Yes, LEGO’s partnership with the Volkswagen Group will bring the world’s fastest production car to bedrooms all around the world. August can’t come soon enough…
Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron | Set Preview
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Mega Micro Space
Rat Dude has built this tiny version of the classic 6989 Mega Core Magnetizer. It comes complete with a telescopic grab arm and little rover, just like the original. There’s also a very neat helicopter, featuring some ice-lolly NPU. Being a food item, it was instantly spotted by the TLCB Elves. Click the link at the start of the post and see if you can spot it too.
Traditional Caravans
Letranger Absurde has made this lovely pair of Gypsy caravans. Nicely decorated in traditional style, we particularly liked the rounded roof of the right most of the two. Being proper petrolheads at TLCB, we all love a good caravaning trip. Click the links in the text to go caravaning too.
Dig Big
This stupendous vehicle is a Caterpillar 7495 HF electric rope shovel and it can carry 120 tons up to 9m high in its ‘dipper’ (or bucket to you and us). Well this one can’t obviously, as it’s made from Danish plastic, but it’s rather impressive all the same.
Built by previous bloggee Arjan Oude Kotte (aka Konajra) it is – almost unbelievably – mini-figure scale, and features a full array of LED lighting, Power Functions remote control, spectacular detailing, plus of course, a truly enormous shovel.
An evolution of Arjan’s original model that appeared here in 2014 there’s more to see of this brick-built masterpiece at his Caterpillar 7495 HF photo album – click the link above if you’re diggin’ this as much as we are.
Speed Champions 2018 | Set Previews!
Over the past few weeks a group of crack The Lego Car Blog Elves have been undertaking a secret mission. Infiltrating The LEGO Company’s headquarters, dodging the guards (and guard dogs – who have a taste for Elf meat), and resisting the baited mousetraps to bring back LEGO’s brand-new-for-2018 Speed Champions line-up. And what a line-up it is!
2018 continues LEGO’s hugely successful officially licensed partnership with some of the world’s top automotive brands, with six new sets all of which replicate real-world cars both current and – much to our delight – classic too. With two new sets each from Porsche, Ford and Ferrari, there’s plenty to like. Let’s take a look!
We’ll start with Porsche, one of the newer partnerships LEGO have forged, who add two new sets to their inventory. First up (top) is the 75888 Porsche 911 RSR & 911 Turbo 3.0 set, a glorious double featuring both the latest 911 RSR endurance racer and a superb lime green classic 911 Turbo 3.0. Each features a mini-figure, some neat decals, and the set includes a pit wall, mechanic mini-figure, and a rather useful looking timing gantry complete with reversible timing bricks.
75888 features just under 400 pieces, including those three mini-figures, and we expect it to cost just over £30 when it reaches stores. We like it a lot.
LEGO’s second new officially licensed Porsche set (above) is the 75887 Porsche 919 Hybrid, featuring Porsche’s 2017 Le Mans winning prototype. The 919 model is constructed from a wealth of curves and plates ensuring it is all but studless, with some colourful decals used to recreate an authentic livery. A light pole, mini-figure and laptop are all included and we expect 75887 to be wonderfully pocket-money attainable at around £12 when it reaches stores.
On to Ford, who like Porsche also have two new-for-2018 sets in the Speed Champions range, and who also have both a current and classic models recaptured in brick through their partnership with LEGO.
The 75885 Ford Fiesta M-Sport WRC is the first of the new additions, featuring Ford’s brand new World Rally Championship contender; the mental Fiesta M-Sport WRC. Like 75887 above, 75885 will be priced in the pocket-money bracket at around £12 and contains just over 200 pieces, including a racing driver mini-figure and a wealth stickers to help create authenticity. New white wheels and wedge tiles also make appearances, and the car looks wonderful in (we think) Monte Carlo Rally specification with a front-mounted light bar.
Our only gripe is that 75885’s livery is not the same as that found on the 2018 rally car, but perhaps the real livery hadn’t been decided upon by the time LEGO needed to finalise the set, or a partnership with title-sponsor Red Bull in addition to both Ford and M-Sport was one to many. Nevertheless 75885 is a lovely looking thing and looks to be a great entry level set for racing fans.
Ford’s second set within the 2018 Speed Champions line-up is perhaps the most famous model in their history. Yup, LEGO have gone and built a classic 1960s Mustang! We think 75884 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback is one of the nicest Speed Champions sets to date, and whilst it is perhaps a little over-stickered for a historic racing car, it looks fantastic in its Bullitt-green and gold stripe livery. As usual a mini-figure driver is included plus a timing board, and we expect 75884 to join the range alongside the Porsche 919 Hybrid and Fiesta M-Sport WRC in the c£12 bracket. It’s our favourite.
Finally we come to LEGO’s longest standing partnership and the brand that started LEGO’s collaboration with the auto industry; the mighty Ferrari.
Like Porsche and Ford, Ferrari have two new sets in the 2018 Speed Champions line up. First (above) is 75886 Ferrari 488 GT3 ‘Ferrari Corsa’, another rather nice entry into the pocket money bracket complete with a mini-figure racing driver (female this time), plentiful decals and a nifty looking trophy.
Ferrari’s second officially licensed Speed Champions set for 2018 is rather more flamboyant. Priced at over £80 and containing three Ferrari cars (a modern 488 GTE, a gorgeous classic 250 GTO and a historic 312 Formula 1 car), the 75889 Ferrari Ultimate Garage also includes seven mini-figures, spare parts, a vintage petrol pump, trophies, and a race start/finish line.
All in all 2018 looks to be an excellent continuation of LEGO’s partnership with real-world car manufacturers, with a wealth of choice at different price points, a couple of new parts, and – best of all – some wonderful classic cars to accompany the very latest machinery. More like these please LEGO!
Happy 60th Birthday Brick!
60 years ago today the founder of The LEGO Company Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for a little interlocking brick formed of studs and tubes.
A few months later patent approval was granted, and The LEGO Company became the owner of what would become probably the most valuable toy patent in history.
Six decades on and LEGO have become the largest toy maker on the planet, and even though Godtfred’s original patent has expired – allowing countless imitators to emerge – The LEGO Company continues to build its success upon a little plastic brick designed 60 years ago.
#Happy Birthday Brick!
Black on Black
A double post today, as two previous bloggees appear here with a pair of black mini-figure scale classics. First up (above) is _Tyler‘s glorious 5-wide Ford Anglia 100E in police specification, complete with a brilliantly authentic 1950s British police officer.
Today’s second black classic comes from Jonathan Elliot who has built a lovely 6-wide ‘anonymous black sedan’ from a similar era. Smart techniques abound on both models and there’s more to see of each via the links above.
Space Smarties
Uh oh… sci-fi. We’re so bad at these. One of the proper blogs will probably find these shortly and do them justice, but in the meantime you’ll just have to make do with us.
This is an LL424 Aura Battle Frigate and an LL112 Harbinger Missile Corvette, and we have absolutely no idea what that means. What we do know is these rather wonderful creations by Flickr’s ZCerberus are orange, and orange Smarties are clearly the best kind. We therefore have a happy Elf to reward, and you can check out more of these excellent builds via the link above.
What Lies Beneath
This remarkably neat 6-wide muscle car by Angka Utama hides a cunning secret beneath its exterior curves.* Yes, underneath the white bodywork is another complete car, and it’s equally neat too. There’s more to see of Angka’s ingenious creation/creations on both Flickr and MOCpages – take a look via the links.
*Make your own joke.
Construct-a-Corvette
Lasse Deleuran (aka gtahelper)’s stunning Chevrolet Corvette C7.R has appeared here at The Lego Car Blog before, and now he’s made another. OK, that doesn’t warrant a re-post, but the arrival of free instructions does! You can build your own incredible Lego replica of the Corvette C7.R in 2017 Le Mans GTEPro spec at either Eurobricks or Flickr – click the links for the details.
Hot Doggin’
The Elves’, who go hungry unless they successfully find a blog-worthy creation, seem intent on continuing the mobile snack theme started yesterday. Maybe they’re trying to tell us something? Whatever, this brilliant hot dog truck by Flickr’s LEGO7 is a magnificent example of vehicular cuisine, and you can grab yourself a snack via the link!
Vital Vittles
After a hard day at work, subduing rampant rampaging Elves and occasionally writing a bit of copy, there’s nothing TLCB’s editors enjoy more than relaxing with a tin of chilled beverage. Because of this, DOGOD Brick Design’s can shaped truck instantly caught our eye on Flickr. Vitali is a popular drink in Taiwan, with a fleet of delivery vehicle shaped liked its tins of drink. Disappointingly for us, it turned out that Vitali is non-alcoholic but we still enjoyed the nicely filled interior and custom stickers.
42062 Container Yard Review
Scrolling through the Brick Badger website can be a dangerous business, especially if you haven’t bought any new bricks for a while. It was a dull Sunday afternoon at TLCB Towers. The Elves had decided to find out which colour of 32009 Technic beam could do the most damage when beaten against a colleague’s head (medium lilac apparently). We were wandering the interweb and spotted the 42062 Container Yard was nearly 40% off on the famous riverine retailer.
The set contains 631 pieces, including a selection of beams in LEGO’s standard blue and orange colours, plus eight, grey 64782 flat panels. Not owning the 42056 Porsche 911, a source of orange Technic pieces is always welcome and the grey panels looked like they’d come in handy for making neat bases for MOCs. There’s also one of the new worm gears and a good number of 18654 (15, plus spares). LEGO insists on calling these 1×1 beams, despite the pieces obvious inability to perform this engineering function. The most obvious new pieces in the set are the 18942 and 18940 Gear Rack & Housing. It will be interesting to see what use MOCers come up with for these parts. The set continues Technic’s trend of axles coming in a variety of colours: red, yellow and brown in this case.
Building the models is the usual, enjoyable adventure with Lego. There is a very nicely produced instruction book for both the main build and the B-model. The different colours are well differentiated and the days of dark grey and black getting confused are long gone. The parts come in numbered bags; building the tractor unit, the trailer and finally the telehandler. It took us a couple of hours of building and tea-drinking to complete the build. Builders at the youngest end of the suggested age range might find this quite a marathon of building and concentrating. Perhaps an advantage of this set is that you can build the lorry (and pause to play with it), build the trailer (and pause to play with it) and finish off with the telehandler. We certainly did!
As you would hope from a set with two different models, there are a good variety of mechanisms for young (and old!) engineers to build and play with in this set. Each vehicle has a different steering mechanism, plus the four-bar linkage that raises the arm on the telehandler, which also uses that new worm gear. Purists might be annoyed that the A model doesn’t use the gear rack to extend the telehandler’s arm. However, the B model does and the A model uses an interesting camming mechanism similar to the locking mechanism found in early repeater rifles. The container grabbing claw is another very neatly implemented version of a locking knuckle. For a set with a relatively small number of pieces there’s a lot here to inspire amateur engineers to experiment and build their own machines.
Sadly, the one thing that this otherwise excellent and exciting looking set doesn’t do so well on is its playability. Compromises have had to been made to keep the set within a certain price range, which is understandable. Continue reading
Back in Black
LEGO’s 42056 official Porsche 911 GT3 RS set is a spectacular flagship for the Technic range. It’s just a shame it’s mostly spectacularly priced, rather than spectacularly engineered. Here’s what 42056 could have been, Paave‘s brilliant medium scale 911 GT3 RS.
Inspired by the official set, only downsized, Paave’s black GT3 features independent suspension, opening doors, hood and engine cover, adjustable seats, and – in lieu of the set’s (mostly hidden) flat-6 piston engine – a suite of Power Functions remote control goodness.
An on-board LiPo battery powers twin L Motor drive whilst a Servo motor allows for precise steering, all cunningly hidden away underneath the realistic bodywork. There’s more to see of Paave’s remote control Porsche 911 GT3 RS at the Eurobricks forum – take a look via the link above.
Little & Large
Fortunately not a Monday night in front of the tele with eighties’ comedy duo Syd and Eddie but a ravishingly beautiful, small-scale version of Lego’s 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Master interpreter of the Porsche in Lego form, Malte Dorowski is the creator of this 42056 in a smaller scale. Stay tuned to TLCB for another small version of 42056 tomorrow…