For once we’re not referencing Spinal Tap (well we are a bit), but this iconic scene from the TV series ‘Stranger Things’ in which psychokinetic schoolgirl Eleven flips a delivery van through thoughts alone. Built for the LEGO Ideas ‘Stranger Things’ competition, Flickr’s Hachiroku has captured the scene brilliantly and there’s more to see at his photostream here.
Not a visually-challenged yet hench guy, but this; a heavily modified Hawker Sea Fury fighter that competed in the Reno Air Races in the late 1980s. Flickr’s Sydag is the builder behind this top-quality recreation of the famous air racer (so named because it was owned by a man who ran a window blind business!), and has also built a superb hangar in which to house it, complete with a rat rod, disused airframe, and a variety of tools and equipment. Click here to head to the skies at Sydag’s photostream.
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.
This is a Mobquet M-68 landspeeder (of course), and it comes from newcomer barneius industries of Flickr. With our expert knowledge of all things sci-fi we could detail the M-68’s history and technical capabilities but we wouldn’t want to embarrass the other blogs, so instead we’ll simply stick to how deeply, awesomely cool it looks.
Featuring Ford Thunderbird style jet-thruster rear lights, a wing reminiscent of the Plymouth Roadrunner, and an excellent side-stripe, the Mobquet channels a whole host of classic American metal into its design, with glorious results. Head to barneius industries’ M-68 Flickr album via the link above to see the complete gallery of images and see how many ’60s muscle car references you can spot!
Beige is the colour of, amongst other things, hearing aids, baby sick, boring trousers, and 1980s Volvos. Not exactly an exciting hue. But somehow despite this history (or maybe because of it) beige still looks damn cool in the right setting. A Jeep Wrangler Rubicon is one such example, as demonstrated here by Ben of Flickr and his neat 6(ish) wide Lego version. Head to Ben’s photostream via the link.
Today’s blog-worthy creation comes in two colours (earning the Elf responsible two Smarties as we’re feeling generous), each built by well-regarded Technic builder Madoca 1977 and filled with functional goodness.
Madoca’s ‘Dacoma 4×4’ pick-up truck looks most excellent in either colour, with a wealth of clever Technic engineering concealed inside. This includes remote control 4×4 drive via two L Motors, Servo steering, a high/low gearbox powered by a Medium Motor, LED headlights, working differential locks and suspension, plus opening doors, hood and tailgate.
There’s more to see on Eurobricks, including a video of the truck’s features and a link to building instructions. Click the link above to make the jump.
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.
If yesterday’s Classic Space recruitment poster didn’t do the trick then this surely will! From bi-pedal mechs and lunar rovers to drop ships and mining tractors, Classic Spacemen and Spacewomen get to pilot all sorts of awesome machinery. And, being strictly research-based, there’s virtually no chance* of being blown up or imprisoned by Blacktron agents! Yu Chris continues the Classic Space recruitment drive and there’s more to see of his wonderful array of Classic Space vehicles on Flickr. Click the link above to sign up!
*Not a guarantee.
Looking like the coolest recruitment poster in the world (or off of it for that matter), Flickr’s Veynom sure knows how to get our attention. Veynom is making his TLCB debut thanks to his glorious LL-238 spacecraft (pictured here in a ‘Cosmic Infographic’ courtesy of Muad’Brick), hurtling through space above a proud flag-planting classic spaceman. Join the cause at Veynom’s photostream via the link above and do your bit!
We’re taking a dump in the woods today, thanks to this ‘tracked dump truck’ by Flickr’s JLiu15 and its four tracks separated by an articulated pivot.
Not only can it take a dump in the woods, JLiu15’s remote control oddity is also capable of transporting several TLCB Elves outside and tipping them in the pond. Not that we’d do that…
Whilst we transport several TLCB Elv… er, we mean, get on with researching LEGO facts and whatnot, you can see more of JLiu15’s tracked dump truck on Flickr via the link above.
To the pond!
Aaaand we’re back with car! And what a car. This is a Lamborghini Huracan Performante, the track-focussed, more powerful, lighter weight version of the V10 supercar.
This stunning Technic recreation of the Performante comes from newcomer Jerry LEGO Creations who has not only captured the Huracan’s visuals brilliantly in Technic form, there’s a working V10 engine driven by all four wheels, all-wheel suspension with anti-rollbars, working steering, opening doors and hood, and a detailed interior too.
A proper Technic Supercar then, and there’s more to see of Jerry’s spellbinding build at the Eurobricks forum. Click the link above to make the jump.
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.
Every so often a creation arrives here at The Lego Car Blog Towers that makes us all go ‘…woah!’. This is one of those times. This beautifully presented model is Lucio Switch’s ‘Tow Truck MkII’ and it’s ridiculously brilliant.
As you’d expect for a model of this size (c10K parts and weighing 12.5 kgs) Lucio’s tow truck is motorised and remotely controlled, but before we even start looking at the electric functions there’s a host of non-motorised features to detail. These include all-wheel suspension (independent up front and live-axle at the rear), a fully suspended and pneumatically tilting cab complete with opening and locking doors, pneumatically suspended seats, and a V8 piston engine underneath. Storage lockers open on each side of the truck and five sets of Power Functions LEDs light the head and tail lights.
Which leads us nicely to the motorised functions, all of which are driven by LEGO’s Power Functions system with three on-board batteries hooked up to four third-party SBricks, allowing programable bluetooth control.
Nineteen separate Power Functions motors are present in Lucio’s model, with four XL motors powering the 8×4 drivetrain and three Servos turning the front two steering axles. Next are eight Medium motors, the first of which drives the pneumatic compressor that operates the aforementioned tilting cab and suspended seats.
The remaining seven Medium motors power the rotation and extension of the two enormous front outriggers, the extension of the two rear outriggers, the towing arm, and the rotation of the crane boom, whilst four Large motors power the crane lift, boom extension, and the two independent winches.
The four SBricks allow all of that functionality to be programmed neatly onto a smartphone from which the truck can be controlled remotely via bluetooth (take a look at the video below to see this in action), as otherwise you’d need a very large joystick controller indeed!
It’s one of the most outstandingly impressive Technic creations of 2019 and furthermore Lucio has presented his model beautifully, with superb high quality images and an excellent video demonstrating the truck’s functions. You can watch that video below, and you can see all the images at Lucio’s ‘Tow Truck MkII’ Flickr album here, join the discussion at the Eurobricks forum here, and read full details at Lucio’s own website by clicking here.
YouTube Video
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.
We’re linking to that childish Austin Powers sketch today for good reason. Firstly because penis jokes are funny. Secondly because this Atlas-F inter-continental ballistic missile looks like one. And thirdly because it, and all the other fantastically pointless atomic weaponry developed during the Cold War, amounted to little more than chillingly dangerous willy waving.
The SM-65 Atlas was one of the USA’s numerous ‘my dick’s bigger than yours’ taunts, and being 85ft high and weighing 260,000 lbs it was admittedly pretty massive. But still completely pointless.
The Atlas-Fs were the first ICBM’s able to be deployed from underground silos, taking just ten minutes to launch. Six squadrons were armed with the F, with seventy-two of the things deployable at their peak (plus another fifty-seven of other variants), each armed with a warhead over a hundred times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.
This marvellous recreation of a horrendous machine comes from Flickr’s Ralph Savelsberg (aka Mad Physicist, who is perhaps living up to his name with this build), and is – somewhat unbelievably – mini-figure scale. A neat launch pad, silo, and two mini-figure missile boffins are included and there’s more to see at his photostream. Click the link above to wave your willy.
