In a seedy bleak cyberpunk future, you could do worse than a classic Datsun pick-up. Notoriously hardy, the Datsun 720 is the perfect tool for collecting disused electronics ready to harvest the internals. Or whatever it is these colourful characters are doing. Ids de Jong knows, and you can ask him at his photostream via the link above.
Sometimes you don’t need ten thousand pieces to build something blogworthily good. A few hundred might be all that’s required, and previous bloggee IBrickedItUp is proving that today with three top-quality small-scale creations.
Each combines clever techniques, an eye for detail, and excellent presentation to great effect, and all have building instructions available too.
IBrickedItUp’s Jeep Wangler crossroads (plus some neat street furniture), City Bus, and ‘Back to the Future’ DeLorean DMC-12 time-machine can all be found at their Flickr photostream, alongside a range of other real-world vehicles recreated in miniature from a small number of relatively available pieces.
Click the link above to take a closer look, and see what your pieces could create.
Google-search for someone riding a banana and the resultant images tend to involve a speedboat and an inflatable. At least, most of them do…
Anyway, now you can travel aboard a curved exotic fruit on the road too, courtesy of seb71‘s ‘Motorbike 10’, which ingeniously deploys two LEGO banana bricks to form the fuel tank. There’s further clever parts usage besides the banana-based brickery, and you can see more on Flickr via the link above.
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the Toyota Corolla, and the Monaco Grand Prix. All simultaneously the greatest examples of their respective genres, and also the most boring.
But Formula 1 in Monaco wasn’t always a procession. Before the cars were the size of school buses, which these days makes overtaking impossible, Monaco could put on quite a show.
Back in 1988, even with the complete dominance of the McLaren-Honda MP4/4, the ’88 Monaco Grand Prix delivered. Twenty-six cars started – two of which were even called ‘Megatron’ (seriously, look it up!) – just ten finished, and Ayrton Senna was the class of the field.
Out-qualifying his team-mate Alain Prost by a staggering 1.4 seconds, Senna led the race by almost a minute… until he didn’t. A momentary lapse of concentration eleven laps from the finish and he hit the wall, whereupon he exited his broken McLaren and walked home.
Prost took the win (his forth and final Monaco GP victory), followed by Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari some twenty seconds back. Which means there’s perhaps some artistic license with the cars’ proximity in alex_bricks‘ stunning 1988 Monaco Grand Prix vignette, but in every other respect this is a spectacularly realistic homage to the Monte Carlo street race.
Recreating the circuit as it was in the late-’80s required Alex to watch old race footage (which is surely some of the most fun research required to build a Lego model), matching his brick-built version of the Mediterranean Principality to the televised imagery from the time.
The result is a replica of the streets of Monaco as they were in 1988 so perfect we can practically hear the noise from the Formula 1 cars bouncing off the walls of the buildings, with Alex displaying his incredible build at the Brickfair show earlier in the year.
Fortunately he’s uploaded a few images to Flickr too, so you can join TLCB Team immersing themselves in Monaco in 1988 via his photostream. Click the link above to head the greatest race on the Formula 1 calendar, long before it was boring.
LEGO’s excellent new Icons 10321 Corvette set looks is a glorious addition to their officially-licensed line-up. However, at $150 and aimed at ages 18+ it is likely to be out of reach for many TLCB readers. No so today’s model, which has all the style of the 10321 set, yet uses 1,000 pieces less. Recent bloggee SFH_Bricks is the builder behind this superb Speed Champions Corvette C1, building instructions are available, and you can find them, and it, by clicking here.
TLCB Elves like giant remote controlled behemoths here at The Lego Car Blog. So do we if we’re honest, but we’re also marginally more sophisticated than our mythical workforce, and thus we also like creations that are rather smaller. In fact, clever parts usage, attention to detail, and top-notch presentation often count for more in small-scale.
Proving that point today we have two excellent examples of small-scale building, each of which is only approximately Speed Champions set size, yet packs the visual punch of models a hundred times the parts count.
The first of today’s small-scale creations (above) is previous bloggee SFH_Bricks‘ superb Mercedes-Benz CLK LM. Entered in the 1998 24 Heures du Mans, both CLK LMs retired around the half-way point with engine issues, but were the fastest cars by some margin prior to their retirement. Entered in shorter races and the CLK LMs were dominant, coming first and second in every single round of the ’98 FIA Endurance Championship. You could even get a road legal version, which SFH_Bricks has built too.
Today’s second small-scale build comes from Ids de Jong, and is a gloriously Blacktron-coloured cyperbunk sports car entitled the ‘Blackstar CX2′. Two deeply cool-looking mini-figures (or – presumably – two less cool-looking ones) can fit inside, and there’s more of Ids’ creation to see at their photostream.
Click the links above to check out more of both builds, and if you’ve found a small-scale creation that you think is deserving of an appearance here you can take a look at our Submission Guidelines and let us know by clicking these words.
It was all going so well at TLCB Towers this morning, until this arrived…
This astonishing creation is a 2,600-piece fully remote-controlled Doosan DL 420-7 wheel loader, driven by four Power Functions motors and powered by a BuWizz bluetooth battery.
It’s the work of the amazing Michał Skorupka, better known as Eric Trax (a TLCB Master MOCer no less), who has replicated the South Korean wheel loader in simply incredible detail.
Working four-wheel-drive, articulated steering, pendular suspension, plus a motorised lifting and tipping bucket arm all feature, and all of which the Elf at the controls used to launch an assault on today’s other four-motor remote control creation.
A brick-based ‘Battle Bots’ inevitably ensued, with the Elves happily riding upon the other combatant machine being squashed in a variety of ways.
Anyway, we have control of both now, so whilst we commence some important ‘testing’ (which may or not be a similar remote control construction machine battle…) you can check out more of Eric Trax’s stunning Doosan DL 420-7 wheel loader via Flickr, Eurobricks, and Brickshelf.
This is the ‘Classic Space Baby Mobile Rocket Transport Mech’, or C.S.B.M.R.T.M. for short, a triple rocket transportation and launch system that can transform into a giant space-baby mech. Because shut up, that’s why.
Angus MacLane is the owner / father responsible for this mildly terrifying Classic Space roving automaton, and there’s more of his otherworldly insanity to see at his photostream. Pack some giant space diapers and head to lunar daycare via the link in the text above.
Toyota like the word ‘Cruiser’ in their model names. The Land Cruiser, so called because it was basically a copy of a Land Rover and ‘Rover’ was already taken, the Urban Cruiser, which sounds like someone looking to pay for, er… night time affection, and this; the FJ Cruiser, which was named after the original Land Cruiser that was itself named to mimic the Land Rover.
Unoriginal naming aside however, Toyota 4x4s are of course superior to Land Rovers in every way, and the FJ Cruiser even added a dose of rare Toyota funkiness, with suicide doors, a contrast roof, a wraparound rear window, and three windshield wipers.
This neat Speed Champions scale recreation of the FJ Cruiser is the work of Ben of Flickr, who has captured Toyota’s most aesthetically interesting 4×4 brilliantly in brick form. There’s more to see at Ben’s ‘Toyota FJ Cruiser’ album and you can cruise on over via the link above.
We like giant yellow diggers here at The Lego Car Blog. Because we’re six. Luckily for us one of the Elves found this one, a 20-ton Komatsu PC200, as replicated in brick-form beautifully by previous bloggee Y Akimeshi. With a posable arm and bucket, slewing superstructure, and a mound of brick-built earth to dig, Y’s creation is one of our favourites so far, and there’s more of the model to see at their photostream. Click the link above if you’re diggin’ it too.
After years of very limited top-tier competition, the fastest class at Le Mans undergoing a spectacular resurgence. Works teams from Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Peugeot, and Cadillac all entered in 2023, with BMW, Lamborghini and Alpine all set to join in the coming years.
The 2023 24 Heures du Mans was won by a jubilant Ferrari, returning almost six decades after their last win, following an epic race-long battle with favourites Toyota. Joining his previously blogged classic Le Mans endurance racers, SFH_Bricks has recreated the 2023-winning Ferrari 499P brilliantly in Speed Champions form, alongside a host of other Hypercar-Class teams from this year’s event.
The second place Toyota GR010, doubtless still miffed at being slowed down by the FIA ‘Balance of Performance’ rules that likely cost them the win, the wonderfully-liveried (if uncompetitive) Penske Racing Porsche 963, and the third-placed Cadillac V-Series.R join the Ferrari 499P in SFH_Bricks’ ‘Le Mans 2023 Hypercars’ album.
Each Le Mans Hypercar wears an accurate livery -created in collaboration with brickstickershop – and is presented flawlessly, with building instructions available too. Join the 2023 race courtesy of SFH via the third link in the text above, plus you can check out the top-tier Le Mans cars from decades past via the second.
One of Steven Spielberg’s most iconic movies – and his biggest cinematic regret – ‘Jaws’ was a triumph.
The highest grossing film ever upon its release, the 1975 blockbuster spawned several increasingly terrible sequels, taught an entire generation to (unfairly) fear sharks, and arguably led to the creation of the most-watched music video of all time. Which if anything Spielberg should be more regretful for than the whole shark-persecution thing.
Anyway, paying homage to one of the all-time film greats is Justus M., who has superbly recreated the ‘Orca’ fishing boat from the movie, along with an ominous fin in the water….
Join the hunt at Justus’ photostream via the link above, and cue the most famous two notes in film-score history…
The absolutely inevitable sound that follows a Ford Mustang leaving a car meet. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one.
We’ll stand at a safe distance from IBrickedItUp‘s excellent 8-wide fourth generation Mustang then, which is pictured in front of an equally excellent forced-perspective city-scape backdrop. Expect to find the Mustang smashed into a telephone pole somewhere in there in about five minutes.
Grab your phone and head to the scene of the accident shouting “Ho-lee-shee-it!” on loop (the only other sound at an American car meet as inevitable as a crashing Mustang) via the link above!
You know how it goes, you wait ages for a Gasser and then three arrive at once. Or something like that.
Anyway, our third ‘gasser’-style hot rod in a week arrives courtesy of _Tiler, whose beautifully presented ’56 C1 Corvette has allowed to us to link to a brilliant title song, and which somehow sits in the centre of a Sacrilege/Inspired Venn diagram.
There’s more of the ‘vette to see on Flickr via the link above, you can jump to the aforementioned title song here, and you can check out the brand new official LEGO Icons 10321 Corvette set by clicking those final teal words.
LEGO’s 40650 Land Rover Classic Defender is a rather nice little 150-piece pocket-money set. But add just a single extra stud to the dimensions (and a few more advanced building techniques) and it can become something altogether more authentic. Cue SvenJ.‘s excellent 7-wide Land Rover Defender 90, which adds the Defender’s famous ‘barrel side’, triple-rear-window, posable steering, and a whole heap more interior and exterior detail. Building instructions are available and you can upgrade your own 40650 set via the link above.
