Category Archives: Lego

More Corsair

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This isn’t Henrik Jensen’s first Vought F4E Corsair. In fact he built one way back in 2014, which didn’t feature here as it didn’t quite meet our standards. Or we weren’t paying attention. One of those two anyway. Henrik’s second iteration updates his previous design with LEGO’s latest dark blue parts and folding wingtips, and adds a gloriously cool brick-built checkerboard engine cowling that frankly every plane should have. Custom decals complete the aesthetic accuracy and there’s more of Henrik’s superbly realistic F4E Corsair to see at his Flickr album by clicking these words.

Fight Club

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The first rule of Fight Club means we can’t tell you why these boxing robots from The Secret Walrus are here, but there’d probably have been an Elf fight had we not featured them and we’ve just had the office carpets cleaned. See more at the link.

Party Like it’s 1990

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Few cars of the 1990s had as much impact as this one. Honda’s NSX shocked the world upon its launch at the start of the decade. A mid-engined supercar from the makers of the Civic, priced at just over half that of a comparable Ferrari 348. Sure it made ‘only’ 270bhp – a figure beaten by a Hyundai i30 these days – but it weighed little, being the first mass-produced car with all-aluminium bodywork, and the V8-powered Ferrari only had 30bhp more.

Honda continued building the NSX right up until 2005, although only around 18,000 were made in that entire production run. Today the NSX is worth substantially more than the Ferrari it undercut at the time, making it, and many other Japanese icons from the ’90s, properly profitable investments.

Fortunately for those of us who can’t afford the real thing serial bloggee Simon Przepiorka has a brick-built solution in the form of this superb small-scale Lego recreation. Simon has captured the NSX’s aesthetics brilliantly, and there’s even a detailed interior and engine behind the opening doors and engine cover.

There’s more to see of Simon’s fantastic Honda NSX at his photostream – click the link above to make the jump to when Honda were at the very top of their game…

Thunderbirds to the Rescue!

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Back in the 1960s if you needed rescuing and didn’t mind your rescuers being supported by a few wires then the Thunderbirds were there to save the day! Equipped with three flying rescue vehicles, a space station, one submarine, and a seemingly endless range of land based paraphernalia, the Tracey brothers were prepared for any situation. Piloted by Scott, Thunderbird 1 was perhaps the vehicle deployed most frequently, being able to fly like a plane, take off like a rocket, and hover like a helicopter. Or more accurately a Harrier jump-jet. This amazing recreation of the first Thunderbird is the work of Gary Davis of Flickr who has used some serious skill and a lot of pieces to recreate the famous aircraft in an enormous scale. He’s also managed to get it signed by the actor who voiced Scott in the series, which is a nice addition. Take a trip to Tracey Island via the link above for all the photos of Gary’s incredible build!

Apple Sauce

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Apple weren’t always the tech giant that they are today. Back in 1980 at the dawn of the home computer era, and for the next 25 years, they were a small nerdy company making nerdy things for nerdy people.

However Apple did manage to break free form their nerdiness briefly with their sponsorship of the Porsche 935 K3 racing car run by actor Paul Newman at the 1980 Le Mans 24 Hours, which (perhaps unintentionally) practically writes its own to pork and apple puns.

This wonderful homage to the forgotten Apple Computers Porsche 935 K3 comes from serial bloggee Simon Przepiorka, who has captured both the car and its rainbow livery brilliantly in Speed Champions style.

Both Porsche and Apple have gone on to much bigger things since 1980, one almost pioneering the sports-car-turned-SUV craze (boo) and the other managing to sell basically the same phone for ten years at increasingly ludicrous prices (also boo).

We’ll stick with Apple and Porsche c1980 then, and you can too via the link above.

Stranger Things

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With LEGO branching out into the appropriately strange theme of Stranger Things, a strange LEGO Ideas condition is currently underway to build something strange. This is saabfan2013‘s entry, a suitably spooky set-up depicting four of the shows character’s atop some excellent brick-built bikes. Head to saabfan’s photostream via the link above for more strangeness.

Is This Even a Car Blog Any More?….

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A fair question. But we would think that because we’re the ones asking it. Anyway, enough inner-monologue, because we are still a car blog (there’ll be an awesome car appearing here tomorrow), but we had three Elves return with sci-fi builds today and there’d have been a fight had we not blogged them.

They are all excellent though, and they begin with Marco Marozzi‘s ‘Buddha Heavy mech’ (above) so called because it has precisely nothing in common with the ancient Indian philosopher.

Next up we have a neo-classic spaceship from John Lamarck, with very probably the coolest design of any spaceship ever. Two inter-connected rings circle a spherical cockpit, suspended in the middle by magic (we presume), whilst two rotating engines mounted on one of the rings power the craft.

Lastly we have this, a spectacularly intricate spacecraft by Nick Trotta. Called the ‘Refraction R/99’ it features a single-wing design with a centrally mounted mini-figure cockpit complete with a very jazzy canopy cover.

There’s more to see of each of today’s three sci-fi builds on Flickr via the links in the text above, and we’ll be back tomorrow with an actual car. We promise.

Little Red Corvette

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From one of America’s worst 1960s vehicles to one of its best. The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray was something of a revolution for US sports cars when it arrived in 1963. This is the C3 iteration that launched a few years later, with about 58 different V8 engine options (seriously, just look at this list!), the same slightly dodgy handling, and ridiculously good looks. This lovely Speed Champions-esque version of the iconic American sports car comes from previous bloggee ZetoVince who designed it for the ‘How to Build Dream Cars with LEGO Bricks‘ book reviewed here last year. Head to ZetoVince’s photostream via the link above for more details, and you can read our review of the book in which it features by clicking the final link in the text.

Moon Cat

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This TLCB Writer does not particularly like cats. The moon therefore, seems like a good place for them. Andrea Lattanzio aka Norton74 might think so too, having created this very cool ‘Moon Cat’ lunar rover, possibly to transport cats? The Moon Cat comes with a large cargo hold capable of transporting many cats, a neat dual cockpit handily separated from the aforementioned hold (and therefore also the aforementioned cats), and the most inspired use for LEGO crutches we’ve seen in the form of the headlight surrounds. We can’t think of how that links to cats. Join this writer in dreaming of a cat-free planet (and a cat-heavy moon) at Norton74’s Moon Cat album via the link above.

Guts-Dozer

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This writer isn’t old enough to have played Mega Man 2, but looking at this killer Boss he feels like he missed out!

Flickr’s TFDesigns! aka Frost is the builder behind this splendid recreation of the ‘Guts-Dozer’, successfully turning a 2D pixelated video game villain into a 3D brick-built caricature, complete with a giant enraged alien or whatever it was that Mega Man was fighting.

Take a trip to the Skull Fortress circa 1988 via the link above, and if you have no idea what we’re on about you can see this Boss in all his ’80s glory by clicking here!

Electrically Embarrassing

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Electric cars have come a long way in recent years. We have Tesla to thank for much of that, along with Nissan, and Toyota of course with their electrification of combustion engines.

However not so long ago electric cars were, frankly, absolutely terrible. The Reva G-Wiz. The Think City. Whatever the hell this is supposed to be. And this, the CityEl / Ellert.

Launched in 1987 the CityEl has a top speed of around 35mph and a range of 30-50 miles from its set of horrible lead-acid batteries and single electric motor. Yup, we said ‘has’ rather than ‘had’, because this automotive embarrassment is still being made. To put that into context purchasing one new today would be like buying a ZX Spectrum computer, an Atari games console, or one of those mobile phones that you had to carry around in a briefcase.

Brickshelf’s gtahelper has made the slightly odd choice to reproduce the CityEl / Ellert in Lego, but he has done a rather excellent job, and has even included a wonderfully ’80s driver to stand alongside it. A full gallery is available to view via the link above, where you can also find a link to instructions should you share gtahelper’s penchant for unfortunate vehicles.

Renault Rarity

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Renault are doing better these days, making a range of boring SUVs and Crossovers that don’t fall apart every second Thursday. However they’re about as interesting a Brothers Brick parts cataloguing evening, and frankly we’d rather walk than drive any of them. Ok, maybe the Twingo‘s alright, but that’s because it’s really a Smart.

Not so this however. It’s called the Renault Diaoul and it comes from the mind of F@bz, which must be a very interesting place indeed. Inventive parts are visible in abundance, including some properly odd wheels and one of the most unique engines we think we’ve ever seen. There’s much more of F@bz’s concept to see on Flickr – click the link above to make the jump, and if you work for Renault maybe take some notes…

One of the Rest

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Of all the teams in Formula 1 right now, Ferrari are the most irritating. With Mercedes-Benz utterly dominant once again, and big names such as McLaren, Williams and Renault simply making up the numbers, it’s down to Scuderia Ferrari to make F1 interesting. They have a genuinely fast car, an enormous budget, and – for reasons known only the Bernie Ecclestone and the mafia – the largest proportion of F1’s revenue regardless of where they place. And yet they’ve been about as good at winning races as Donald Trump is at empathy.

Silly strategical errors and an illogical favouritism of one driver have cost the team not just points and wins, but the fans an interesting race every so often too, with Ferrari now just one of the rest. That said the 2019 Scuderia Ferrari car does look most excellent, as you can see here. This Lego recreation of the SF90 Formula 1 car comes from Noah L (previously ‘Lego Builders‘), and it joins his excellent roster of every Ferrari F1 car from the past few years. Cunning techniques abound and there are lots more images to see at his Flickr album or on MOCpages via the links above, which make for much more interesting viewing than any recent Formula 1 race.

A Super Yacht

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This is the M/Y Scout, a brand new twin-screw ocean going superyacht designed by H2 Yacht Design and built by Hakvoort Shipyard for a discerning billionaire. Measuring 209ft/63m long and with a 1,400 gross tonnage the Scout is only fractionally smaller than TLCB’s own superyacht, the Seabricscuit, paid for via the ads for Disney World, clickbaity fake news sites, and garden decking (at least that’s what we’re currently seeing) that appear here on this website*.

This spectacular 1:53 scale replica of a really quite beautiful ship comes comes from previous bloggee Arjan Oude Kotte (aka Konajra) of Flickr, who has recreated the M/Y Scout from around 14,000 LEGO pieces.

At over 1.2 meters long Arjan has captured every detail of the real vessel in his model, from the intricately layered hull and custom lit decks to the discerning billionaire mini-figure having a drink on the stern! Set sail for Arjan’s M/Y Scout Flickr album to view the incredible gallery of imagery (which also includes a time-lapse video of the build) via the link above.

*To see where our advertising revenue really goes click here.

Cosmic Cab

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This hovering Checker taxi was found by one of our Elves today, who – after watching two compatriots munching on yellow Smarties (they’re the best kind) yesterday – is now happily eating a yellow candy reward. It has Eric Teo of Flickr to thank, who has simultaneously gone retro and sci-fi with his flying classic cab. Click the link above to hail a hovercab.