Category Archives: Lego

Cardboard Car

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Flickr’s Szunyogh Balazs has appeared on these pages several times before, with vehicles that are fast, loud, or both. But not today, because his latest creation is at the opposite end of the vehicular spectrum. This is the communist East German Trabant, a car made fro cardboard for people that had no choice.

Almost three million Trabant 601s were made, making it the East German equivalent of the West German Beetle. Although the Beetle became a Polo. And a Golf. Whereas the Trabant carried on until the collapse of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany in 1991. There’s more to see of Szunyough’s splendid Lego Trabant 601 on Flickr, and you can head to the other side of the iron curtain via the link above.

On the Wings of an… um, Seagull

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Seagulls are roundly disliked in TLCB’s home nation. Found on rubbish dumps or in British seaside resorts (which amount to the same thing), they make irritating ‘CAAAW!’ noises, crap all over the place, and mug people for their chips. However in car form, they’re rather wonderful…

This is the mid-’50s Mercedes-Benz 300SL ‘Gullwing’, perhaps the only time a coupe has been more desirable than the roadster, thanks entirely to those magnificent doors.

This splendid Speed Champions version, complete with the aforementioned gullwing doors, comes from previous bloggee SFH_Bricks, and with building instructions available you can recreate it for yourself. There’s more to see at SFH’s ‘1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL’ album and you can CAAAW, crap all over the place, and steal someone’s chips via the link above.

Chain Plane

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This strange looking creation is the product of no fewer than seven builders. Published by Flickr’s [Intense Potato], the ‘Beluga Gunship’ was formed via a digital file being passed from one builder to the next after 48 hours, with each adding what they liked to the design in their allotted time. Which means that this creation may have started life as a 1982 Morris Ital, an 18th century battleship, or a small dog, but whatever its beginning it’s turned out rather well. You can see more of this virtual oddity, and discover the chain of builders that formed it, at Potato’s photostream. Click the link above to pull the chain.

Space Race

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The mid-’90s were a high watermark for Renault. Their Espace multi-purpose-vehicle was a smash hit, creating an entirely new class of car in Europe that other manufacturers scrambled to copy, whilst on track their V10 Formula 1 engine was winning absolutely everything with Williams and Benetton. And then in 1995, in moment of utter genius, they decided to merge the two…

The result was the Renault Espace F1, a one-off carbon-fibre minivan with a mid-mounted 800bhp V10 F1 engine, a top speed of nearly 200mph, and publicity other manufacturers could only dream of.

This fantastic recreation of Renault’s unhinged MPV is the work of Flickr’s Sergio Batista, and features replica decals, 3D-printed wheels, LED lights, a detailed engine and brick-built suspension, plus – in authentic Espace tradition – space for multiple mini-figures. There’s lots more of the model to see at Sergio’s photostream you can race back to when Renault were on top via the link above.

Poop-Poop!

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We’ve gone all Toad-of-Toad-Hall today, courtesy of this be-goggled mini-figure and his marvellous 1931 Mercedes-Benz SSKL. Flickr’s SvenJ. owns the hands behind it, which he’s also used to stretch LEGO’s latest tyres over their vintage rims for the perfect wheel/tyre combo. There’s more to see at Sven’s photostream and you can race along the roads in the early-’30s via the link above. Poop-Poop!

We’ve Got Wind

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And so has Daniel Church. This is his ‘Wayward Wanderer’, a spectacular twin-sail concept yacht with a gorgeous curved jib formed of tessellating hexagons. The Wanderer’s beautiful brick-built hull is equally well crafted, with the only wonky element of the whole photo being the horizon. Point your bow towards it and set sail via the link above.

My Other Car’s Also a Ferrari

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It’s been two decades since the Ferrari Enzo, and two since an official LEGO set depicting it. Cue nopingrid of Eurobricks, who has recreated Ferrari’s iconic early-’00s hypercar from the parts of one of their newest, the Technic 42212 Ferrari FXX K. Using 85% of the FXX K’s 900 pieces, nopingrid’s Enzo includes working steering, a V12 engine, plus opening butterfly doors, and we think it looks rather better than the donor set. Building instructions are available and you can find out more at the Eurobricks forum via the link above.

Barracuda*

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If TLCB Elves were to design a car, it’d probably look like a ’70s Plymouth Barracuda. Lime green bodywork, a black hood with a giant scoop in the middle of it, racing stripes, and an enormous V8 engine packing up to 425bhp from over 7 litres, the Hemi ‘Cuda was wildly different to the cars trundling around our home nation at the time.

Cue this splendid Speed Champions scale recreation of Plymouth’s third-generation Barracuda from previous bloggee gnat.bricks, which includes all of the aforementioned attributes plus -and more unusually at this scale – a brick-built drivetrain, including  full-length exhausts, gearbox, driveshaft and differential, and steering arms/suspension. These don’t function of course, but then neither did the steering/suspension of the real ‘Cuda.

There’s more of gnat’s brilliant Barracuda to see at his ‘CUDA SC’ album on Flickr, and you can jump back to ’70s America via the link above, whilst clicking the link below for the most appropriate soundtrack imaginable.

*Today’s excellent title song. Of course.

Beetle Built Different

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Hope, magic, and more than a little ingenuity. The Lego Car Blog staff have built a great many things, but none have deployed antenna ball-joints as fenders. There’s so much going on in 1saac W.‘s Volkswagen Beetle there is genuine bafflement here at TLCB Towers as to how it all holds together. Join us trying in vain to figure it out at 1saac’s photostream via the link above.

The Dinky Knight

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Batman has never looked so… small. This perfect miniature of the Tumbler (and The Dark Knight himself) comes from _Tiler of Flickr, who has chosen his pieces flawlessly. Head to the tiny streets of Gotham via the link above.

Golden Girl

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The world is full of people with strange outlooks. These include those who think melon is an acceptable starter, enthusiasm for the Tesla Cybertruck, and people who put Christmas lights up in October. But right up there with the climate-change denying flat-earthers in the weird stakes are fans of ‘Girls und Panzer’, a Japanese anime in which high school girls compete against one another in World War 2 tanks.

Cue this golden Italian CV-33 tank commanded by a Japanese school girl named after a fish. It’s the work of Flickr’s lavishlump, here making their TLCB debut, and both tank and school girl are brilliantly built, particularly given the limitations of LEGO’s gold piece portfolio.

There’s more to see of lavishlump’s ‘Anchovy & CV-33 Tankette’ at their album of the same name, and you can head to a playing field in Japan for the weirdest school sports day via the link above.

Rust n’ Dust

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It wasn’t just British and Italian cars in the late-’70s and ’80s that failed to start in the morning and/or dissolved if they got wet. No, the French made some awful cars too, including today’s, the woeful Renault 20.

Sitting at the top of their line-up, there was (much like the aforementioned British and Italian cars) a lot to like about Renault’s executive hatchback, including some innovative engineering that included both crumple zones and side-impact protection.

But none of that mattered when the cars were heroically unreliable, tragically underpowered, and rusted within just a few years of leaving the forecourt, resulting in a resale value of almost nothing at all. Still, there is one Renault 20 we like, the pioneering Turbo 4×4 Dakar, with a 1.6 litre turbocharged rally engine and all-wheel-drive courtesy of the rear axle from a Renault Trafic van.

Constructed by Flickr’s NV Carmocs, this 8-wide replica of the Renault 20 Turbo 4×4 captures the 1982 Dakar-winning car beautifully, thanks in part to a superbly accurate livery and some brilliant photo editing.

There’s much more of NV’s Renault 20 to see at their photostream, and you can head to the desert in 1982 via the link above, where the lack of rain and a whole load of available spare parts were probably sorely missed by every other Renault 20 owner at the time…

One Fabuland Return Please

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If there’s a model for social cohesion, LEGO’s vintage Fabuland theme is it. Where else could you see an elephant riding a scooter, a monkey pushing parcels, and a rabbit, a donkey and a dog about to board a whimsical primary-coloured steam train. In today’s increasingly divided society there’s probably a lesson in there somewhere. We’ll be boarding at HarrisBricks’ wonderful Fabuland Hilltop Station to find it, and you can buy your ticket at the Eurobricks forum via the link.

Mine’s Longer Than Yours

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No really, it is. Because unless yours is a supertanker, today ours is bigger. This spectacularly long DAF and Nooteboom Telestep trailer combination comes from Ralph Savelsberg of Flickr, and replicates the real wind-turbine transporting trucks operated by Van der Vlist of the Netherlands. Because the Dutch love a windmill.

So do we as it happens, what with them providing endlessly renewable energy and still allowing sheep and whatnot to graze underneath. Anyway, Ralph’s creation can elongate to a quite unbelievable length, and like the real rig cunningly includes five axles with four that operate consecutively greater steering angles, presumably so it doesn’t require all of Belgium or another neighbouring country to turn around.

There’s much more to see at Ralph’s Flickr album and you can take a look at the longest erection on Flickr via the link above.

Decking Vietnam

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This is a Vought F-8E Crusader II, one of the first supersonic carrier-based fighters, and it flew from the decks of U.S aircraft carriers from the late-‘50s right up until the mid-‘70s. Which of course meant it served in the Vietnam War, where it earned the nickname ‘MiG Killer’ because it, well… killed MiGs, with an astonishing 19:3 kill ratio.

This exceptional brick-built replica of the F-8E is the work of Flickr’s Juliusz D., and includes working landing gear, the Crusader’s trick variable incidence and folding wings, an opening cockpit, a deployable air-brake, functioning flaps, a full compliment of missiles and bombs, and phenomenally accurate period-correct markings.

It’s one of the finest Lego fighters we’ve ever featured, and you can take flight from a carrier deck somewhere in the South China Sea in 1967 via the link above.