…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.
The Elves are still Transformers-mad, so the Elf that discovered today’s creation is now something of a hero with his colleagues. We like it too, so it was yellow smarties all round.
This magnificent Lamborghini Diablo is the work of the very talented Marin Stipkovic. Marin’s Lego Lambo looks good on its own, but as you can see here it also transforms into an excellent Autobot Transformer. You can check it out in both forms at either MOCpages or Flickr, where Marin’s included a video showing the trickery involved.
*A clever title yes, but also a flimsy pretext to include a Futurama link.
The Lego Car Blog has grown from its humble beginnings as the amateur LEGO-related musings of some incompetent writers, to… er, ok, it’s still basically that. But we do now have a variety of additional content available upon which you can feast your eye-holes. Here we run through what resides away from the main page.
1. Set Reviews
The Lego Car Blog’s resident anoraks have amassed a fairly extensive library of set reviews and set comparisons. These are impartial, honest assessments of some of the sets that the office collectively owns. To see what we’ve reviewed so far take a visit to the Set Review Library here.
2. Interviews
The Lego Car Blog Elves are occasionally quite formidable, especially in large groups. You might be able to take on three or four of them, but what if there’s a fifth, hiding somewhere behind you and armed with a pencil? As such we’ve managed to secure interviews with some of the best builders around, with only a few wounds to patch up once they got here. These have been compiled in our ‘Master MOCer’ Series, where you can read about how each builder got started in the LEGO Community, what influences them, and what they’ve got coming up. You can read all our interviews here, or by clicking on the ‘Interviews’ tab in the main menu.
3. Search
All the content that has appeared on The Lego Car Blog is available to view in our archives by using the search function that can be found at the bottom of every page. The ‘tags’ at the foot of each post are also hyperlinked, allowing you to find similar content. For example, you could view all of the Set Previews that have appeared on The Lego Car Blog by typing ‘set preview’ into the search bar, or you could find all of the science-fiction posts by either typing ‘sci-fi’ into the search bar, or by clicking the relevant ‘tag’ attributed to one of the posts on the main page.
4. Feedback and Submission Suggestions
The Lego Car Blog is, we hope, a nicely accessible site. You can let us know what you think of us, what we’ve missed, and what you’d like to see by adding your thoughts to the Feedback Page here. You can also suggest creations that you think should be here. Not your own, as no-one likes a show-off, but nicety is often rewarded in the LEGO Community. Suggest a creation that you think deserves to be publicised and someone may do the same for you. To read what we look for and ensure your suggestion complies we recommend reading the submission criteria here.
And there you have it! Take a look around, let us know what you think, and if you’ve got an idea for something that you’d like to see here on The Lego Car Blog let us know; it’s your site too.
TLCB Team
The 1950s Mercedes-Benz 300 SL is, according to TLCB anyway, one of the most beautiful cars ever made. Part of its legendary appeal is down to the incredible ‘gull wing’ doors that debuted on the car.
Beautiful as those doors were though they did have a drawback. The 300 SL was based on the boring old bits from normal Mercedes saloon cars that really weren’t up to the job of handling the power from its inline-6 engine, an engine that was the first to feature direct injection and made over 200bhp (a lot for the 1950s).
As such SLs were quite… crash-able, and if you were trapped inside one upside-down all thoughts about how funky the doors were would vanish when you realised they couldn’t be opened.
Danger is cool though, and thus 300 SLs are now some of the most sought-after cars ever, commanding astronomical price-tags. Which means to get your hands on one you’ll have to build your own, which is exactly what Flickr’s Tobias Munzert has done. His wonderful recreation not only looks the part but also features the doors that made the car so famous. Now, do we put an Elf in it and turn it upside-down…
Suggested by a TLCB reader, this Technic Dodge Challenger by Flickr newcomer Dustyen055 includes Power Functions remote control, working lights, and one very cool stripe. The star of the 1971 road movie Vanishing Point, the Challenger goes out with a bang. We’d quite like to recreate the final scene with Dustyen055’s model and a pair of Lego’s own remote control 8275 Bulldozers.
MAKtober rumbles on, and whilst we still have no idea what it is, we do like the results. This 6×6 rover is the work of LEGOLIZE IT MAN, and you can see more of it and the other MAKtober creations on Flickr.
We kick off the week with a submission suggestion by two TLCB readers who have done some Elving of their own. Senator Chinchilla, who can be found on both MOCpages and Flickr, has constructed this very yellow Lamborghini Gallardo special edition. You can see all the photos via either of the links above, and if you’ve found a creation our Elves have missed you can see if it meets TLCB’s criteria here.
Whilst they do like fully functioning Technic supercars, big brick-built aircraft and especially working Transformers, our Elves’ tiny minds are also attracted to skillfully crafted small builds. Swedish builder LegoJalex has used a handful of bricks to produce three super little trucks. The Elves’ favourite is the red one, as they can squash nearly 4½ Elves into the back of it. You can count just how many bricks LegoJalex has used by clicking this link to Flickr.
If you’re a builder who doesn’t own thousands of bricks, check out our Creation Criteria and then fire up your imagination. You never know, the Elves might pay you visit.
This incredible model is a little outside our usual field here at The Lego Car Blog, but much too special for us to overlook. The work of Ed Diment, aka Lego Monster on Flickr, it’s a commission piece that now hangs in one of the shops in London-Heathrow Airport.
It is of course a replica of the magnificent Airbus A380 in British Airways livery. It’s also in 1:55 scale, which ordinarily would mean a model not very big at all. In this case 1:55 equates to a truly massive creation. Ed is a professional model builder for Bright Bricks, and you can see all the photos of the awe-inspiring piece on Flickr at the link above.
Long before Megan Fox, huge GM sponsorship and ‘Bayformers’ the Transformers franchise was a slightly ropey-looking cartoon, which now counts The Lego Car Blog Elves amongst its most avid fans.
Since we bought the Elves a video of the ’80s animation a new policy had to be introduced; ‘No Transformers Until You Bring Back A Creation’. Today though they’re all happily crowded round the old TV we’ve put in their cage-room, because they’ve discovered a gem of a model, and one that fits their latest obsession.
Alex Jones aka Orion Pax is back, with a brilliant imagining of the original G1 Optimus Prime in Lego form. The flat-fronted truck comes complete with a superb silver trailer and transforms Optimus into his robot form beautifully. Check out the pictures and a video of the transformation at Alex’s photostream on Flickr, or via his ace website orionpax.de.
It’s a supercar double today here at The Lego Car Blog. And this one is really super. Built by Technic legend Sheepo, this Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 is the pinnacle of what can be achieved from LEGO bricks technically. The well-known Lego blogs are often not interested in the technical realism of Lego models. Here though, whilst we may not feature an expertly landscaped castle, we do love to see what Lego can be used to do technically. With Sheepo’s talent and engineering prowess it can be used to do a lot.
This astonishing Shelby Mustang GT500 features the usual Technic supercar requirements (steering, suspension, engine and gearbox) and adds remote control drive via LEGO’s versatile Power Functions system. But Sheepo doesn’t stop there. Not only does his Mustang drive and steer remotely, it features a remotely operated sequential 5+R gearbox with an automatically triggered clutch, and remotely operated disc brakes that can also be engaged from a working pedal in the cabin. If it was any more realistic this car would be for sale in a Ford dealership.
See all of the photos and join in the discussion on Eurobricks, and you can check out the full technical specifications and builder commentary of the GT500 on Sheepo’s website here.
YouTube Video:
Brickshelf’s Nico71, a veteran of The Lego Car Blog, is back with a model a little more unusual than the Ferraris, and Lamborghinis that regularly grace these pages. His superb Citroen 2CV is a fully functioning Technic ‘Supercar’, featuring working suspension, engine, gearbox, steering, and much more besides. You can see the full gallery showing all the technical details on Brickshelf at the link above. Cheap and slow can be just as impressive!
Ralph Savelsberg adds another star TV car to his collection. The Ferrari 308 was one of the most famous cars of the 1980s, thanks mostly to an extravagantly moustached Tom Selleck – playing simultaneously the most masculine and the most camp TV character of all time – in the hit American TV show ‘Magnum P.I’. You can see the full gallery on Flickr at the link.
*A large prize** to those of you who get the cross-televisual title reference!
**Not really.
This year’s MOC Olympics are already into their third round, over on MOCpages. TLCB Elves don’t often look at the listings for this competition, as despite being packed with loads of creative builds, the MOC Olympics don’t produce many cars. Our hungry Elves were initially attracted by the modular cafe which headlines this MOC but were then delighted to find two cars, which meant that they got two meal tickets to spend.
Matt Rowntree’s challenge was to build a Back to the Future Lego set and he chose to avoid the obvious DeLorean and go for the scene at the diner, along with the two vehicles. First up is Biff’s ’46 Ford Super DeLuxe Convertible, with its sculpted front end, typical of that era. The second vehicle is D. Jones’ manure truck, complete with working tipper function so that it can fill Biff’s car. You can see more of the cars, plus the cafe and the mighty wurlizter jukebox by clicking this link to MOCpages.
