol, but none of the emissions. We know which we prefer.

Look Here, Old Sport. What is Your Opinion of Me, Anyhow?

“It was a rich cream colour, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns”.

It was also – in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ – a Rolls Royce. However Baz Luhrmann, never one to let reality interrupt the stylised nature of his films, cast a 1929 Duesenberg Model J in his 2013 move adaptation, set in 1922.

Despite deviating from both the book and, er… time, the Duesenberg Model J was the perfect vehicle with which to represent the extraordinary opulence of the story’s titular character. The fastest and most expensive automobile of the time, the Duesenberg Model J was the car of choice for America’s ultra-wealthy, with bodywork created by any number of American or European coach-builders, a weight of up to three tons, and a straight-eight engine that could, if optionally supercharged in ‘SJ form’, make 400bhp.

This astounding model of the Duesenberg SJ used in 2013’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is the work of the fantastically talented Adrian Drake and is – like its real-world counterpart – quite unfathomably long.

Measuring 144 studs from front to rear bumper, with a complete interior behind four opening doors, LED lighting, and the most intricate and incredible brick-built wheels we’ve ever seen, Adrian’s creation is fit for the most mysterious of 1920s millionaires.

It also wears a truly jaw-dropping body, created from a myriad of overlapping bricks, plates and tiles, that can only be accomplished when building at a scale as large as this.

A stunning collection of imagery reveals Adrian’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ Duesenberg SJ in phenomenal detail, and you can find it – along with the builder’s other works – on Flickr. Click the link above to take a ride across 1920s New York, and here to see the real movie car doing just that in Baz Lurhmann’s gloriously over-the-top film interpretation.

Space Punk


Fresh off the back of another example of our sci-fi incompetence, here’s more space-related overreach from TLCB staff.

Built by Nick Trotta of Flickr, this cyberpunky spacecraft is so superbly designed that even we can see it’s probably one of the spaceships of the year.

Ingenious construction techniques and inspired parts choice make Nick’s creation absolutely worth a closer look, even if – like us – you’re not really sure what you’re looking at, and you can join us gazing in wonder via the link above.

Flight Path


Oh uh. Sci-fi. Or is it sky-fi? Or dieselpunk? It doesn’t really matter to be honest, as we don’t understand any of them. It also doesn’t matter because this wild looking ‘Sky Viper’ by Flickr’s Greg Dalink is at least four different kinds of awesome. Built for ‘Novvember’ (don’t ask us!), Greg’s creation mashes multiple themes for maximum effect, and you can see more of the amazing resultant model at his photostream. Click the link above to take off.

Pair of Martins

The Lego Car Blog Elves, fed only when they find a blog-worthy creation, could be called ‘competitive’. By which we mean they’re willing to use Max Verstappen levels of ruthlessness to win.

This inevitably leads to regular Elf fights at TLCB Towers, which we wouldn’t particularly mind, if it weren’t for the tidying up and occasional trips to ‘Elf Hospital‘.

Fortunately today we could keep the peace, as two Elves returned each with a blog-worthy creation by the same builder.

This gorgeous pair of classic Aston Martins comes from barneius of Flickr, the first (above) being a stunning V8 Volante, and the second (below) a DBS.

Both were effectively the same car, hence the accurate similarities between them, and there’s more to see of each classic Aston via the link above. Take a look whilst we distribute two meal tokens to a pair of lucky Elves.

Concordeski

This is a Tupolev Tu-144D, and if looks like Concorde, that’s because it kind of was. Only much, much worse.

Rushed into the skies to beat Concorde to supersonic air-travel (which – by a few months – it did), the Tupolev Tu-144D flew just 102 commercial flights between the sixteen aircraft built, of which only 55 – for just seven months in 1977-78 – carried actual passengers. Which means that half of all the total Tu-144D flights only flew cargo. Supersonic cargo. Yay communism.

By 1983 the Tu-144D programme was halted completely, due to the aircraft’s unreliability, crashes and development issues (although weirdly NASA used the Tu-144D for supersonic testing up to 1999), and the aircraft were put on display around the Soviet Union, where they remain today.

This one however, is on display on SvenJ.‘s desk, having been beautifully constructed in brick form. Ingenious building techniques, detailed landing gear, and an accurate ‘Aeroflot’ livery make Sven’s Tupolev Tu-144D a wonderfully realistic replica of the Soviet supersonic airliner, and there’s more of the model to see on Flickr.

Click the link above to buy your supersonic ticket. Or perhaps just take a look, and then fly Concorde instead…

Grey Pig

Almost every modern car on the roads of TLCB’s home nation is grey. And an SUV. Except that is, for one very specific category of owner. The YouTuber.

No, the YouTuber chooses a whole different aesthetic, based on ‘views’, and ‘clout’, and other insufferable influencer nonsense. Which invariably means that their heavily-financed supercar will be covered in some hideously lurid wrap, with the words ‘I’ve TRANSFORMED’ my [Insert Supercar Here]’ emblazoned in bubble-writing across the accompanying ten-and-a-half-minute video.

An exhaust that also ‘TRANSFORMS’ the car will follow, before the finance agreement is terminated early – much to the insincere sadness of the YouTuber doing it – to fund the next pointless cycle of Buy-Wrap-Exhaust-for-views.

Thus, if we had enough money for a supercar, we’d get it in grey. Because that way no-one would think we’re a talentless YouTube douchebag.

Cue previous bloggee Fuku Saku’s superb Porsche 911 GT3 RS, which is not only brilliantly constructed, it’s also quite fantastically grey. Ingenious techniques recreate the 911’s notoriously tricky shape, and there’s more of model to see at Faku’s ‘GT3 RS 991.1 Gray’ album on Flickr.

Click the link above to take a look, and don’t give the YouTuber supercar douchbags your views.

Fresh Donuts

2023 sadly saw the loss of one of the motoring world’s greats, when Ken Block was killed at the start of the year, when his snowmobile landed atop him.

One of the founders of DC Shoes, Ken raced in motocross, rallycross, rallying, and the X-Games. The top step of each of those championships eluded him, despite some moderate successes, but where Block became a household name to millions was via his utterly brilliant ‘Gymkhana’ videos.

Perfectly designed for the viral-video age, Ken’s ‘Gymkhana’ series took increasingly outrageous one-off vehicles, astonishing car control, and a whole load of sponsorship money, to create some of the most tyre-shredding back-to-back stunt scenes ever recorded, racking up hundreds of millions of views in the process.

Following his death there is only one more of Ken’s ‘Gymkhana’ films to be (posthumously) released, after which we may never see his like again. However Flickr’s Clemens Schneider has created his own ‘Gymkhana’ of sorts, with his unique motorised donuting Mustang vignette, in which Block’s ‘Hoonicorn’ drifts around a donut shop car park.

There’s more to see of Clemens’ tribute – including a video of the motorised Mustang circulating the donut car park in a cloud of brick-built tyre smoke – by clicking here, plus you can see the trailer for Ken Block’s last ever movie via the link in the text above.

Wiiilsoon!

This spectacular creation is a Scania R143 heavy haulage truck, as operated by H.C. Wilson of Elmswell in the UK, and created by truck-building legend Dennis Bosman (with the phenomenal decal work of fellow previous bloggee JaapTechnic).

Dennis’ model is a near perfect replica of H.C. Wilson’s restored classic Scania, complete with a ballast box for traction, behind which would be an enormous trailer when the truck was in use.

Dennis’ incredible Model Team replica also includes a suite of motors hidden within, powering two drive and two steered axles.

It’s an astonishing build that is absolutely worth a closer look, and you can find all of the beautiful imagery and further details at Dennis’ ‘Scania R143 H.C. Wilson’ album on Flickr, plus you can find out how he makes amazing creations just like this one via his Master MOCers interview here at TLCB.