There’s a new Ford Bronco out. Which of course means a TLCB post saying ‘we’d prefer the old one’. But we would, so here it is, courtesy of TLCB regular 1saac W. Jump back to 1970 via the link.
Bricking Bronco
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Category Archives: Lego
Coles Express
We’ve featured thousands of cars here at The Lego Car Blog, but very rarely do we feature the places where they fill up. Of course the days of the gas station – at least in their currents forms – are numbered, but for now they remain one of society’s few remaining meeting places.
Wealth, gender, and race matter not at the gas station, where the entire spectrum of humanity congregate by hoses full of ancient zooplankton, over-priced bags of sweets, machine-served coffee, and last-minute flowers.
This superb brick-built recreation of one of the last bastions of physical interaction comes from Kale Frost who constructed it as a commissioned piece. Click the link to join us standing at the pump pondering which over-priced bag of sweets to buy at his ‘Coles Express’ album on Flickr.
A Supercar. Only Smaller
Japan’s wonderful ‘Kei car’ class, which restricts size, weight, and power in favour of tax breaks, is one of our very favourite things in the automotive world. The antidote to the SUV arms-race, it includes vehicles of almost every type, from one-box people movers to off-roaders, fire engines, and tipper trucks. Back in the early ’90s, it even included a supercar. Kinda…
This is the Autozam AZ-1 / Suzuki Cara, a gull-wing doored, mid-engined, turbo-charged coupe built in collaboration between Mazda and Suzuki, that took all of the ingredients of a ’90s supercar, and miniaturised them.
With a government-mandated 67bhp, the speed was miniaturised too, but then would you really want to do 180mph in something the size of a large shoe?
This one is even smaller, being a Speed Champions recreation of the mad ’90s original, it comes from Ilya M, there are free building instructions available, and there’s more to see on Flickr. Shrink a supercar via the link above!
Drift Tax
Do you own a Japanese sports car from the 1990s? If so, your retirement is paid for. Because at the current trajectory, previously near-worthless Japanese metal will be valued at around $1billion a piece by 2030.
Supras, worth under £10,000 in TLCB’s home nation just a decade ago, are now up to £50,000. MR2s, which were scrap value just a few years ago, now make £10,000. And the humble Nissan 240SX – even a knackered ‘project car’, now costs five figures, with good examples north of £20,000. For a thirty year old Nissan!
We don’t pretend to understand it, but we suspect much of the hype is down to the video games Gen-X-ers and Millennials played two decades ago, which were awash with modified Japanese metal.
The resultant phenomenon today is a boom in ’90s Japanese sports cars, with all of them ending up looking likes this; 1saac W.’s superb modified Nissan Silvia / 240SX. Wide wheels, silly camber, a phat exhaust, and huge aero tick all the drifty boxes, and you can take a closer look at 1saac’s immensely valuable Nissan at his photostream.
Click the link above to pay the Drift Tax, whilst we rue the fact that Gran Turismo didn’t feature the sheddy old Rovers that make up TLCB carpark instead of ’90s Japanese sports cars…
Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday
Motor racing has long been used to change brand image. Or, in the case of the tobacco industry, market cigarettes to children.
Audi’s ‘What Dieselgate?’ hybrid Dakar racers, Inifiniti, then Aston Martin, and next Ford, all pretending they have something to do with the Red Bull F1 car, fictitious energy drink company ‘Rich Energy’ sponsoring Haas F1, without having any money… or even an energy drink… Yes the world of race sponsorship makes about as much sense as a LEGO website staffed by Elves.
Fast-forward to the future of racing (or is the past? We’re never quite sure with Star Wars), and the Galactic Empire is still using the same tactics to transform its brand image / market itself to children. Because what better way to convince a sixteen year old to die* on a far away planet than to go racing!
This marvellous ‘Imperial Pod Racer’ is the work of Rubblemaker of Flickr, who has imagined what it would look like if the Galactic Empire went racing. TIE Fighter aesthetics, top-notch building techniques, and stellar presentation have us ready to enlist at the Stormtrooper recruitment office, and you can join us there via the link above!
*And yes, this is actually happening. Still, it’s better than Marlboro.
Out on Bale
Pieces of farm equipment, like American cars, are often named after scary things. Cue the Claas Scorpion telehandler, so called because it looks precisely nothing like the desert-dwelling arachnid.
It is a good bit of kit mind, as is regular bloggee Damian Z’s brick-built recreation, which not only looks the part, it functions like it too.
A variety of implements can be attached to the telescopic elevating boom, including a pair of forks, a tipping bucket, or a horizontal grabby thingy.
Said thingy can be used to manoeuvre bales onto the drawbar trailer, which can then be towed behind, and there’s more to see of Damian’s excellent creation at his ‘CLAAS Scorpion’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to get out on bale.
They Think It’s Febr-Over…
…It is now!
Yes the annual festival of all things other-worldly is over for another year, with a smorgasbord of wonderful roving contraptions entered, about which we know exactly nothing. We’re not sure what our strong suit is, or even if we have one at all, but we certainly know it isn’t sci-fi.
But before TLCB staff can breathe a collective sigh of relief and return to writing about the engine capacities of 1960s British sedans, here are two final Febrovery rovers, as entered by Julius Kanand and Nathan Hake of Flickr, and about which – as is customary – we know exactly nothing.
Both look great though, with Julius’ final Febrovery ’23 rover (above) available to view at his photostream (where an array of other rovers can also be found), and Nathan’s fully remote controlled entry (below), complete with articulated steering, 8×8 drive, and an ingenious LEGO Spikes Colour Sensor front light, available to view at his.
Take a look via the links above, and you can check out all the Febrovery madness from this year by clicking here.
I Said a Ten Second Car
Here it is. The car responsible for more hype, mis-understood physics, and ignorant YouTube comments than any other over the past two decades. Yup, this is Brian O’Conner’s modified Toyota Supra Mark IV from first film in the seemingly never-ending ‘The Fast and the Furious’ movie franchise.
Complete with retina-searing orange bodywork, the single worst decals ever applied to an automobile, and various unspecified modifications, the star movie car would became an icon. An icon that, despite LEGO having a license both with Universal Pictures and Toyota, is yet to become an official LEGO set.
Cue previous bloggee barneius, who has recreated that Toyota Supra from 2001’s ‘The Fast and the Furious’ brilliantly in Speed Champions scale. Retina-searing orange bodywork, the single worst decals ever applied to an automobile, and various unspecified modifications have all been faithfully replicated in brick form, and if you fancy your owning your very own ‘ten second car’ there are building instructions and purchasable stickers too.
More superbly presented images of barneus’ build are available to view at his ‘Toyota Supra MK4 The Fast and the Furious’ Flickr album, and you can live your life a quarter-mile at a time via the link in the text above, before starting a fight in the comments about how the Toyota Supra Mark IV is the best and most awesomest car ever.
A Lot of Front
This is a New Holland TD90 tractor, and it’s large, slow, and rather front-heavy. Just like your Mom. Unlike your Mom however, it has been recreated superbly in brick form by Flickr’s Damian Z, and comes complete with a range of attachments including a forklift, straw bailer, and the front-loader bucket shown here. A full gallery of excellent imagery is available and you can take a look at all the pictures by clicking these words.
Wrath of the Sith
This is a ‘Sith Wrath Class Light Frigate’, and we know that because builder BobDeQuatre wrote it in the description. Yup, this is another attempt by The Lego Car Blog to post something about Star Wars, a topic about which we understand as much as Kim Kardashian does about plumbing.
Should the proper Lego blogs pick this one up they will no doubt be far more useful. Until then, you’ve just got us going ‘Ooooh, that looks cool’. See more of Bob’s spectacular Sith thingy at his ‘Sith Wrath’ Flickr album via the link above, where further Star Wars information may be available.
It’s Not Size That Matters…
…but what you do with it. And least that’s what this TLCB Writer tells himself. It’s a self-support mechanism that’s never been truer than with today’s post too, as we have two enormous-looking FebRovery rovers that are actually really rather small indeed.
The first deceptively-scaled creation comes from Oscar Cedarwall of Flickr, whose ‘Multi-Purpose Terrain Rover’ has gained an apparent massiveness thanks to a cleverly constructed landscape and the use of LEGO’s tiny one-stud figures. Top notch presentation and appropriately wide-angle photography maximise the illusion, and there’s more to see of Oscar’s optical trickery at his photostream.
Our second not-very-big-at-all creation is really very small indeed, utilising a body just one stud square and LEGO’s chain components, more commonly found on Technic motorcycles, for the tracks beneath it. Created by TLCB favourite David Roberts, the ‘Planetary Explorer’ is one of the tiniest FebRovery entries yet, and there’s more to see (although not that much more) at David’s photostream.
Click the links above to see how it really is ‘what you do with it’ that counts.
Cooler Box
We don’t care what anyone says, this is the coolest car we’ve ever posted. Yes, this magnificent slab of Swede, a Volvo 242, is so deeply cool that The Brothers Brick can’t look at it directly. We on the other hand, being connoisseurs of cool, can’t get enough of Stephan Jonsson’s glorious grey box. Even more so as it’s the ‘Coupe’ variant.
Of course being an ’80s Volvo the 242 is the single squarest coupe ever devised, and – unlike every other Volvo of the time – your Ikea boxes have to go on the roof rather than in the boot, but that just makes it cooler.
A beautifully detailed engine, opening doors, hood and boot, a spectacularly orange interior, and accessories like a roof rack and tow bar add to our delight, and there’s more to see of the coolest car we’ve ever posted at Stephan’s ‘Volvo 242 Group H’ album on Flickr. We like really like old Volvos.
Old Lady’s Bathroom
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.
Industrial Roving
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.
R is For…
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.