Flying Across New York

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Many Marvely-type superheros have flown across New York. Or run. Or swung on spiderwebs. Or been propelled by their supersuit/hammer/insertmagicspaceitemhere.

The real heroes of New York however, take the bus.

Nurses, firefighters, police officers, teachers… the people that keep NYC’s engine running, whilst simultaneously not being able to afford to live in it.

Cue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s New Flyer XD40 buses, transporting hundreds of unsung heroes across New York City every day.

This superb brick-built recreation of true hero transport comes from previous bloggee JLui15, who has not only captured the New Flyer and its MTA livery beautifully, he’s packed it with working functions, including motorised drive, steering, and opening doors controlled via an SBrick.

There’s much more of the New Flyer XD40 to see at Flickr, Eurobricks, and in the video below, and you can join the everyday heroes transiting New York on board via the links in the text above.

YouTube Video

 

The LEGO Lighting Book | Review

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LEGO and lighting have been wired together for decades. From early 4.5V lighting sets, via the 12V and 9V eras, to the latest LEGO LEDs, a huge range of sets have been enhanced by the addition of light over the years.

Of course it took third-party companies about five minutes to figure out that for a niche group of builders, there was demand to go well beyond LEGO’s own lighting offerings. Cue Game of Bricks, Lightailing and others, who have created some fantastically intricate, fully programmable lighting products designed to bring official LEGO sets to life.

But building with LEGO isn’t just about official sets. The best models are those designed and built uniquely, using scale, techniques, and themes that could never be packaged into what is at heart a children’s toy.

These are the models we publish here of course, many of which have an even greater potential to be brought to twinkly life by in-built illumination. Now Brickworld Coordinator Brian M. Williams and the excellent No Starch Press can show you how. This is The Lego Lighting Book.

Available in digital download or hardback, The LEGO Lighting Book is the latest in No Starch Press’ ever-expanding catalogue of brick-based titles. Combining LEGO history, step-by-step building instructions, example images, and a few not-quite-purist approaches to wiring lighting into LEGO bricks, Brian M. Williams’ runs to around 180 pages, with production and printing as lovely as we have come to expect from No Starch Press publications. That said, it is worth noting that whilst most images are super sharp, a few look like they were taken in the dark on a camera phone in 2009. Probably because they were.

The book begins with a brief background to lighting at Lego shows, and a history of LEGO’s own range of lighting components, before moving on to applications, step-by-step instructions, and – interestingly – a bit more physics and electronics than we were expecting.

Whilst rather detailed, the author makes good use of imagery, layout and white space to ensure The LEGO Lighting Book is easy to follow and engaging, exemplified by high quality building instructions that both demonstrate how to build – and then illuminate – example creations, and also create brick-built electronics components, which is something of a niche within a niche.

Not all of the instructional builds will be suitable for everyone however, with the steps of a few involving ‘double-sided tape’, ‘soldering’, and one beginning with “drill holes to create a path for the wires”…

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LEGO Icons 10321 Corvette | Set Preview

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LEGO’s fantastic officially-licensed momentum continues… this is the brand new 1,210-piece LEGO Icons 10321 Corvette!

Interestingly forgoing ‘Chevrolet’ in the set title, the 10321 Corvette brings the second generation of Chevrolet’s iconic fibreglass sports car to the Icons (previously ‘Creator Expert’) range.

It’s a fine choice too, as – like the Ford Mustang – any generation of Corvette after the ’70s has more than a hint of ‘douchbag’ about it. Not so the ‘60s Corvettes however, which are perhaps the classiest – and most beautiful – American cars of all time.

The Icons 10321 Corvette set captures the early ’60s aesthetic of the real car beautifully, with a red-over-white colour-scheme, kinda whitewall tyres (via white rims behind grey caps), three sets of license plates, and a gorgeous curved windshield that is repeated at the rear on the hardtop version. Details are brick-built for the most part, with only a few well chosen badging decals enhancing the realism.

A convertible can also be constructed, with both versions featuring working tie-rod steering, opening hood, doors and trunk, and a detailed engine and interior.

The new Icons 10321 Corvette set will reach stores in August of ’23, costing around $150/£130 and aimed at ages 18+. Don’t worry if you’re not in LEGO’s ‘adult’ target demographic though – it’s a marketing ploy only, designed to make it more acceptable for Dad to bring one home claiming – as LEGO do – that it’s a “Mindful project for adults”.

Which this Dad is absolutely going to do. For his mindfulness obviously.

Lamenting Lancia

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As occasionally we do here at The Lego Car Blog, today’s post is a lament of Lancia.

One of the most innovative, technically advanced, and motorsport-winning car companies in history, Lancia have created some of the all-time great automobiles. Yet today they make only this. Which is probably worse than if they made nothing at all.

We’re heading back to the 1970s then, when Lancia made a whole range of wonderful (if poorly rust protected) cars, and this; the incredible Stratos HF.

Designed by Bertone (who pitched it to Lancia by just turning up and driving it underneath the security barrier), the Stratos was a mid-engined sports car designed for rallying. And rally it did, winning the World Championship three years in a row from ’74 to ’76. And unlike every other Lancia it couldn’t rust, being made from fibreglass.

Equally glorious (and rust-proof) is this spectacular replica of the Alitalia-liveried Stratos rally car, recreated brilliantly by Biczzz of Flickr. Beautifully-built bodywork, superbly accurate decals, and a replica Ferrari V6 ‘Dino’ engine underneath a removable rear clamshell make this a fine homage to Lancia’s glory years, and there more to see – including a lime green road-car version – at Biczzz’s ‘Lancia Stratos’ album.

Click the link above to go rallying in the mid-’70s, when Lancia were on top of the world.

Lipstick Lights

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The parts designers at the LEGO Company have been making increasingly intricate and bespoke pieces in recent years. One of the parts seemingly most dedicated to a singular purpose is the mini-figure ‘lipstick’ brick, with alternative uses suggested within TLCB Towers limited to ‘a baby’s lightsaber’ or ‘a dog’s erection’. You’re welcome Online Lego Community.

Thankfully regular bloggee 1saac W. owns a more creative mind than TLCB Team, and has redeployed the aforementioned lipstick brick to wonderful effect as the tail-lights on his beautifully presented ‘Anonymous Black Sedan’.

Superb building techniques and parts choices are evident well beyond the tail-lights, and there’s more of the model to see at 1saac’s photostream, where there’s even a hovercar version available too. Click the link above to put your lipstick on.

The Hidden Pages of The Lego Car Blog

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Here at the world’s thirty-sixth-best source for LEGO news, reviews and fan creations, we’re continually amazed by the propensity of people to, well… actually turn up to read the nonsense that we publish. That your views generate advertising revenue to fund the Executive Washroom and Sauna that we give to those that need it more than us, is more amazing still.

Whether you’ve been with us since the start, found us by accident, or seen one of your own creations featured here, you may not know that there’s more to The Lego Car Blog than the homepage feed. Not much more admittedly, but just enough to warrant this post!

So if you fancy stepping beyond the homepage into the murky backwaters of this site, here are a few of the lesser-known pages hidden behind a wall of incomplete menus and incoherent website mapping;

Interviews
Some of the world’s best vehicle builders have been coerced – occasionally via an Elf armed with a sharpened pencil or some incriminating Photoshopping – to reveal the secrets to their success here at The Lego Car Blog. There are two seasons of ‘Master MOCers’ available, plus our ‘Become a Lego Professional’ series, and you can jump to each via the links below.

Master MOCers Series 1 | Master MOCers Series 2 | Become a Professional

Frequently Asked Questions
Do you want to find out who the shadowy figures that work here really are, how to get your creation featured, whether you can get building instructions for a model you’ve seen, or if we’ll publicise your website, product or LEGO Ideas submission? If so click the links below!

FAQs | Submission Guidelines

Archives
The Archives here at TLCB Towers are a dark and foreboding place. A decade of Lego news, creations, and Your Mom jokes are stacked high upon towering shelves, the narrow corridors between which are rumoured to be inhabited by a band of long lost and terrifyingly feral Elves.

Fortunately you don’t need to go in there, as you can find pretty much anything via the handy Search box that appears on every page; type your query into it to see what it brings back. Plus we’ve been rather more organised with our reviews, with over a hundred available in the Review Library. Additionally, all our posts include a variety of Tags that appear in the post footer. If you’re intrigued by one give it a click, and any previous uses of that Tag will appear.

Review Library | Example Search | Example Tag

Directory
Lastly, if you’ve had enough of The Lego Car Blog (and we can’t blame you), you can check out a whole host of other sites via the Directory, including considerably more professional Lego Blogs, Lego resources and creation-sharing platforms, third-party products, and even a few more general vehicle-related sites.

Directory

Happy clicking, and if there’s anything you’d like to see here at The Lego Car Blog (or stop seeing…) then you can let us know! You can contact us via a handy form, and – if it’s not one of the two hundred pieces of spam we receive every day – we will read it : )

Contact Us

Keep it Simple

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We are not a complex, multi-facited bunch here at The Lego Car Blog. In fact we’re a bit crude, and rather unsophisticated. Which might be why we like the Jeep CJ2, and Jonathan Elliott‘s excellent brick-built recreation of it. A simple model of a simple vehicle, Jonathan’s build demonstrates that well-chosen pieces combined with thoughtful presentation can match models ten times the parts count, and there’s more of Jonathan’s CJ2 to see at his photostream.

And it was all Yellow*

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Look at this van
It’s not one shade nor hue
Quite a thing to do
Built in mostly yellow

1saac W
Decided old not new
Patina’s right on cue
Varied types of yellow

So click the link above
To show this build some love
‘Cos it’s kinda yellow

*Sorry Coldplay. Here’s the link to how it should go…

Pre-Revolutionary Travel

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This is a Russo-Balt C24/40, one the Russian Empire’s earliest cars, originally founded in Riga (now in Latvia) before production moved to St Petersburg. Funded by Germany, designed by a Swiss engineer, and built in Russia (or its empire), the Russia-Balt was an early example of excellent cross-border collaboration.

Of course that didn’t last long, and the Russo-Balt company switched to making military aircraft (of Sikorsky design, who would later create many famous U.S helicopters), before Lenin’s Bolshevik October Revolution closed the factory, Sikorsky fled to France, and the company director was murdered whilst attempting to flee to Finland. Which means that if not for the Bolshevik’s brutality, Sikorsky may never have left Russia and gone on to design the aircraft that opposed it during the Cold War. It’s a funny old world.

Today the remnants of the Russo-Balt company in Latvia builds trailers and, er… this, but we’re staying with the company’s origins and its early C24/40, built here in both ‘Torpedo’ luxury car and work-van form by Flickr’s Kirill Simerzin.

There’s more of each version (plus a third) to see at Kirill’s photostream, and you can head to the pre-revolutionary years of the Russian Empire’s automotive industry via the link in the text above.

City Cargo

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LEGO have created an intricate Town/City universe over the years, with their own energy brand, postal service, and railway company. There have also been a number of cargo/delivery companies over the years, usually featuring some sort of box-and-arrow logo and mini-figures wearing humiliating uniforms.

Cue LegoMarat’s excellent Model Team flatbed truck, based on none in particular but inspired by many, and proudly wearing LEGO’s ‘City Cargo’ box-and-arrow logo from the City set range.

The lovely detailing continues with ‘wooden’ planks lining the bed, life-like wheel bolts and reflective strip decals, opening doors and a detailed interior, and there are more superbly presented images to see at LegoMarat’s ‘Lego Flatbed Truck’ album on Flickr.

Don your humiliating uniform and head to your next City Cargo delivery drop via the link in the text above.

Black Box

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A few months ago the coolest car we’ve ever published appeared on this page. A mildly modified Volvo 242 Coupe, it was everything we could want in a 1980s Volvo. Except of course, to be a proper 1980s Volvo, it should’ve been an estate…

Now its maker Stephan Jonsson has constructed a station wagon counterpart, in the form of this fabulous Volvo 245, also lightly modified and fitted with a brick-built T6 Turbo engine. There’s even a tow-bar. Don’t be fooled by that rear ‘spoiler’; it’s a wind deflector for a caravan.

We’ve never wanted a car more, and there’s more to see of Stephan’s wonderful Volvo 245 T6 Turbo at his album of the same name. Click the link above to make the jump.

Apollo 10

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May 18th 1969, and the tenth Apollo mission departed the Kennedy Space Centre to begin its eight day mission. Only the fourth U.S human spaceflight and the second to orbit the moon, the Apollo 10 mission was a rehearsal for the first moon landing that was to come just two months later, when – on July 20th 1969 – mankind’s relationship with our lunar satellite changed forever.

Cue a tenuous link to today’s car, the Apollo Intensa Emozione. No, us neither, but the Intensa Emozione (or ‘IE’ for short) is a carbon-fibre German supercar, “based on airflow and nature… marine animals in particular”, and powered by a naturally-aspirated Ferrari-derived V12.

Just ten Apollo ‘IE’s will be built, each costing almost $2.7 million (around 1% of the inflation-adjusted cost of the Apollo 10 mission), and having literally nothing at all in common with the moon landings beyond being very expensive. Still, it’s a considerably better name than another more well-known Ferrari V12-powered hypercar.

This exceptional brick-built replica of the Apollo ‘IE’ comes from previous bloggee 3D supercarBricks, who has captured the bodywork-inspired-by-marine-animals brilliantly. Opening gull-wing doors, 3D printed wheels, and superb presentation enhance the realism, and there’s more of the model to see 3D’s Apollo Flickr album. Blast-off to the moon via the link above.

Urally Good

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We may mock President Putin as regularly as we can create a tenuous link to his dickwittery, but the country he dictates is an amazing one. Spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific across eleven time zones, responsible for the first animal, satellite, and person in space, and with a history uniting fifteen separate countries into one bloc of… er, communist misery, Russia and the former Soviet Union are a major part of our current world.

They also make probably the best off-road trucks of anyone, which are needed to traverse a vast and wild landscape, with most having their roots in the Military. Founded in 1956, off-road truck-maker Ural shares this history, and still employs 4,000 people today building trucks like this, Vladimir Drozd‘s beautifully presented Ural crane truck.

With a working crane that rotates, elevates, extends, and winches, Vladimir’s Ural functions as good as it looks, and there’s loads more of his superb model to see at his ‘Ural Crane Truck’ album on Flickr. Take a look via the link above, or here for a tenuous link to Putin’s dickwittery.

The Ultimate Driving Machine

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The future of BMW M-cars is electric. And automatic. The current M2 is already confirmed to be the final manual M-car, and – if the horrendous new BMW XM is any indication – the future of BMW’s M-division looks fat, almost comically ostentatious, and immensely, unfathomably, ludicrously ugly. Make your own ‘Your Mom’ joke.

Which is probably why the original 1980s BMW ‘E30’ M3, weighing under 1,200kgs and powered by a four-cylinder engine that made less than 200bhp, is being seen as something of an antidote to the overblown ridiculousness of today’s M-cars.

This lovely Technic recreation of BMW’s M-car high water mark was found on Eurobricks, and comes from previous bloggee apachaiapachai. There’s remote control drive and steering courtesy of LEGO’s Control+ motors and app, opening doors, and that’s it. Which makes it every bit as wonderfully simple as the real E30 M3.

There’s more to see at the Eurobricks forum, and you can take a look via the link above.

Brickin’ Baja

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One of the coolest liveries in motorsport has got to be Toyota’s diagonal sunset-coloured TRD striping. Seemingly unchanged since the ’80s, said livery has appeared on everything from NASCARs to Baja trucks, and it’s the latter we have here today.

Built by SpaceHopper, this superb Toyota T100 Baja off-road truck features Control+ remote control drive and steering, working suspension, a fully-caged interior, stunning attention to detail, and – most importantly – a simply brilliant recreation of Toyota’s famous TRD livery.

There’s more of Space’s Toyota T100 Baja model to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks, and you make the jump somewhere in the desert via the links above.