LEGO 76139 1989 Batmobile | Set Preview

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Great news for those of you who only work in black! LEGO have revealed their upcoming 76139 ‘1989 Batmobile’ set, at it is really very black indeed. With 3,306 pieces (at least 3,000 of which look to be black), 76139 is one of the largest Superheroes sets to date, and bridges nicely across the DC and Creator car lines.

The model is a faithful replica of the vehicle used in the 1989 Tim Burton movie, and comes with a rotating platform and three slightly superfluous mini-figures (Joker, Vicki Vale (who?!), and Batman himself), which gives away the model’s primary purpose as being a display piece rather than a toy or engineering demonstration. Nevertheless the new set does feature working steering, a sliding cockpit (using a new piece), and pop-up machine guns should Batman decide to go rogue.

The new 76139 ‘1989 Batmobile’ set is expected to cost a around £220/$250 – which is rather a lot – and will go on sale on Black Friday 2019, which seems both appropriate and quite possibly a dark joke considering the price…

SEMA

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Founded in 1963, the Specialty Equipment Market Association, or SEMA, has become a giant of the automotive landscape. The annual SEMA show in Las Vegas is now one of the largest automotive events non the planet, attended not just be tuning companies but also by mainstream auto manufacturers, who are embracing a culture that can help their brand image.

Previous bloggee Simon Przepiorka has decided to build a Lego homage to the upcoming SEMA show, taking the official 10265 Ford Mustang set as a base and reworking it to achieve the awesome looking wide-body Mustang you see here. Such an approach is perfectly in keeping with SEMA, where standard manufacturer products are modified to often wild extremes, these days occasionally by the actual company that made them in the first place.

We think Simon’s modified Mustang looks spectacular and there’s more to see at his photostream via the link above, plus you can take a look at some of the good, weird, and frankly awful vehicles from last year’s SEMA show by clicking here.

56

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Following on from his Mellow Yellow 1960s sedan publicised here last week, Flickr’s Tim Henderson has followed it up with a classic from the decade earlier. Tim’s 1950s sedan includes all the hallmarks of era’s styling including a chrome grill with prominent fenders, side stripes, and tail fins, and there’s more to see at his photostream via the link above.

We’re 8 Today!*

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Two World Cups, two Olympics, and two Presidents have all passed since this ropey little corner of the internet spluttered into life eight years ago. Considerably less newsworthy than any of those things, The Lego Car Blog has quietly become at least a footnote in the annals of the Lego Community, and that’s good enough for us!

TLCB Review Library is now stacked with more than one-hundred set, book and third-party product reviews, there are over twenty interviews with the world’s greatest vehicle builders in the Master MOCers Series, and we’ve even finally gone and got ourself a Facebook page, around five years after Facebook was cool.

Since The Lego Car Blog’s peak of over a million visitors a year we’ve now settled in the high hundreds of thousands, so it seems at least a few people have got bored and wandered off (or left in anger), but if enough of you continue to like what you see here (or even if you don’t like it, continue to read it), we’ll endeavour to keep bringing you the best Lego vehicles that the web has to offer.

As always please let us know what you like and what you don’t, suggest creations our Elves have missed, and feel free to share, repost or steal anything you find here. The Brothers Brick do.

Thank you for stopping by, and remember that your views and clicks here at The Lego Car Blog generate advertising revenue that goes to those who need it more than we do, and for that we are incredibly grateful.

Onwards to nine, at which point we may well have to all get on with our lives and leave to this the proper blogs!

TLCB Team

*Yesterday, but we weren’t paying attention.

Retro Rampage

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Whiiiir! Crunch. Whiiiir! Crunch. Elven Screaming. Whiiiir! Crunch.

Sigh. These are sounds we’ve heard too often here at The Lego Car Blog Towers before, and they usually mean we’re going to have to get the carpets cleaned again.

A weary trudge to the corridor outside the office revealed the cause, and to our surprise there wan’t just one, but three. Three Elves were each controlling three separate (and rather impressive) Technic Monster Trucks, bashing them into one another and occasionally adding variety to the proceedings by driving them at and over the Elves who had come to watch the spectacle.

It admittedly looked like great fun, so Mr. Airhorn was deployed to break up the ruckus, the injured were patched up with Pritt-Stick and plasters, and we’ve taken control of the trio of Technic trucks for ourselves.

Each truck comes from Technic building legend Madoca77 and wears a gloriously retro livery, including the famous Ford ‘Big Foot’ colours and Toyota’s wonderful ’80s ‘pick-up’ stripe, and the three models are all remotely operable via bluetooth thanks to two SBricks.

These control the four XL motors (one per wheel), the two Servo motors that steer both the front and rear axles, the Medium motor that switches between crab steering and normal steering modes (just like LEGO’s excellent 40254 Claas Xerion 5000 set), and the Medium motor that operates the clamshell bodywork lift.

Madoca’s builds also include LED headlights, opening doors and dropping tailgates, plus – most importantly – a mega suspension setup which includes portal axles. They easily make it into our favourite creations list of 2019, and if you like them as much as we do then head to the Eurobricks discussion forum via the link above to read more about the builds and to watch a video of Madoca’s vintage monster truck design in action!

T600

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This might sound like a Terminator robot, but it is in fact a Kenworth truck, in this case recreated brilliantly in Technic form by anatolich aka Artur Volu. Artur’s Technic T600 not only looks the part, it’s absolutely packed with spectacular functionality, all of which can be controlled via bluetooth thanks to two SBricks. Remote control drive, steering, and a lockable fifth wheel all feature, as do suspended seats, a working V8 engine, and pendular suspension. That’s not all either, as Artur has constructed an enormous Michigan eight-axle trailer to accompany the T600 which also features a host of remotely controlled functions. Head to Artur’s Flickr photostream or the Eurobricks discussion forum to see images of the complete rig.

Is Halo Still a Thing?

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Well if it is here’s a Scorpion Main battle tank from the game.

Thanks to the seemingly unending series of terrible ‘Warthog’ and ‘Master Chief’ creations that plagued MOCpages for years we’ve actively avoided publishing Halo models here, so ingrained is our hatred of them. However those days are now thankfully long gone and we’re finally able to admit liking a Halo model. Kinda like it being OK to admit to liking Journey’s ‘Don’t stop believing’ now that Glee has finally finished. Just us? OK… No matter, this Halo Scorpion Battle Tank is rather good, it comes from ZiO Chao of Flickr, and there’s more to see at his photostream here.

Wildfire

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Wildfire is usually a completely natural phenomenon, and actually quite a useful one, allowing trees to spread their seeds and clearing land for regrowth. California’s latest (and tragic) wildfires are not. Sparked – literally – by crappy electrical equipment positioned over tinder-dry forest, thanks to hotter and drier summers, they have spread with ferocious verocity, claiming the lives of Californian citizens, destroying livelihoods, and wiping entire communities off the map. And in response the President is casting stones on Twitter. Yay.

Thankfully there is one constant source of goodness in these tragedies; the amazing California Fire Department, who have risked literally everything to save whomever they are able. This is one of the tools they have available to assist them, the HME Type 3 4×4 Wildland fire engine. This superb Lego recreation of one of CalFire’s wildfire response vehicles comes from previous bloggee sponki25 and it is well worth a closer look. Head into the forest with the heroes of CalFire via the link above.

*Today’s excellent title song.

Street Punk

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The future can seem a bleak and daunting place, where Miami is under an ocean that contains more plastic than fish, and where the Amazon is just a smouldering ash heap. Lego builders are often far more optimistic than this TLCB writer though, either predicting a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic party of thunderous V8 hot rods and pointy metal hats, or a colourful electrical megacity filled with glowing excitement. It’s the latter we have for you today, courtesy of TLCB debutant Lego-nuts and his superb cyberpunk street scene. A pair of Tron-style motorcycles provide the vehicular link, ready to race through a perfect midnight city backdrop. Head to the streets of the future via the link above and join the race.

Training Gagarin

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We don’t really know much about trains (we are a car blog after all), but we do still like them. Especially when they’re as detailed and colourful as this one is. A PKP ST44-1112 ‘Comrade Gagarin’ (apparently…), it’s been built by Mateusz Waldowski of Flickr, and it is quite wonderfully made and presented. An assortment of five beautifully-built trucks are in tow behind the locomotive, making Mateusz’s model really rather large indeed, with lovely attention-to-detail throughout. Head to Flickr via the link above to see more of the train tribute to the first man in space.

Mellow Yellow

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It’s a small scale day here at The Lego Car Blog. Previous bloggee Tim Henderson proves you don’t need a billion bricks to build something deeply cool. See more of his 6-wide ’60s sedan on Flickr via the link.

Petite Porsche

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This is a Porsche 917K, one of the most successful endurance racing car designs of all time, and it’s been recreated to near perfection in miniature by Flickr’s K MP. Wearing the 1970 Le Mans winning livery K MP’s 917 captures the real car brilliantly and there’s more to see at his photostream via the link above.

Super Stratos Stradale

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The Lancia Stratos was not a good road car. Uncomfortable, unreliable, and almost comically badly designed, there’s a reason that Lancia are barely around today (and so sad is their current single offering it’d probably be better if they weren’t. What’s going on Fiat?!). However, the Lancia Stratos rally car was a very different matter…

Powered by a mid-mounted Ferrari V6 the Stratos won three consecutive World Rally Championships, in ’74, ’75 and ’76. It might have won more too, were it not for parent company Fiat switching their focus (and therefore funding) to their own brand in ’77.

Such results have made the Lancia Stratos a hugely sought after car, despite the road variants being pretty rubbish. A better bet (and probably better built) is this Technic version from James Tillson, which recreates the Stratos brilliantly in Lego form.

Like the real car the front and rear bodywork opens, revealing the transversly-mounted V6 engine, working suspension, and functioning steering, with remote control delivered by Power Functions motors and a third-party BuWizz bluetooth battery.

There’s more to see of James’ Technic Lancia Stratos in both Stradale and Group B specification on Flickr and at the Eurobricks forum – take a look via the links in the text above, plus you can read our review of the BuWizz bluetooth battery that controls and powers it by clicking here.

Grappling Aid

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As has been well documented on this site, TLCB writers know absolutely nothing about sci-fi. Which year the Morris Minor switched from 820cc to 950cc? Yes*. Space? No. So instead you’re getting commentary on this excellent spacecraft by Flickr’s Nuno Taborda that refers to it as a cross between a grappling hook and something from your Mom’s ‘special friends’ chest. See more of this burgling-tool-come-sex-aid via the link above.

*1956

Identify Any Brick, In the Blink of an Eye!

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Back in April this year we stumbled across a very cool, OK, massively nerdy project. LEGO have produced a vast array of pieces over the years, everything from a flaming sword to a Deadpool duck head. No, we don’t know why either. Most of LEGO’s pieces however, are rather useful, but with so many made how do you know what it is you have (and need more of)? Piqabrick have the answer.

“Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, Piqabrick instantly identifies Lego bricks’ code, simplifying the long-lasting operations of searching and sorting.

Piqabrick easily and quickly identifies any Lego brick providing you the ID code and color code. How? Thanks to our proprietary computer vision technology. Piqabrick “looks at” a brick to identify it, just like we already do… but better!”

Sounds cool right? OK, not cool – massively nerdy again, but really bloody useful. Better still, Piqabrick has no monthly or yearly fee: it’s free for a lifetime.

If you’d like to find out more about how Piqabrick works and pledge so that the tool can become a reality then visit the Piqabrick Kickstarter campaign via the link below!

Piqabrick on Kickstarter