Insanity Incoming

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Is there any car more likely to be driven by someone with a looser grip on reality than the Hummer H1. You’ll notice there’s no question mark at the end of that sentence because no, no there isn’t.

Owned exclusively by those who don’t believe in vaccines, but do believe that 911 was a hoax, in staged mass shootings, giant space lasers, and that the government controls the weather, the Venn diagram for the Hummer H1, Collecting Canned Food, and Wildly Unnecessary Gun Display overlaps so tightly it’s just a circle.

As socialist Europeans, the Hummer H1 is very much Not Our Sort of Car, but no matter, because this Model Team replica of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s electoral chariot is fantastic.

Complete with the pre-requisite American Flag, Tony Bovkoon’s brick-built H1 features four Power Functions L Motors for drive, Servo steering, LED lights, working suspension, four opening doors, and is fully remote controlled. Just like the weather apparently.

There’s much more of the model to see at Tony’s ‘Hummer H1’ album on Flickr, and you can join the Flat-Earthers, members of QAnon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene hoarding ammo and decrying Socialism via the link above.

Zillie Smalls

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The Lego Car Blog Elves have a well-publicised penchant for extreme violence. They’ve squashed, flattened, and smushed one-another via a variety of brick-built creations, and whilst they may be mythical, the stains left by their bodily fluids certainly aren’t.

Cue another can of carpet foam today, thanks to previous bloggee gyenesvi and this most excellent Buwizz-powered Zil 130 trial truck.

Propelled by two Powered-Up L Motors driving all six wheels with another controlling the steering, and with live-axle suspension (coil up front and leaf sprung at the rear), gyenesvi’s Zil can climb over almost anything, including a few unsuspecting Elves who were quietly watching something with Megan Fox in on the TV in their cage room.

Luckily for us gyensvi’s Zil trial truck is actually really small (and therefore a rather clever feat of Technic engineering), and thus it didn’t take long before an Elf got wedged between the rear wheels and brought the rampage to an end.

There’s more of the model to see at both the Eurobricks forum and Bricksafe, where links to building instructions can also be found, plus you can watch the truck in action in the video below. Take a look via the links above, whilst we sponge some Elf blood out of the carpet.

YouTube Video

Digitally Dinky

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Britain’s new car market was once filled with light, nimble, rear-wheel-drive sports cars. Dozens of different models were produced, and there was room for all of them… until the arrival of the hot hatchback.

Killing off the sports car in just a few short years, the hot hatchback became the affordable driver’s car of choice, and – to some extent – still is, despite the seemingly unending march of the SUV. Thus here are three of them (although one isn’t technically a hatchback), all created digitally by Flickr’s Peter Blackert, and each was another nail in the sports car coffin.

First up (above) was Ford’s Fiesta XR2. Released in 1981, the XR2 added a 1.6 litre crossflow engine (and some black plastic, stripes, and extra lights) to Ford’s humble supermini, creating a car that could out perform any comparable sports car of the day, and yet could seat four and their luggage.

Of course small quick cars didn’t start with the Fiesta XR2, having been around since the Mini Cooper of the early ’60s. Austin and Morris – now morphed (along with many other brands) into the dysfunctional behemoth British Leyland – continued with their own sporty offering, the Mini Clubman 1275 GT. Effectively the same car as the decade-old Mini Cooper, the Clubman wore a squared off front end to make it, um… marginally uglier. The ’70s were weird.

Our last hot hatchback comes from one of the genre’s giants; Peugeot. But this isn’t their iconic 205 GTI. The 104 arrived a decade earlier, with this example being the strangely truncated three-door ‘Coupe’ version (which was some rather optimistic marketing on Peugeot’s part). A 205 GTI it was not, but it set the scene for what was to come, and you can see more of it plus Peter’s other virtual recreations of sporty seventies’ superminis at his photostream via the link above.

The LEGO Builder’s Handbook | Review

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We like books here at TLCB Towers and have a growing library of titles written by members of the LEGO Community, sharing their knowledge, techniques, and sometimes even building instructions with their fellow LEGO fans.

Cue our friends at No Starch Press, whose latest title ‘The LEGO Builder’s Handbook | Become a Master Builder’ was offered to us for review. But who better to review a book about becoming a Master Builder than someone who’s attained that status already! Thus said copy was dispatched to one of our TLCB Master MOCers, the immensely talented Kyle Wigboldly (aka Thirdwigg), for a vastly more qualified appraisal than our own. Over to Kyle!

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In today’s internet centrick world, you can find any group to connect with that you need or want. We in the LEGO world can find any number of ways to connect with other builders just like us. We are constantly barraged with the specific LEGO interest sites, reviews, and purchasing options. So there is something refreshing for me about being presented with a book that may not fully connect with my specific build interest. Reading a LEGO book can be a nice way to slow down and wander along with where the author is leading you, rather than in the direction a nondescript algorithm (or TLCB Elf. Ed.) is pushing me. The LEGO Builder’s Handbook written by Deepak Shenoy is such a book to let me wander. The book was published in 2024 by No Starch Press, longtime publishing friends of the LEGO community.

The book is organized in three main parts; The Basics, Breaking Free of the Grid, and Computer Assisted Builds. While there are a number of pictures, renders, and examples, this is a text heavy book. Rather than showing lots of images of what others have built, the book focuses on teaching you how to build. It shows various ways you can expand your building techniques provided you have the parts needed. Though it is hard to define for whom this book is written.

The audience seems broad which is evident when you start with The Basics. As a LEGO builder who is squarely in the LEGO Technic area of building, this book is not directly for me. But the value started to be more clear when I started sharing the book with various children in my house and neighborhood. But ‘The LEGO Builder’s Handbook’ is not squarely directed to them as well. I found the book is at its best when experienced with a wide range of building skills. The book starts with learning the basics about building with system bricks; how do you make a strong wall, and how do you think about recreating a scale building with the correct propositions? There are skills that every good builder will need to learn to become a better one. Skills that the children in my life do not yet know. But working through the book together gave them some tools to get better. This section used building a large Empire State Building model as a throughline to demonstrate the skills being shared. I found this connection both practical and overwhelming. It was nice to see how the skills being taught could be applied to a large, and impressive building, but it was overwhelming because moving straight from learning about how to use overlapping brickwork to a three foot tall structure is a little bit of a leap.

The next section, Breaking Free of the Grid, had less of a practical/applicable gap. If you want to take your building from “thanks for showing me your creation” to “featured on The LEGO Car Blog,” working outside of the grid is the best next step a builder can make. It is in this chapter that both myself and the children in my life could connect on is the fascinating mathematical integration of the LEGO system. Stacking brick and plates, using brackets and sideways studded bricks, and half stud offset, continue to impress upon me the versatility of the LEGO system. This chapter of the book is extensive, and fascinating. A whole chapter is focused on the half stud offsets, and another on building with SNOT (studs not on top).

The final chapter, my favorite, is the chapter about angled building (so much math!) This chapter is accessible, but it is certainly not entry level. An experienced builder should be expected to know and use this information. A growing builder will need to develop into these areas, and this book gives you the tools and images to help you with this. This part of the book shines brightest.

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Noisy Cricket

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Cricket. A gentlemanly game, played largely by standing around a village green for five days, after which sometimes it’s a draw. Still, it unites everyone in hatred of the Australians and it’s infinitely better than baseball.

Anyway, here’s a ‘gasser’ hot rod named after the pointless British game. Or a grasshopper. We’re not sure. Whichever it is, the ‘Noisy Cricket’ is an absurd concoction of Vespa 400 microcar and side-piped V8, created by the unhinged mind of Tim Inman, and it definitely wouldn’t take five days to finish anything.

The spindly suspension, front-mounted gas tank, and parachute pack out back are gasser drag strip deriguour, and you can step up to the crease at Tim’s photostream via the link above.

Champion of Speed

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We like slow crap cars here at The Lego Car Blog. They’re more… well, ‘us’. But if you’re going to build a ‘Speed Champions’ style build, it may as well be the Champion of Speed.

Powered by an eight-litre quad-turbo W16, the Chiron can reach a (limited) top speed of 261mph, and can get from zero to 249mph (400kmh) and back to zero again in around forty seconds. We’re not sure your internal organs would be in the same order afterwards if you managed it mind.

Much safer is this Speed Champions version, which with a good shove might reach 24.9mph, that comes from previous bloggee RGB900. Clever parts choices, neat techniques and top quality presentation capture the real Chiron excellently, and you can take a closer look at RGB’s photostream via the link above.

S3cUre Pa55w0Rd

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The Soviets may have been reasonably good at making things to blow up other things, but their naming department was terrible. Whilst in the West we got Cold War aircraft called ‘Apache’, ‘Electric Lightning’, ‘Vulcan’, and ‘Phantom’, the communists got ‘Mil Mi-8 MTV-2 HIP’. Which reads like a secure password.

Despite its crap name, the MIL Mi-8 _Gy72%& is world’s most produced helicopter, and is still in production today, some 56 years after its introduction. This one is from the German ‘Democratic’ Republic (East Germany) in the 1980s, and has been reproduced beautifully by Flickr’s [Maks].

Some light painting adds to the realism, there’s more to see of [Maks]’s MIL Mi-8 @-4Jx7z0P# at his album of the same name (kinda), and you can click here to ensure no-one’ll guess entry to your laptop.

Mysterious Liking

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There are some things that this TLCB Writer probably shouldn’t admit to liking. Made in Chelsea. His own farts. Nickelback. Star Wars Episode I. And, most embarrassingly of all, the Opel Frontera.

Launched in 1991, the Opel Frontera (or Vauxhall Frontera in our home market) was based on the amazingly-named Isuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard, and is perhaps the most successful worst car ever, being rebadged around the world as the aforementioned Opel/Vauxhall Frontera, the Holden Frontera, Chevrolet Rodeo, Isuzu Rodeo, Honda Passport, and finally the Landwind X6/X9.

Each was a different flavour of awfulness, with appalling build quality, terrible ride and handling, leaking doors, an interior of the dreariest plastic imaginable, and yet… this TLCB Writer rather likes them. This is one of those occasions were it’s a good thing our identities are secret.

Cue a strange enthusiasm therefore, when one of our Elves found this brick-built example on Flickr, as created brilliantly by Fedor Kolbasin.

Featuring all-wheel-drive, working steering and suspension, four opening doors, plus one of the most realistic interiors we’ve ever seen fitted to a Technic model, Fedor’s Opel Frontera blends working functions with a beautifully executed exterior to create one of the nicest ’90s 4x4s we’ve published yet. (Even if you’re not as much of a Frontera fan as the writer of this inexplicably is. Ed.)

There’s lots more of the model to see at Fedor’s ”99 Opel Frontera / Isuzu Rodeo’ album, and you can head to peak ’90s SUV-ness via the link above. You might even leave with a mysterious liking for the real thing. (Probably not though. Ed.)

We Will Remember Them

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Lego Poppy

Lest We Forget

Image courtesy of Fujiia

Here Comes the Sun*

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Winter is coming here at The Lego Car Blog Towers. But whilst us North Northern Hemispherers are steeling ourselves for it getting dark by mid-afternoon and defrosting the car both before and after work, our readers in the Southern Hemisphere are getting ready to enjoy sunny summer days.

Cue the perfect car for the sunshine, and one – in the US at least – named after it; the lovely Honda CRX / Del Sol.

Produced when Honda were at their glorious peak, the CRX / Del Sol brought affordable, economical, reliable fun to the masses, and in targa form open-top motoring too.

This fabulous Technic recreation of the Del Sol captures the real car brilliantly, and comes from previous bloggee (and TLCB Master MOCer) Nico71.

Featuring a removable transverse 4-cylinder engine driven by the front wheels, working steering via ‘HOG’ and the wheel, rear suspension, opening doors, hood and trunk, and a stow-able targa top, Nico’s model is as luminous inside as out, and you can see more of his fantastic Technic Del Sol at his excellent website (where building instructions can also be found), and via the video below.

YouTube Video

*Today’s title song.

LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance | Set Preview

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The LEGO Icons range has brought some spectacular real-world vehicles to the hands of LEGO fans. The Corvette, Countach, Camaro, Concorde, and many more besides have been recreated brilliantly in brick form to date, but we didn’t expect the next set in the Icons range to be a 1912 Norwegian three-masted schooner. And nor for it to be quite so wonderful. This is the LEGO Icons 10335 Endurance.

Now lying at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, the ‘Endurance’ carried Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven to the edge of Antarctica in 1915, where the ship became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed.

Neither Shackleton nor his crew were lost in the sinking, surviving an incredible feat of, well… endurance, to make it to Elephant Island in three of the ship’s small boats in April of 1916, before Shackleton braved the open ocean once again to reach South Georgia and raise a rescue party.

Recreating the ship at the heart of the amazing Antarctic survival story, the brand new 10335 set is constructed from over 3,000 pieces, includes ten sails and rigging, and an intricate multi-level deck with stairs, cabins, a steam engine, an operational rudder, and the Endurance’s four detachable lifeboats (three of which made that astonishing journey in 1916).

Costing £229.99 / €269.99/ $269.99, the new LEGO Icons 10335 The Endurance is certainly a set aimed at adult collectors rather than children or casual fans, but it just might be LEGO’s most beautifully executed replica yet. It reaches stores at the end of November 2024, some 108 years after the crew of the Endurance were finally rescued from a remote island in the Southern Ocean.

Light It Up

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It’s the early-’80s, and computers have the power of a Casio wristwatch. But that didn’t stop programmer Kevin Flynn from being sucked inside one and having to fight his way out. Kinda like trying to leave Facebook today.

The 1982 movie ‘TRON’ was groundbreaking in both its exploration of the virtual world and its use of computer generated imagery (CGI), which handily fitted the visuals required by the storyline perfectly. And it featured some wicked-cool motorbikes.

This is the aforementioned virtual vehicle, the TRON ‘Light Cycle’, brought to physical reality by TLCB Master MOCer Sariel, lit via beautiful LED strip lighting and rotary beacons from Brickstuff, and powered and controlled by a BuWizz 2.0 bluetooth brick.

A LEGO RC Buggy Motor drives the bike’s (amazing) rear wheel whilst a Power Functions Servo steers, and you can watch this incredible creation in action via the video below. A full gallery of stunning imagery is available at Sariel’s ‘TRON Bike’ Flickr album, and you can discover how he creates jaw-dropping models like this via the link to his interview here at TLCB in the text above.

YouTube Video

TLCB is a Teenager!

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Today is a momentous day, albeit one fraught with uncertainty, unpredictable outbursts, mood swings, and mild horror. No not Donald Trump’s Presidential comeback, but our birthday, because today The Lego Car Blog became a teenager!

Well, not quite today, as in typical teenager fashion we got up too late, but it’s better than last year when we forgot entirely.

Since our first post thirteen years (and one day) ago, nearly nine million of you have joined us here at the Online Lego Community’s most ramshackle website, with the most viewed pages of the past year being the new set reveals, the Review Library, our new A-Z of Lego Cars (plus bikes and trucks too), and a recreation of a certain Toyota Supra.

So whether you’re here for the first time or have been with us for all thirteen years, thank you for joining us. Expect more Lego-based vehicular ramblings as we enter our thirteenth year, only perhaps with worse skin, braces, and added moodiness.

TLCB Team

Making America Great Again!

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He’s back! Yes, at the time of writing it looks like Donald Trump is returning to the White House, and here at The Lego Car Blog we’re delighted. Because we’re going to get four more years of material to make jokes like this. And this. And this. And this.

Admittedly this does mean forfeiting the first woman President in US history (for the first criminal President in US history), environmental regression, and the exacerbation of sensationalist popularism, but easy material is easy material. Plus USA! USA! USA!

Cue today’s creation, America’s brand-new M10 Booker infantry support vehicle, the first units of which were delivered earlier this year.

Designed for The US Army’s ‘Mobile Protected Firepower’ programme, the M10 is “capable of providing mobile, protected, direct fire offensive capability”, with the contract won by General Dynamics Land Systems based in Michigan. USA! USA! USA! …Except the design is actually based on something rather old. And with German roots.

Yes this most modern and American of light tanks is derived from an Austrian-Spanish design from the early ’90s, that was produced by a company formed through the collaboration of Germany and Austria in the 1930s. US-Oh… No matter, a quick Americanised name-change sorted that.

This superb Lego recreation of the M10 Booker MPF is the work of newcomer Thinh Thi, who has both built and presented it beautifully, including a rotating turret, rolling tracks, and even brick-built shovels.

There’s more of the model to see at Thinh’s photostream and you check out something defensive, older than it looks, and actually a bit German via the link above. Or in any number of Trump victory speech videos that will be circulating imminently.

Deere Wrangling

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The LEGO Technic 42157 John Deere 948L-II set hasn’t borne many B-Models here at The Lego Car Blog to date. Just one in fact. Which is odd, as it does look like a rather good source of parts, and it comes with four mega yellow wheels.

Cue newcomer legoRookie2021, who has repurposed the pieces from 42157 to create this gloriously cartoony Jeep Wrangler. Reminiscent of those insane Icelandic cliff-climbing racers, Rookie’s Wrangler includes working steering, a six-cylinder engine, opening doors and hood, plus an intriguing pneumatic suspension system.

Instructions are available and you can see more of Rookie’s Wrangler alternate at the Eurobricks forum – click the link above to swap your John for a Jeep.