This classic spaceman looks like he’s having a good time. But then, they always do. Flickr’s piratecox makes his second appearance here in quick succession with this wonderfully odd entry into this year’s Febrovery event. Click the link to make the jump.
This enormous chunk of Blue is the work of TLCB favourite Nick Barrett, and it’s mini-figure scale. Yup, that’s just how big a Liebherr LTM mobile crane is – even in mini-fig form it’s 10 studs wide and very very long. Nick has used the size well, engineering in all the working functions you’d expect to find on a model of a much larger scale, including progressive rate steering, working stabilisers, and of course a fully extending, raising and lowering boom. Nick’s Liebherr crane was suggested to us by a reader, and you can see more on both MOCpages and Flickr.
Before Charlie ‘Tiger Blood’ Sheen went completely insane he starred in one of the greatest movies ever made; the incredible 1986 Vietnam War epic ‘Platoon’.
The Vietnam War featured fairly limited wheeled vehicles, such was the nature of the combat, and it was aircraft that played the pivotal role. The most famous is probably this, the Bell UH-1D ‘Huey’ transport helicopter.
Bigboy99899 has recreated the iconic aircraft (and one of the typical scenes from the Platoon movie) brilliantly over on Flickr – you can click on his name above to see all the photos.
This year’s Febrovery is producing some wild flights of fancy, some strangely silly machines and even one or two practical bits of space surface transportation. Falling somewhere in between the very silly and very practical is Tyler Sky’s “Lunar Worksite Maintenance Bio-Break Rover”.
Naturally this appealed to the Elves’ sense of humour and has left them rolling around the floor in fits of smirking giggles for most of the day. We, of course, are mature, sophisticated bloggers and appreciate the build for its features. The double banked, rubber CS wheels; the greebly plumbing on the rear of the machine and the compactness of the cubicle. Click this link to see Tyler’s full width presentation, plus his other marvellous Febrovery machines.
Car building extraordinaire Lino Martins is back with another mad vehicle from times past. This time it’s a 1956 Ford with two top-fuel dragster engines shoehorned in. There’s more to see on Flickr at the above link.
Carl Greatrix continues his run of Caterham Seven’s with this R300 racing version. Carl’s hoping his design will become an official LEGO set (and we are too) – click the link above to make it happen!
This is not a Lotus 7. Or a Caterham 7. Or a Westfield 7. Or indeed any variation on the 7 theme that we knew of. It is in fact a Donkervoort S8A, which is a new one on us, but nevertheless it looks great in Lego form. Previous bloggee Vinny Turbo is on a roll, and you can see more of his latest creation here.
One of the best ideas of last year is back. It’s the ‘Fifteen Piece Vehicle Challenge’ on MOCpages. That’s right. Fifteen. One-Five. It’s an amazing test of creativity and pure, simple fun. Just ask Tom Remy, last year’s winner with this:
A Beautiful Way to Travel, so long as you don’t mind where you’re going…
If you think you can match that, head on over to Sam the First’s group on MOCpages and get building. Three weeks to combine fifteen pieces of Lego should be plenty of time, and even the Elves can scrape together the necessary plastic. It’s informal, it’s fun, it’s open to everybody, and it’s even well organized. Can you tell that we like it? Get over there!
Okay, we admit it, the Elf Riot was our fault. It all started when we promised our pointy-eared workers a night off, watching a DVD. The story was based on a book by the man who wrote James Bond and the film features some explosions and a transforming car. What could go wrong?
The Elves settled down in expectation of seeing something with Megan Fox, fireballs, Megan Fox, Optimus Prime, Megan Fox… Well you get the idea. Dick van Dyke just didn’t cut it. The Elves who made it through the ensuing mutiny and endured 144 minutes of 1960s musical spectacular have been irredeemably scarred.*
Anyhow, relax and feast your eyes on Ralph Savelsberg’s latest creation in his series of vehicles from film and TV. Featuring detachable wings and a brick-built Caractacus Pott, this Lego version of the most expensive theatre prop of all time looks splendid on its vintage, 1970s wheels. Click the link in the text to see more photos of this car, including WIP shots and Ralph’s neat solution to building Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s long exhaust pipe.
*They’ve started to demand payment in Toot Sweets instead of Smarties.
This Pro Street Racer is the work of piratecox on Flickr. It features all of the chrome and giant fins that you’d hope to find find on a 50s or 60s automobile. It also sports the obligatory hot-rod custom exhausts and an engine so large that the driver can’t actually see where he’s going. The car also has an instrument panel made from coffee cups and a mean looking driver.
Whilst the Elves were passing through piratecox’s Photostream, they collected the first of this year’s Febrovery builds to be blogged here. Many Rebrovery builds feature multiple wheels but this rather nice Classic Space motorbike has just the usual two. Click the links in text to see more.
The first of two car maintenance related posts today comes from L@go, over on Flickr. It’s a reworking of the classic 361 Garage set from 1979. This version has been updated and expanded too, leaving loads of space for an interior packed with details.
There’s an oil spill on the floor, that looks just like the stain on the carpet in reception at The Lego Car Blog Towers. There’s also a very nicely built bench vice and what we hope is a sausage in a microwave. Higher up, you might spot a fume extraction system and the typical collection of junk and old car parts that you’ll find on the office roof of many workshop. Click on this link to see the full album of the Raph brothers’ repair shop.
One of The Lego Car Blog Elves has just staggered back into the office, having been lost in the Hardnuary group on Flickr for a while. It’s demanding a blue Smartie as a reward but as this build isn’t a vehicle of any kind (and Hardnuary finished 5 days ago), we’re saying, “No”. However we are blogging this model by Dicky Laban because we think it’s a neat bit of work, it’s car related and it also gives us an excuse to post a link to this classic tune from 1987.
Here at The Lego Car Blog our attitude to sci-fi is like our attitude to art: we don’t much about it but we know what we like. We’ve done quite well recently, having blogged both the first and second place winners in the third ever Classic Space Pocket Money Contest, well before the results were announced. The third place build was a spacey golf course in LDD, which didn’t really meet our submission guidelines, so we’ve an excuse for missing that one.
The Elves’ favourite was Locutus 666’s Rapid Reconnaissance Rover, an impressively large machine built from less than 100 pieces. Equipped with two cockpits and big wheels for high-speed rolling across the office floor, this vehicle kept our diminutive workforce entertained for a long time. Then they discovered that it’s a modular build, which can be quickly swapped into various configurations. That’s when the fighting started…
Regardless of this, we’re feeling a bit more confident about our sci-fi expertise, especially when things have wheels on. We’ll be watching this year’s Febrovery Flickr festival with interest.
One of the reasons that we originally created The Lego Car Blog and unleashed the Elves on an unsuspecting world, was our belief that quality vehicle builds were being neglected by Lego bloggers. It is therefore with some pride* that we can announce that one of the “proper Lego blogs” beat us to this beautiful Technic sports car by quite a few days.
Jeroen Ottens has skilfully used Technic panels and flex rods to produce a mid-engine machine with a smooth, curved body. He has based the car around the look of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider and included some built-in Italian stripes to emphasise this. The car also has full Power Functions features, including a working gear box. Click this link to Jeroen’s Photostream see more.
*This is our excuse and we’re sticking to it.
The appropriately named Vinny Turbo has just uploaded a load of new builds onto his MOCpages and Flickr accounts. Unfortunately this has resulted in a disorderly hoard of Elves stampeding into The Lego Car Blog offices and demanding Smarties of all sorts of colours. After dispersing our chaotic co-workers with a liberal use of Mister Airhorn, we’ve chosen a couple of the best to share with you.
At the top of this post is the Integra, a re-worked version of an earlier car, which now comes with adjustable front Bat-spoiler. At the bottom of this post is the sleek and refined VTS V10, which features some interesting SNOT bodywork. Also worth a look are the Bentrolls Steam Cloud limousine and the VTS Edge with its curvaceous black body. Click on the links in the text to see more of Vinny’s work.
