что-то странное в окрестности

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If there’s something strange
In the neighbourhood
Putin’s gonna call…
Ghostbusters!

If there’s someone gay
Or gender misunderstood
Putin’s gonna call…
Ghostbusters!

He ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost
He ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost

But he’s hearing things
That should not be said
Putin’s gonna call…
Ghostbusters!

A political threat?
Then you’ll end up dead!
Ow, Putin’s gonna call…
Ghostbusters!

Have we butchered the classic Ghostbusters theme song by Ray Parker Jr. just to tenuously link to Vladimir Putin’s human rights record? Yup! But to be fair it’s been ages since we received a good death threat.

Plus, of course, this rather wonderful creation is a VAZ/Lada 2104 estate that has been brilliantly converted into a Soviet Ecto-1, which makes re-writing that song almost mandatory.

We also happen to think it might just be cooler than the original Ghostbusters’ Cadillac ambulance. OK, no it isn’t, but it is a Lada converted into an Ecto-1, which does probably make it the coolest Lada ever.

Flickr’s Tony Bovkoon is the builder who has brought Ghostbusting to Russia, and there’s more to see of his fantastic Lada Ecto-1 on Flickr.

Click the link to call…
Ghostbusters!

Lightailing Light Starter Kit | Review

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It’s Christmas, the time of family, giving, food, and – most importantly, if this TLCB writer’s better half is to be believed – twinkly lights.

An industry devoted to lighting up LEGO sets has boomed in recent times, with many lighting kits for official LEGO sets already reviewed here at The Lego Car Blog.

But good as some of these kits are, what lights us up is builders designing their own creations. It’s what LEGO is all about, and yet there hasn’t been a product allowing builders to easily light up their own vehicular designs. So we asked LEGO lighting specialists Lightailing to make one…

This is what they sent us, the Lightailing Light Starter Kit, containing a power source (USB or coin-cell batteries), two expansion boards, connecting cables, and two bright white LEDs, two red LEDs, and a white self-adhesive strip light, all neatly packaged using the components readily available from Lightailing’s other kits.

So is the Lightailing Light Starter Kit any good, and what creation did we light up? Read on to find out! Continue reading →

Monotone Mixer

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We’ve nearly reached our Christmas closedown here at The Lego Car Blog, but we still have time for a few more creations before we turn off the lights and get drunk.

This one has amused us immensely, being perhaps the single least Christmassy creation that it’s possible to conceive.

The gloriously grey Volvo FM12 cement mixing truck pictured here comes from regular bloggee Damian Z. (aka thietmaier), who has applied his usual brilliant attention to detail to create a model that looks much, much larger than it actually is.

It’s also wonderfully mundane, and we like that. Because we’re weird. Weird enough to encourage more boring builds in 2022…

Was that a hint for a ginormous 2022 Building Competition?…

Moving on, there’s more to see of Damian’s excellent Volvo FM12 cement mixer truck at his photostream – click the link in the text above to jump into the mix.

The Car of Choice

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Car choice seems to be shrinking of late. Despite manufacturers creating ever more models, they mostly seem to be crossovers of marginally different sizing but uniform monotony.

Engine choices are shrinking too, with many cars in TLCB’s home nation available with just one. Thankfully the Germans, although very much on the make-everything-a-crossover bandwagon, do still offer a bewildering array of engine options.

However even that’s a bit of a ruse, as they’re pretty much all the same engine, only you have to pay extra for the software to release more power (which the engine already has, locked behind a paywall). Urgh.

Fortunately Wigboldly (aka Thirdwigg) of Flickr is railing against the current miserable new car situation with this, his ‘Ionos Sports Sedan’ Technic Supercar.

A good old-fashioned executive saloon, Wigboldly’s creation can be had with three different engines, rear or all-wheel-drive, and a manual or sequential gearbox, just like real cars used to be.

Of course if it were real, Wigboldly’s Ionis would totally bomb in today’s new car market, as it’s not a boring one-engined crossover with power-behind-a-paywall, but we’d still choose it!

Luckily Wigboldly isn’t trying to make money out of his design, what with it being Lego, but that even extends to the building instructions, which he has created and published for free.

We rarely publish direct links to instructions here at The Lego Car Blog, but we will today.

Click here to jump to the Ionis’s free building instructions on Rebrickable, where there’s more drivetrain choice than many cars on sale today, and give Wigboldly a thumbs up on Flickr via the link in the text above.

My Other Car’s Also a Classic Truck

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This is a UAZ 452-3303, one of many imaginatively named Soviet off-road van truck thingies designed during the Communist era.

The UAZ 452 was launched in 1965 with a 75bhp 2.45 litre petrol engine that could run on fuel as low as 72 octane (basically spicy water), and it’s still in production today, with nine different variants available.

This one, the 3303 dropside pick-up truck, is affectionally know as the ‘tadpole’, because it looks rather like one, and has been recreated beautifully in brick form by ArtemyZotov of Eurobricks.

It also continues our run of B-Models, being constructed entirely from the 10290 Creator Pickup Truck set. Opening doors, dropping bed sides, and a load of fruit and veg all feature, and there’s more to see – including a link to building instructions – at the Eurobricks forum via the link above.

Don’t Have a Cow, Man!

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¡Ay, caramba! This isn’t a car. But seeing as more of us reading this will have been on a skateboard than in a Pagani, it’s perhaps a more relevant than much of what we post!

Flickr’s grubaluk owns the mind behind this marvellous skateboarding Bart Simpson, which deploys LEGO’s Pull-Back Motor in excellent fashion.

Skate through Springfield via the link above!

My Other Car’s a Porsche

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LEGO’s excellent 10295 Creator Porsche 911 set has produced some wonderful alternates to date, and this might be our favourite so far.

The Chevrolet Corvette C3 was America’s answer to the Porsche 911 of the time, and is – at least in the eyes of this TLCB writer – still one of the best looking American cars ever made.

Capturing the C3 Corvette brilliantly, and using only the pieces from the 10295 Porsche 911 set to do so, is Lego-building legend and TLCB Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber.

Firas’ expertly presented creation recreates the iconic classic Corvette in T-bar form, with pop-up headlights, opening doors and hood, a superbly detailed engine bay and interior, and a removable targa roof.

It makes for one of the finest alternates from any set that we’ve seen yet, and best of all if you own the 10295 Porsche 911 set you can turn it into a Chevrolet Corvette C3 yourself, as Firas has produced building instructions too.

Head over to Firas’ ‘Corvette C3’ album on Flickr for the complete gallery, you can find the building instructions at his website here, and you can click here to read Firas’ interview in the Master MOCers series if you want to find out more about how he creates his amazing models such as this one.

My Other Car’s Also Really Small

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Fiat’s original 500 was really small. But back in the 1950s you could go even smaller.

Microcars, often dubbed ‘bubble cars’, were popular in post-war Europe, thanks to limited metal supplies, a need for cheap transportation, and a population that was still largely moving itself about by motorcycle. Or horse.

This is one of the most well known bubble cars, the BMW Isetta. Less well known is the fact it was actually an Italian design by ISO Rivolta that BMW produced under license, so it’s fitting therefore that this one is also built from the bits of an Italian car.

The work of previous bloggee Tomáš Novák (aka PsychoWard666), this beautifully presented BMW Isetta is constructed only from the parts found within the official 10271 Creator Fiat 500 set, although such is its accuracy you’d never know. Unless you see it alongside the 10271’s rather pointless easel of course…

Building instructions are available and there’s lots more of Tomáš’ BMW B-Model to see (including that give-away image) at both Eurobricks and Flickr – click the links above to take a look.

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

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This one’s both. And it has a name as tricky as the tongue-twister title. This is a DAF FAQ CF 430 8×2 hook-lift truck (with three axle trailer), and it comes from Arian Janssens of Flickr.

Constructed to carry a variety of big metal boxes, Arian’s DAF FAQ CF (etc.) is a beautifully built Model Team version of the real truck, complete with a working hook-lift, three steering axles, and an unfurling grab crane mounted behind the cab.

An extensive gallery of images shows the DAF ReallyLongName in a variety of configurations, with and without various containers, the trailer, and the crane operating.

Make the jump to Arian’s album on Flickr to see the complete set of photos via the link in the text above.

The Ferrari The Ferrari

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Almost a decade on, the Ferrari LaFerrari is still the stupidest name ever given to a car. And yes, we have heard of the Mazda Bongo Friendee.

Powered by a 6.3 litre V12 with Hybrid KERS producing almost 1,000bhp, the Ferrari The Ferrari did have the performance to back up being named twice though.

This stunning 1:16 Model Team replica of the Ferrari The LaFerrari Ferrari is the work of previous bloggee Noah_L, and features opening butterfly doors, front trunk and engine cover, along with some of the finest presentation you’ll see anywhere in the online Lego community.

Noah has made building instructions available too, so you can recreate your own spectacular Ferrari LaFerrari The Ferrari model at home. Click on the link above to find the complete image gallery, along with build details and the link to building instructions.

My Other Car’s a Bus

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This is a Trabant 601 Combi, one of the great mobilisers of the people, and it comes from Eurobricks’ PsychoWard666 who has constructed it solely from the parts found within another historic people mover, the 10258 London Bus.

Both the Trabant and the AEC Routemaster bus are icons of their time and location, and – despite being rather different classes of vehicle – are more similar that you might think.

Each was designed to mobilise as many people as possible, and thus had a monopoly in its respective market, and both designs endured long beyond their intended lifespans, with the Trabant produced from 1960 right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, whilst the Routemaster remained in service until 2005, outlasting far more modern bus designs.

Of course whilst this meant each became a symbol of the society they mobilised, they were also seen as polluting, noisy, uncomfortable, and dangerous by the end of their lives. And if you don’t think a Routemaster is dangerous you’ve never been on one at 2am. Although to be fair that applies to all of London’s buses.

Back to the model, and PsychoWard’s Trabant 601 captures the East German peoples’ car beautifully, particularly considering the parts limitation of the 10258 donor set. Building instructions are available too, so if you own the 10258 London Bus set and you’d like to turn one classic transportation icon into another you can find out how to do so at the Eurobricks forum – Click the link above to take a look.

Air Canada Express

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Diet America, better known as Canada, quietly produces rather more than you might think. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Drake, and even Pamela Anderson all hail from America’s attic, whilst Trivial Pursuit, the Wonderbra, insulin, and peanut butter are all Canadian too.

Transportationally speaking, Canada is responsible for building the Toyota RAV4, the Honda Civic and CRV, a variety of boring Chryslers, and two of the most ‘American’ cars ever; the Ford GT and the Dodge Challenger. Yes, even the Hellcat.

At least half of the entries on the list above we thought were American (which speaks volumes about how uninformed the staff here at TLCB are, and/or how Canada quietly gets on with being awesome whilst America shouts loudly and frantically waves a flag back and forth), but one company we definitely did know is Canadian is the engineering giant Bombardier.

Over their 80 year history, Bombardier have produced trains, snowmobiles, ATVs, buses, military equipment and aircraft, the latter of which the company concentrates on today.

This is the Bombardier CRJ-200, pictured appropriately in Air Canada livery, and it comes from Tom Clair of Flickr. Tom has recreated the 1990s business jet beautifully in brick form, with a complete interior, opening cabin doors, and working ailerons too, plus some superbly realistic decals to replicate the aforementioned national livery.

There’s lots more of Tom’s excellent CRJ-200 to see at his Flickr photostream – fly on over via the link above, whilst we search the web for classic Wonderbra adverts. For research. We love Canada.

Lego Lambro

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Nope, not Lambo, Lambro. Which is even more exciting! We’ve seen dozens of Lamborghinis in Lego form, but until now we’d never seen Lambretta’s 550cc tuk-tuk built from bricks.

The Elves of course, don’t get our excitement one bit, preferring V12 engines and racing stripes, but as they’re a workforce of mythical creatures their thoughts on the matter are moot.

We, TLCB staff, are rather pleased to have found this Lambro 550 by Flickr’s Hoang H Dang (aka Know Your Pieces), because humble workhorses like this have made a far greater contribution to far more people than an Italian supercar ever could.

This superb Lego recreation of the little scooter-powered pick-up captures the aesthetic of the real vehicle beautifully, and is depicted here as one of the countless Lambro 550s that have been exported to Vietnam since the 1960s.

Wonderfully accurate detailing, working steering, and fantastic brick-built lettering make Hoang’s Lambretta Lambro 550 one of our favourite creations of the year, and there’s loads more to see of it and the lovely Vietnamese street-scene of which it is part via the link above.

Krazy Log*

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This is a KrAZ 255b logging truck, and it’s really very long indeed. It’s also a tribute to the late Ingmar Spijkhoven, whose influence within the online Lego Community continues to endure.

Previous bloggee Mathijs Bongers is the builder behind it, and his KrAZ is packed with detail, including opening cab doors, a detailed engine under the hood, working suspension, a sliding/stacking trailer mechanism, and a wonderfully life-like chassis.

There’s lots more of the model to see at Mathijs’ extensive ‘KrAZ 255b’ album on Flickr – take look a via the second link in the text above, and you can click the first to find out more about the incredible builder who inspired it.

*Today’s title song. Yeh, we went there.

Lunar Landing

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It’s fifty years since the coolest vehicle ever made (apart from the Citroen DS obviously) first landed on the moon.

The Lunar Roving Vehicle (better known as the ‘Moon Buggy’) was a foldable all-wheel-drive EV designed to enable the Apollo astronauts cover a greater area of the lunar surface.

The LRV was used three times between 1971 and ’72, and Flickr’s VALARIE ROCHE has recreated the momentous event five decades later, with a brick-based tribute to the lunar landings suggested to us by a reader.

Valarie’s build includes a fully-foldable LRV, a pair of astronauts (with the names of all twelve to walk on the moon inscribed on the vignette’s base), and a recreation of the LLRE (Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment), which can still be used today to disprove those who think that the above occurred in a studio in L.A.

Valarie is hoping the build will become an official LEGO set, and you can check it out in more detail (and help to make that a reality) by visiting Valarie’s photostream. Click the link above to rove the lunar surface fifty years ago.