’70s Night

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Lego 392 F1 Car

Long before this Lego Car Blogger was born there was a time known as ‘The ’70s’. The ’70s were a weird and wonderful era, where Radio 1 DJs roamed the earth and everyone was forced to wear massive trousers or brown, and listen to disco-funk continuously. LEGO were just starting to hit the stratosphere during this period, and their pre-curser to Model Team was beginning to produce some excellent large-scale vehicles.

One of these was the 392 F1 car from 1975, a marvellous primary-coloured affair complete with genuine sponsorship decals. Jens M. – one half of the building duo ‘LegoExotics’ – has reimagined the original, retaining the ace look and colouring whilst bringing it up-to-date by incorporating today’s modern smooth pieces. See all the photos on Flickr at the link above.

Lego 855 Crane

Our second ’70s redux comes from Bobofrutx, who’s taken the 855 mobile crane set from 1978 and given it a similar facelift. His version of the ’70s classic includes the features that showed the beginnings of Technic, including working 4-wheel steering, a rotating and extending boom and a working winch.

You can see all the photos at Bobofrutx’s photostream via the link above, and you can read The Lego Car Blog’s reviews of some of the classic 1970’s sets by clicking on the ‘Reviews’ tab in the main menu.

7345 Transport Chopper Review

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7345-Box

After their adventures with the 31005 Construction Hauler and the 31006 Highway Speedster, we thought that the Elves would like to practice their nascent building skills on something a bit more challenging. The 7345 Transport Chopper’s RRP is double that of the previous two sets at £24.99 from Lego.com, though we bought our set for £20.00 from Amazon. Inside the box, you get 5 bags containing 383 pieces, which amounts to ½ kg or 18oz of LEGO. This compares very favourably with the price per kilo of bulk, unsorted LEGO on eBay. Being a Creator set, you’re also getting the months of design effort from LEGO’s team, plus printed instructions for three different models. Value for money? Excellent!

The first stage of building, as usual for the Elves, is to rip open the bags and send parts flying everywhere. Next comes the part where we fish bricks, plates, tyres and greebles out of the TLCB executive jacuzzi. The final stage is where assorted Elves batter each other with the larger and pointier components, until they are settled down with a blast from the air horn. You can understand why we haven’t let them build anything from Technic, with all of those spiky axles and cogs.

The three models are rated as “Quick”, “Medium” and “Advanced” builds. The helicopter is the “Advanced” build and seems to be completed in just 56 steps but there are several extra sub-builds within this, plus another 8 for the little red jeep. As usual, some of the steps only add a couple of bricks to the construction but we have to remember that the target age range is 8 to 12. We built the jeep first and gave it to the Elves to zoom around in, whilst we got on with the serious business of building the chopper. As this set is aimed at younger builders, it’s a bit annoying that you have to use parts from four different bags to complete the first three stages of building the jeep. Perhaps this sub-build could be in a separate bag and the rest of the parts could be in numbered bags, like some of the other LEGO product ranges?

7345-Helicopter

The first part of building the helicopter is its chassis, complete with retractable tricycle undercarriage. Continue reading →

Nerdy Acronym Of The Day*

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Lego Sci-Fi Vehicle

The online Lego Community is full of nerdy acronyms. Here at The Lego Car Blog, or ‘TLCB’, we try to avoid as many as possible, mostly because we’re not clever enough to work them out. Apart from ‘TLCB’ of course.

Anyhow, today we’re going to cautiously dip a toe in the murky waters of Lego Jargon because we’ve not seen a model that so perfectly sums up a particular acronym as this does. ‘NPU’, or ‘Nice Parts Usage’ is a term that frequents the comments on Flickr. It’s usually used whenever a LEGO piece faces any direction other than up, but really it’s for when bricks are used for a purpose that’s way outside of their intended function.

VolumeX’s latest work epitomises this philosophy, with the wheels alone featuring no less than three piece types that we’ve never seen used in such a way before. Check out all the ‘NPU’ at VolumeX’s photostream here; you’ll never look at a LEGO brick in the same way again.

*NAOTD?

Park ’em at Arkham

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Last Man

The online Lego world is buzzing with the launch of Mr. Xenomurphy’s latest creation: Arkham Asylum. There are multiple photos on MOCpages and a comprehensive account of the building process on Flickr. Following a dearth of cars in recent posts, the Elves have undergone several compulsory sessions of “re-education” in TLCB’s own “institution”. It was therefore with renewed zeal that they ignored the soaring architecture, the gorgeous gothic lettering and the brick-built “Clayface” figure and homed in on the cars parked in the yard and the street.

Calin (_Tiler) is a master of building minifig scale cars. He has contributed two versions of his 1930s Ford Model A: a police car and a delivery van. Both have nicely smooth running boards and mudguards, which have been neatly attached, plus a great variety of angles of panels in their bodywork. You can see the first versions of these vehicles by clicking this link. The 1920s style Batmobile has been provided by Dave Kaleta, who claims that he is Batman on his Flickr profile. This single-seat roadster has the classic long, smooth bonnet but with a pair of bat-like ears on top of the radiator. Spot more bat-details by clicking this bat-link to Flickr or this bat-link to MOCpages.

DK Batmobile

’70s Pin Up

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Lego Lamborghini CountachProbably the first ‘Supercar’, whatever the guys at Ferrari think, is something that didn’t wear a prancing horse on the front. It wore a bull. The Lamborghini Countach was the wildest poster car of the ’70s and ’80s, and therefore maybe the wildest car ever. It was also fairly rubbish, being impossible to drive or see out of. But perhaps that’s what made it Super. Rolling Bricks recreates the ’70s icon using a brilliantly simple palette of regular white pieces. See more over on Flickr at the link above, or on MOCpages here.

Lego Lamborghini Countach

The Transporter

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The Transporter

The Elves often return from the weird world of Karf Oohlu’s photostream with smiles on their faces and giggling tales of monsters on the toilet and aliens doing the hoovering. At other times they return scared and gibbering on about “chitterlings”, “crowks”, mad scientists and black tentacles. Fortunately, our feeble-minded workers soon forget their worries after a two-hour session of watching Transformers videos.

Today they have returned happy, with a creation which has earned them three blue Smarties. “The Transporter” is a tracked robot, whose belly contains three of the cutest tanks that we’ve seen. The “Battletykes” have been cleverly built with great economy of parts and descend from the Transporter via a nicely designed ramp. Click this link to Flickr to view the Transporter and more of Karf Oohlu’s strange creations.

Brock Racing Enterprises

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Lego Datsun 510 BRE

At last, The Lego Car Blog has a proper car to bring you! And quite a legendary one at that. This marvellous Model Team model is a Datsun 510 as raced by BRE during the early-seventies. Underneath the perfectly replicated body-work (complete with accurate custom decals) is a fully remote control Power Functions chassis. It might be Model Team but this creation has a Technic heart. Infraredbrick’s Dastun has appeared on TLCB before in a previous form, but a racing version is always better! See more – including construction photographs – on Infraredbrick’s Flickr photo stream here.

Wartime Wednesday

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Lego M3A2 Half-TrackWe came down to the cage room here at The Lego Car Blog Towers to much noise this morning, where two Elves were embroiled in what may well have become a fight to the death. Meal tokens (and the occasional Smartie) are highly prized amongst our delinquent workforce, as without them they have to survive by eating the wallpaper paste left-over from the redecoration of our sumptuous boardroom. Luckily for the Elves today we’re feeling generous, so two meal tokens were distributed and we’re bringing you both of their finds.

First up (above) is a beautifully recreated M3AT Half-Track, built by Flickr’s Captain Eugene. There may be a couple of ‘Brick Arms’ pieces in there but it looks too good to ignore on a minor technicality. Today’s second creation comes from Daniel Siskind who has also recreated a World War II vehicle in mini-figure scale. His M1 Light Tractor, and those that drove them, were some of the unsung heroes of the conflict, building the ports, airfields and barracks that were needed to move and house the Allies.

You can check out both creations in further detail on Flickr via the links in the text.

Lego M1 Bulldozer

Le Swoosh!

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Lego Sci-Fi Ship No.3The weirdness continues here at The Lego ‘Car’ Blog, with this rather swooshable creation from a previous bloggee, the gloriously French-named Vince Toulouse. Entitled simply ‘Machine No.3’ there’s a whole host of gorgeous pictures on Flickr at the link above.

Bad Panda

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Lego Mech The Elves have been feeling a bit weird lately and as such they’ve been bringing back some very un-car-like creations. This mech by Flickr’s Uspez continues the trend by being a cross between a washing machine, China’s favourite bear, and Bender from Futurama. Anyone familiar with Flickr will understand the title too, and we think this would make a far better ‘downtime’ photo than a stuffed animal being dragged across the street. See more at the offending site in question above.

Little Fokker

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Lego Fokker Tri-plane

Flickr plane-builder mrutek is back, with a new model that’s Fokking good. See his World War I Fokker Tri-plane in Red Baron livery via the link above.

Monday’s Ma.Ktober Maschinen

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Ferkel MaK

Here at TLCB Towers we have a similar attitude to both the Elves and Ma.Ktober.  We don’t understand how they work but we like the results.  An important part of the Maschinen Krieger style is smooth, rounded armour, which can be very difficult to make from Lego bricks. Tim Zarki has done a super job of the Ferkel spacecraft, using a variety of curved components.  The sphere at the front of the ship is a particularly interesting bit of building technique and the ship is accompanied by a neat spaceborne SAFS.  You can navigate to Tim’s photos Flickr and his blog by clicking this link.

Revenge!

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Lego Galleon Revenge 1577

This, simply put, is probably the best Lego creation you will see this year.

It’s the work of MaydayArtist, and it’s a perfect scale-replica of the 1577 English Warship ‘Revenge’ that fought (and defeated) the Spanish Armada that was 9 months in the making. It’s all Lego apart from the sails and rigging and was built with the help of a wooden model ship-builder.

The level of detail is breathtakingly real so we’ve included an extra image in this blog post, but you really need to see the close up shots on the Eurobricks’ Pirate forum here, it’s a new benchmark in Lego shipbuilding. For our French readers, the ‘Revenge’ will also be shown at the ‘Festibriques’ show in Paris this year.

Lego Galleon Revenge 1577

No Witty Title Here

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Lego Hitachi ExcavatorBecause this is, apparently, a Hitachi Zaxis 170W. Although that could be a fax machine name for all we know. So over to you to come up with an appropriate title. Steve 5010 is the builder of this great mini-fig machine, and you can check out all the details on Flickr.

Mr. Plough

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Lego Tractor

…that’s my name, that name again is Mr. Plough. Yeah, we’ve properly mashed up that Simpson’s reference, but we’re having a Matt Groening day here at TLCB (see this). Anyway, this tractor with plough attachment by Flickr’s Chris Maddison is one of the nicest farming devices we’ve seen in Lego. The background is something special too, but we’ll leave it to the proper Lego blogs to discuss. See the picture in full-size at the link above.