¡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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s Monday, and it’s cybery here at TLCB for some reason. Perhaps the title would’ve worked about three weeks ago…
On to the models! With much talk in the car world about converting classic cars to EV powertrains, we hope this is the next logical step.
Previous bloggee Sergio Batista has heavily modified the rather lovely 75895 Speed Champions Porsche 911 Turbo set to become something rather more… hoverable. What? – It’s a word!
Sergio’s ‘Porsche 911 2073’ means we only have 52 years to wait, when this TLCB Staffer will be the approximate age that you need to be to become president.
Join us in hope of the hovercar revolution at Sergio’s photostream – click here to float on over and take a closer look!
Today’s second cyberpunk creation also has its roots in an official LEGO set, this time from waaaay back in 1971, when Joe Biden was still cheating in law school and Donald Trump was dodging military service.
LEGO were being far more productive however, releasing the ace 605 Taxi set. All seventeen pieces of it.
Constructed from rather more is Jonathan Elliott‘s 605 Redux, a wonderful cyberpunk homage to the fifty-year-old original. Back in 1971 they probably thought that taxis would look like Jonathan’s in 2021, but instead we got the Prius. Which looks like a melted iron.
Oh well, we can dream of the shape of things to come at Jonathan’s photostream, and you can join us there hailing the taxi of the future via the link above.
The sad state of cinema at the moment means that the only films that currently get made are sequels, prequels, re-boots, or all three, as part of some ‘cinematic universe’ bollocks (we’re looking at you Marvel).
Cue next year’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ release, an unnecessary sequel arriving some three decades after the (magnificent) ’80s original. Still, at least it provides the opportunity for a repeat homo-erotic beach volleyball scene to an astoundingly suggestive soundtrack.
More interesting to TLCB than yet another movie reboot is this Maverick; the Can-Am Maverick RS, a wild off-road buggy built to take on the Dakar Rally.
Well, this one hasn’t been built to take on the Dakar Rally, being rather smaller. And constructed from Lego. But it is still more interesting.
Martin Vala is the builder behind it, and he’s recreated the Can-Am Maverick RS in wonderful detail, right down to the steering and suspension, which are brick-built from System pieces.
Authentic decals and stunning presentation complete the build, and there’s lots more to see of Martin’s Maverick at his ‘Maverick RS’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to feel the need for speed.
This is the Mitsubishi Pajero. Except in Spanish-speaking countries, where it’s definitely not.
Nor is it in TLCB’s home nation, where ‘Pajero’ isn’t an exceptionally rude word, but where ‘Shogun’ just sounds cooler.
Anyway, whatever it’s called, this Lego recreation of the ’90s Pajero/Shogun/Montero by regular bloggee SP_LINEUP is rather excellent, and there’s more of it to see at his photostream.
Click the link above to take a look. Unless you’re Spanish.
After being less than impressed with the first group of 2022 Technic sets, we were hoping something special was yet to be uncovered. And it has been!
This is the brand new 42130 Technic BMW M 1000 RR, the largest motorcycle set LEGO have ever made, and perhaps the largest scale ever used for a vehicle too, at an enormous 1:5.
So, the awkward bit; 42130 will cost over $200.
Which is a lot. But then the real BMW M 1000 RR costs around $30,000, so that astronomical figure for a motorcycle is rather authentic.
What upwards of $200 gets you is 1,920 pieces, including some splendid new wheels, windshield and brake parts, ultra-realistic and suitably M-Sport coloured farings, working steering, front and rear suspension, a three-speed gearbox, and a four-cylinder piston engine.
Two display stands and a black ’18+’ box (plus that hefty price tag) mark the 42130 Technic BMW M 1000 RR set out as part of LEGO’s recently created ‘adult’ product line, and if you consider yourself one of those you can get your hands on it early next year.
Despite the price, we just might…
Lifted trucks, a favoured vehicle for a subset of the American populous that we mock regularly on these pages, are resolutely awful.
Even though the suspension is raised, the lowest point of the chassis (usually a differential) is unchanged, thus ground clearance remains exactly the same. Only now the handling, fuel economy, and refinement are worse.
The Lego Car Blog Elves of course, having very small brains indeed, absolutely love lifted trucks.
This one comes from JLiu15, and – despite it being much too slow to run any Elves over – the Elf that found it seems rather pleased.
Remote control all-wheel-drive, three-mode steering (front wheels, four wheels, and crab), a V6 piston engine, and – most notably – ludicrously lifted suspension all feature, and there’s lots more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum. Click the link above to take a look.
