Front-heavy, able to handle a big load, and often found working in docks*, telehandlers move all sorts of things from one place to somewhere else. This one comes from recent bloggee Sseven Bricks who – despite only building in Town scale – has included four-wheel-steering in his miniature JCB. Head dockside via the link above.
*Just like your Mom.
Here at The Lego Car Blog we’re big fans of up-cycling. Repurposing one thing into another thing is both advantageous to the wallet, and means that one fewer new thing has had to be made, usually by digging something out of the ground/cutting down a tree, melting/refining it in a factory, and shipping it in a giant box full of other new things half-way round the world.
Of course LEGO by design is an up-cycler’s dream. Endlessly reusable, reconfigurable, and hand-down-able, it is the antidote to crappy single-use plastic toys that will last a thousand times longer in landfill or our oceans than they will in the hands of a child.
Cue previous bloggee M_Longer, who today demonstrates LEGO’s greatest attribute brilliantly by up-cycling two 2025 entry-level Technic sets into entirely new models.
M_Longer’s JCB Fastrac (above) uses every one of the parts from the 42199 Monster Jam DIGatron set, whilst his helicopter (below) swaps the ocean depths of the 42201 Deep-Sea Research Submarine for the skies, and includes a pitching main rotor and a hand crank that turns it and the tail rotor simultaneously.
There’s more to see of M_Longer’s 42199 JCB Fastrac, or alternatively his 42201 helicopter, at both Eurobricks (where links to building instructions can also be found) and Bricksafe, and you can take a look at each up-cycled alternate via the links below;
Helicopter: Eurobricks / Bricksafe, JCB Fastac: Eurobricks / Bricksafe
BMW’s current design language is… um, challenging. Stupid aggressiveness, stupid grilles, stupid lighting, stupid grilles with stupid lighting… ‘The Human Centipede’ is less visually offensive than some of BMW’s latest offerings.
Which is why we’ve chosen to show the rear of Drop Shop‘s fantastic BMW M3 Competition rather than the front. Because so good is his brick-built replica of BMW’s latest iteration of their super saloon that its face is every bit as difficult to stomach as the real thing.
There’s much more to see at Drop’s photostream, if your constitution is more robust than ours…
It’s the late ’70s, and Ford’s Crown Victoria is still a decade-and-a-half away from police ubiquity. Which means a variety of barge-like metal is plying America’s highways wearing a star on the side. This is one such patrol car, the Plymouth Fury (a great automotive name), as recreated wonderfully by Sseven Bricks. Click the link to Protect and Serve circa-’78.
Large, round, red, and pulled by truckers. No, it’s not your Mom on vacation, but this stupendous tanker truck by Flickr’s Arian Janssens. Six axles, superb detailing, and much steering are all at play, and there’s more to see of Arian’s DAF FTG XF 480 to see via the link.
The Ferrari F40 is probably the finest Ferrari ever made. And therefore it’s possibly the finest automobile ever made too. The F50… isn’t. Still, they’ve both been built by Flickr’s RGB900 and you can see more of one the all time greats, and the F50, via the link above.
Is there anything cooler than a bright yellow Mark 1 Ford Capri? No, of course not, and previous bloggee Versteinert had the coolest dad ever, because this is a replica of the exact car owned by his father in the ’70s.
Ford’s European coupe was offered in a bewildering array of trims and engine sizes, with Versteinert’s dad choosing a mid-range engine married to high specification, with his being 2000 GXL.
Capturing his father’s car in wonderful detail, Versteinert’s beautifully presented 7-wide model is packed with ingenious building techniques, and you can see it close up at his ‘Ford Capri’ album via the link.
And what of the Capri itself? Well after decades of hiatus, Ford have brought the Capri back as… an electric crossover. Because of course they have. It might be available in yellow, but we’ll take Versteinert’s dad’s Mark 1 2000 GXL any day.
The most common basis for hot rods are Fords. Due to their abundance in America in the 1920s-’40s, all manner of blue ovals have been hot rodded; Model-Ts, Model-As, ‘Tudors‘, ‘5-Windows‘ and everything in-between. But not, we suspect, the Ford GT. Until today. Kinda.
Because this excellent Technic hot rod is built only out of the parts from the official LEGO Technic 42154 Ford GT.
Working steering, opening and locking doors, a V6 engine, all-wheel suspension, and the most ingenious use of Technic wheel arches we’ve ever seen all feature, and there’s more to see courtesy of Equilibrium at the Eurobricks discussion forum.
This amazing machine is a Kenworth 993, a cab-over, six-wheel-drive, heavy duty truck designed in the 1980s to move heavy equipment. And, in one extraordinary case, a nuclear reactor.
We say ‘cab-over’, but the cab was not in fact over anything, as the 700bhp Cummins V12 that powered the 993 was too large to fit under the it, instead being mounted directly behind.
Capturing this unusual design is TsungNing Lee, who has recreated the Kenworth 933 in spectacular detail. Enormous third-party tyres afford a scale that enables incredible realism, with TsungNing both building and presenting his creation in stunning fashion.
There’s much more to see, including work-in-progress photos, at TsungNing’s photostream, and you can take a closer look at this remarkable truck via the link above.
We love mediocrity here at The Lego Car Blog. Which is probably because we are ourselves deeply, completely, terminally, mediocre. And what’s more mediocre, automotively speaking, than a ’90s Toyota Starlet with try-too-hard pin-striping? It’s TLCB of cars. Only it’s well made and reliable.
This glorious example of Toyota’s mundane ’90s subcompact hatchback comes from Ilyabuilder724, and can fit two figures, includes an opening hood, and is fitted with try-too-hard pin-striping. Plus building instructions are available so you can build mediocrity at home. Take a look at all the imagery via the link above.
This TLCB Writer never particularly liked the McLaren Mercedes SLR. It looked like some kind of sad deep-sea fish. But no matter, because if you do like Mercedes-Benz’s mid-’00s collaboration with their then Formula 1 partner McLaren, previous bloggee Fabrice Larcheveque has recreated it brilliantly (sad fish face included) in 8-wide Speed Champions form, and with building instructions too. Find all the imagery and that link to instructions at Fabrice’s ‘McLaren Mercedes SLR’ album above.
Almost entirely known for their cars and pickups, Ford also once made aircraft. The 1930s Ford Tri-Motor was much admired, with around 200 built for civilian and military use before the Second World War.
It was also the aircraft of choice for Indiana Jones’ protagonist in ‘The Temple of Doom’ being operated by the evil Lao Che and his air freight business.
This superb render of the Tri-Motor in ‘Lao Che Air Freight’ livery comes from Robson of Flickr, who has captured the real plane and its fictional operator brilliantly.
There’s more of Robson’s wonderful creation to see on Flickr, and you can click the link above to jump back to a time when Ford made more than F-150s.
We’ve all designed our dream hypercar in our heads. Well, TLCB Staff have. Anyway, Eurobricks’ Sebeus I has turned his dream hypercar into reality (kinda), by building this extraordinarily thoroughly thought-out creation, entitled simply ‘Hypercar’.
The techniques to create it are anything but simple though, with the remarkable exterior matched by amazingly life-like brick-built internals, with a rear subframe, engine and hybrid system, oil reservoir, coolant, battery, ECU, exhaust manifold, plus ‘steering’ and ‘suspension’ components too.
There’s much more of Sebeus’ ‘Hypercar’ to see at the Eurobricks forum, including full build details and imagery displaying the ingenious detail within.
This superbly-liveried rhubarb-and-custard DAF XG was discovered by one of our Elves on Flickr, and comes from regular bloggee Ralph Savelsberg (aka Mad Physicist), who has recreated one of the real trucks used British agricultural haulage firm ‘Manners’. Only mini-figure scale, Ralph’s DAF packs in detail that belies its small size, which is further enhanced by some lovely replica decals. There’s more to see at Ralph’s ‘DAF XG’ Flickr album and you can mind his manners via the link above.
The Trabant 601 may not have seemed a formidable police car, but seeing as most of the East German population would have had, at best, their own Trabant 601, and more likely a crappy motorcycle or a pushbike, it was probably a sufficient deterrent.
Perhaps less so by the early ’90s though, when – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany – East German criminals suddenly had access to the Mercedes-Benz E-Class.
This example comes from _Tiler, who’s been sitting on some official LEGO ‘Polizei’ stickers for a decade just for this moment. Join him keeping the streets of East Germany safe via the link above.
