Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and Dodge

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The Five ‘D’s of Dodgeball make for an appropriate title today, as this wonderful ’20s Dodge Coupe is built only from the parts found within the official LEGO Technic 42111 Dom’s Dodge Charger set.

Eurobricks’ gyenesvi has included suspension front and rear, working steering, a 6-cylinder engine, plus opening doors, hood and trunk, but hasn’t stopped there.

The real ’20s Dodge Coupe was also available as a soft top, which gyenesvi has duly created via the model’s removable roof and modular A and B-pillars, allowing for a swift conversion to the roadster variant.

We guess that makes it Dodge, Duck, Dodge, Dive and Dodge.

And that’s not all. The 42111 donor set includes some rather tasty ‘modifications’ that Dom’s Dodge Charger sported in the Fast & Furious movies, including a supercharger and nitrous kit. Said modifications can also be applied to gyenesvi’s 42111 alternate, creating an authentic looking Dodge hot rod.

Which makes it Dodge, Duck, Dodge, Dodge and Dodge.

Further details of all versions of gyenesvi’s Dodge are available at the Eurobricks forum, where a link to building instructions can also be found. Dive over via the link above!

Anything but Meh

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Lego’s 75892 Speed Champions McLaren Senna set is, to this TLCB Writer at least, a bit ‘meh’. Not that we should begrudge another real-world car being available as an official LEGO set, but still… meh.

LEGO’s new 8-wide Speed Champions scale offers the opportunity up the realism, both for sets we’d forgotten about and models that maybe didn’t hit the mark in 6-wide form.

Cue previous bloggee Fabrice Larcheveque, who has rebuilt 75892 in 8-wide scale, and what a difference two studs make! Gone is the awkward shaping of the official set, replaced by a complex and realistic model of McLaren’s track-only hyper car.

Excellent presentation completes the build and there’s more to see of Fabrice’s McLaren Senna redux on Flickr via the link above.

A Giant Red Digger

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Things TLCB Elves like; Things with Guns. Things with Racing Stripes. Megan Fox (although she’s equipped with neither). Giant Red Diggers. Today is therefore a good day.

This Giant Red Digger is the work of previous bloggee Levihathan, and it’s a Poclain HC 300 – or rather a 2,000 piece remote controlled fully working replica of a Poclain HC 300.

There are no less than six motors, two bluetooth hubs, dual differential tracked drive, a V12 piston engine, and some suspiciously metallic looking linear actuators.

An extensive gallery of imagery is available to view, showing the construction, inner mechanics, and the amazing reach of the excavating arm. Head to Levihathan’s ‘Poclain HC 300’ album  via the link above for more Giant Red Digger goodness.

Sportvan Delux

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The ’60s was an era full of wildly optimistic names. This is a 1965 Chevrolet Sportvan Delux, which Chevy’s marketing department must have spent literally minutes working on, before going outside to smoke a pack of cigarettes or three.

Still, it looks cool, particularly with a trio of surfboards on the roof. Flickr’s Tim Henderson is the builder and there’s more to see of his wonderfully built but stupidly named creation via the link above.

And surely no-one would be silly enough to give something a name as utterly pointless as ‘Sportvan’ these days…

Fuchs with a Magnum

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This is a Fuchs MHL 320 material handler, essentially a full size arcade claw game. It comes from regular bloggee Damian Z. (aka Thietmaier), who has recreated it with absurd realism using all manner of interesting Lego pieces.

The Fuchs is pictured here alongside a Renault Magnum (named after a gun, or an ice cream, or a condom, we’re not sure) hook-lift container truck, which is just as life-like – we particularly like the splendidly battered and rusting scrap metal container it’s carrying.

Each model is beautifully built and presented, and there’s more to see of the Fuchs MHL 320 and the Renault Magnum hook-lift at their respective albums on Flickr. Click the links to take a look.

Cotton Communism

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From one iconic classic to another, although this one perhaps for very different reasons…

The Trabant 601 was a reasonable little car when it first launched in the 1960s, despite the shortage of metal in post-war Europe forcing its construction from cotton, and its two-stroke 600cc engine.

The cotton body meant that it didn’t rust, which – combined with a near monopoly in East Germany and a production run until the collapse of the Soviet Union some thirty years later – led to well over two million Trabants being on the roads at one point.

That number quickly fell once East Germans could buy Volkswagens and Opels instead though, as even by the ’80s the 601 was hopelessly outdated, such is the folly of Communism.

Cue this excellent Model Team version of the Trabant 601, built by Flickr’s Legostalgie who has recreated the classic cotton car superbly in brick form. A detailed interior, engine bay, and opening doors, hood and trunk are included, and there’s more to see at Legostalgie’s ‘Trabant 601’ album by clicking here.

The Speediest Champion

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Is there a car more perfect for LEGO’s new 8-wide Speed Champions range than the Ferrari F40? The most iconic Ferrari ever made has appeared in Creator form, but not yet as an 8-wide set. We’re sure it will at some point, and until then Jonathan Elliott has built one so wonderful we doubt it’ll be beaten. Head to Jonathan’s photostream via the link above to look at the best small-scale Ferrari F40 we’ve seen yet.

Ghost Pirate

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Disney’s ‘Pirate’s of the Caribbean’ managed to successfully* combine both pirates and ghosts, which – to any 8 year old or TLCB Elf – made it the coolest thing ever.

Their piratical spectres were beaten by a few decades however, by the U.S. Navy, whose ‘VF-84 Jolly Rogers’ squadron operated Phantom II jets from the USS Roosevelt in the 1960s.

Featuring a variety of pointy weapons, superb building techniques, and a ‘skull and crossbones’ tail-fin motif (which – to any TLCB writer – makes it the coolest thing ever), previous bloggee [Maks] has captured America’s ’60s fighter in stunning detail, and there’s more to see of his airborne ghost pirate via the link above.

*Ok, maybe not by the third one. Which was (and still is) one of the worst sequels of all time.

Bug(gy) Squash

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The Lego Car Blog Elves, as regular readers of this crumbling ruin of the internet will know, are not a peaceful bunch.

If they find a vehicle that is capable of running over their colleagues, they will do it. It’s as certain as Russian athletic doping, Fox News bias, or your Mom putting out.

And so, with absolute inevitability, this (rather excellent) RC buggy was today used to squash dozens of our smelly little workers.

They didn’t stand much of chance in today’s mass smushing event, as this model by A_C of Eurobricks is one of the fastest, nimblest, and most agile remote control creations that we’ve ever seen.

At less than 400 parts LEGO’s enormously powerful Buggy Motor has an easy time of it, and – when hooked up to a third party BuWizz bluetooth battery delivering up to eight times the power of LEGO’s own – you can see why even the fastest Elf couldn’t escape it.

All-wheel-suspension and Servo steering also feature, and there’s more to see of A_C’s brilliant ‘RC Buggy’ at the Eurobricks forum, where a link to building instructions can also be found.

Check it out via the link above, and watch it in action in an empty tennis court below!

YouTube Video

My Other Car’s Also a Giant Piece of Earth Moving Equipment

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Not a particularly catchy title, but accurate, as this ace mining truck is indeed constructed only from the parts found within the LEGO Technic 42114 Volvo Hauler set.

Redeploying 42114’s ‘Powered-Up’ motors and Control+ bluetooth control, builder Eric Trax has built an excellent companion for the enormous LEGO Technic 42100 Liebherr R 9800 set, with remote control drive, steering, and tipping bucket, plus – ingenuously – a three-speed automatic gearbox.

Whilst the scale is much smaller than that of the donor vehicle – as evidenced by the ‘steps’ leading up the front which give a clue to how massive this would be in real life – Eric’s creation still requires a hefty 1,700 pieces (around 80% of 42114), and can tip an impressive 2kgs of load.

A complete gallery of images, including a few of the truck alongside the official Liebherr R 9800 excavator set, can be found on Flickr by clicking here, where you can also find a link to building instructions should you wish to turn your own 42114 Volvo Hauler set into this mining truck yourself.

Cleverly, Eric’s 42114 B-Model uses the same Control+ profile as the donor set, so if you do make the switch you can drive it straight away using your familiar Volvo controls. Take a look via the video below to see Eric’s alternative in action!

YouTube Video

My Other Car’s a Mustang

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The Ford Mustang and Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia are two iconic ’60s coupes. However, whilst one was (in its day) a powerful, large-engined muscle car for the masses, the other… wasn’t.

With the air-cooled engine from a Beetle, but a larger heavier body, the Karman-Ghia was quite fantastically slow. But it was also gorgeous.

So too is this marvellous Model Team version, which previous bloggee monstermatou has built only from the parts found within the official LEGO 10265 Ford Mustang set.

Opening doors, a detailed interior and a lifelike engine are all included, and there’s more to see at monster’s photostream via the link above, where a link to building instructions will also appear shortly.

Vintage Erection

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If the content of TLCB’s spam folder is to be believed, we’re in for a future of certain erectile disfunction. However, not all old things have trouble getting it up, as this unusual GAZ-AA ‘Tower Wagon’ by Kent Kashiwabara proves.

The GAZ-AA was effectively a Ford Model A constructed under license in Russia, long before the two countries hated one another and the Soviet Union began buying everything from Fiat.

This particular GAZ-AA is based on the Model-A pick-up, but features an extending platform tower mounted behind the cab that can whir skywards, in Kent’s model thanks to some cunningly concealed Power Functions motors.

Remote control drive and steering also feature and there’s more to see of Kent’s erection at his ‘GAZ’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to get it up.

Bean’s Nemesis

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Superman and Lex Luther. Batman and Joker. Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Peter Griffin and the Giant Chicken. There are some very famous nemesis, but – in this writer’s opinion – none more so than Mr. Bean and the mystery driver a blue Reliant Regal van. We don’t know why the aforementioned anonymous van-driver enraged our hero so, but we’re willing to go with it for scenes like this one.

Recreating Bean’s arch-rival, along with his own Mini from probably the most famous Mr. Bean scene of them all, is Rob of Flickr – who has encapsulated both cars brilliantly in brick form. The Mini probably deserves to give a nod of thanks (or several) to designs by previous bloggees _Tyler and Lasse Deleuran, but it’s still worth your click. Take a look via the link above!

A Steaming Log

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It’s the late 1920s and steam powered road vehicles are pretty much over and done. There are a still a few being built though, primarily for applications where their monstrous torque was required; usually for pulling things along, pulling things over, or pulling things that powered other things.

Cue the Foden D-Type, a steam-powered logging tractor that enabled us to write a poo-based title, which is pretty much the main reason it’s appearing here. We’re not a classy blog.

The model is though, coming from previous bloggee Nikolaus Lowe, and it featuring a variety of technical functions including steering, a working ‘steam’ piston engine, and chain drive to the rear differential.

A extensive gallery of excellent imagery is available and there’s more to see of Nikolaus’s huge steamer on Flickr – click the link above to lay a log.

The Best 5-wide 4x4xFar

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This most excellent Land Rover Defender was discovered by one of our Elves on Flickr today, and it might be the best 5-wide recreation of the iconic 4×4 that we’ve seen yet. Newcomer Jan Woznica is the builder and he’s equipped his model with a winch, roof cage, and snorkel for added off-road prowess. Check out the best 5-wide 4x4xFar via the link.