My Other Car’s a Porsche

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Usually found on cars that are very much at the other end of the vehicular spectrum from the Stuttgart product they’re referencing, it’s certainly never a trade-up from the Porsche that wears the ‘My Other Car’s a Porsche’ bumper sticker. Except today that is.

Yes, this glorious Ford GT40 is constructed entirely from the pieces found within the LEGO 10295 Porsche 911 set, and whilst there aren’t many cars cooler than a ’70s Porsche 911 Turbo, the Ford GT40 is surely one of them.

Lego 10295 Ford GT40 B-Model

Built by TLCB Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber, this wonderful 10295 alternate includes as many functions as its donor set, including opening doors, hood and engine cover, plus working steering and a detailed interior too.

Best of all, if you own the 10295 set and fancy trading up to a GT40, Firas has created building instructions too.

There’s much more of Firas’ superb 10295 B-Model to see at his ‘Ford GT40 Mk1’ album on Flickr, and you can find instructions to build it yourself (plus many more alternate models besides) at Firas’ ace website by clicking here.

Big Red Truck

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Sometimes, and particularly if you’re a TLCB Elf, you just want to drive around in a big red truck. That’s what one of our smelly little workers is doing today, having found this beefy looking remote control truck courtesy of Berthil van Beek.

A suite of Powered-Up components equip the aforementioned ride with remote controlled steering, drive, fifth-wheel hitch and trailer legs. Not that there’s a trailer, which is probably a good thing as the Elf at the controls is crashing enough as it is.

There’s more to see on Flickr and you can do just via the link above.

Maximum Five

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Renault are weird. They’ve made wonderful cars, dull cars, terrible cars, and this… a supermini with a mid-mounted 1.4 litre turbo that produced – in race trim – around 380bhp. Back in the early ’80s!

That remarkable figure propelled the Renault 5 Maxi Turbo to the top step of the podium on its maiden event, at the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally.

This WRC success was to be relatively short-lived though, as the arrival of Group B and all-wheel-drive meant the Maxi Turbo was quickly outclassed on anything that wasn’t tarmac.

When an event was on tarmac though, the little Renault continued to be a formidable racer, finding success for the next two decades.

This lovely Speed Champions recreation of the legendary ’80s rally car was found by one of our Elves on Flickr, coming from Fabrice Larcheveque who has updated (and beautifully presented) a model he first created several years ago.

Authentic bespoke decals, a realistic interior, life-like engine bay, and even a roll-cage make for an exceptionally detailed Speed Champions creation, and there’s more to see – including a link to building instructions – at Fabrice’s ‘Renault 5 Maxi Turbo’ album on Flickr.

Click the link above to take a look and maybe recreate the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally on your desk at home. Not that we’re doing that right now of course, we’re much too grown up…

The Boo Boo Bus

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The 1972 Collins ‘Crusader’ Type-II Ambulance – or ‘Boo Boo Bus’ – was Ford Econoline-based ambulance produced for domestic use by America’s emergency services.

We love humble, useful vehicles like this here at The Lego Car Blog, and this one has been built beautifully by regular bloggee 1saac W. of Flickr. Everything is LEGO, including the decals used to create the window frame and (parts of) the red stripe, and there’s more to see of 1saac’s Boo Boo build at his photostream.

Click the link above to dial 9-1-1 in 1972.

Acceptable in the ’80s

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Things were different in the ’80s. Shoulder pads, ‘greed is good’, florescent clothes, cassette tapes, and Russian totalitarian oppression. Wait, that last one’s making something of a comeback…

Ferrari were big in the 80’s too, but whilst we’re glad they’ve stuck around today (unlike Russian totalitarian oppression), we still think they were better in the decade of parachute pants and the mix tape.

The reasons for this are three-fold; 1. Ferrari were more interested in selling cars than merchandise, 2. they hadn’t even thought of making an SUV, and 3. their cars were fabulous.

The 308 GTB, Testarossa, and – of course- the magnificent F40 graced countless ’80s bedroom walls, and Flickr’s Laszlo Torma has recreated all three beautifully in Speed Champions scale.

Laszlo has used the same cockpit piece for all three, yet with clever building techniques and smart attention to detail, each car resembles its real-world counterpart brilliantly.

There’s more of the classic Ferrari trio to see at Laszlo’s photostream, where a link to building instructions can also be found so that you can recreate these iconic ’80s supercars for yourself!

Tranforma Porka

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Brilliant though the Porsche 911 is, it can be criticised for looking, well… almost exactly the same for the last six decades.

What lies underneath the repetitive exterior however, has evolved hugely over the years, with turbo-charging, all-wheel-drive, and soon even electrification packaged inside the iconic body shape.

And that’s sort of the point of the 911 we suppose; a myriad of different engines, drivetrains, and technologies united by a common exterior.

And that’s never been truer than with today’s creation; this epic G1 Transformers ‘Jazz’, a ginormous funky robot hidden completely within the official Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 set by the sheer force of Adrian Drake’s considerable building talent.

Using the 10295 set as a base, Adrian’s ‘Jazz’ Transformer unfurls out of it via a brain-busting manoeuvre of folds and hinges, all of which is unfathomable to the minds here at TLCB.

You can see if you can figure it out at Adrian’s photostream, where there’s more of his amazing creation to view; click these words to watch a Porsche 911 become a robot.

My Other Car’s a Pick-Up

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This quirky classic cabriolet is a Panhard Dyna Junior, a car about which we know absolutely nothing besides that it’s French. And therefore probably weird.

Built by previous bloggee monstermatou, this lovely ’50s two-seat convertible is constructed from the parts found within the LEGO 10290 Creator Expert Pickup Truck set, and like its donor set includes working steering, opening doors, hood and trunk.

There’s more of monstermatou’s excellent alternate to see at his photostream on Flickr; click the link above to head to ’50s France.

Coaster Noordborg

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This is the Noordborg, a 49 metre coaster built for the Dutch shipping company Wagenborg in the 1960s. Well, this one isn’t, being 1.25 metres long and built by Eurobricks’ Jebbo, but it’s every bit as wonderful as the real thing.

1:40 scale makes Jebbo’s coaster approximately mini-figure scale, with it requiring 26,000 LEGO pieces to create.

Spectacular detail is everywhere, and there’s more to see of Jebbo’s beautiful brick-built boat at the Eurobricks discussion forum. Click here to climb aboard.

Maximum Mundanity

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We’re half-way through the Festival of Mundanity, in which we’re looking for the most boring vehicles built from brick!

There are some awesome prizes on offer including the ace BuWizz 3.0 Pro, a package of iDisplayit stands for LEGO sets, and any Game of Bricks lighting kit!

Hoping to score said loot, two entrants previously featured here have recently maximised the mundanity of their creations to increase their scores, after we said “this could only be more boring if…”.

That ‘if’ for 1saac W., who had built the default for motoring mundanity (and his own car), involved recreating the tedium of interpreting parking restrictions. In a white Toyota Corolla. Now that really is mundane.

Another builder on the hunt for more mundane points is iBrickedItUp, whose Cozy Coupe manages to span both our Vehicular category and our partner BrickNerd‘s Object category. It was pictured in a rather delightful garden scene, but outside, in the rain, next to the bins… that’s a whole heap more mundane.

IBrickedItUp has also recreated the sea of dull that is a rental car lot, with a choice of ‘white, off-white, pale-beige‘, BHBricks has built a Scion xB – a car that tried so hard not to be mundane it’s the very thing it became – and the tedium of loading a box truck, whilst Sergio Batista has built the Fiat Multipla, which is a quandary for us, as it wasn’t mundane at all, but its purpose absolutely was.

There’s still half the competition to go, and we’d love to see your boring vehicles, built in any scale, whether Town, Creator, Technic or anything in-between. BrickNerd are after your mundane objects; a few of the fantastic entries received so far are pictured above!

You can see many of the entries to date in the contest Flickr group, and we’ll end this competition update with an extra link to surely the most mundane object in the history of mankind… Bravo Tim Inman, bravo.

Check out the full Festival of Mundanity Competition details here.

Where’s Our Facebook Page Gone?

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For those of you who follow us on Facebook, The Lego Car Blog is no longer visible on the platform. It looks like we’ve been ‘unpublished’ due to our stance on the war in Ukraine.

Hopefully this is an error, as Facebook battle to remove disinformation surrounding the conflict (a good thing). It would be very odd if not, as we’ve mocked Trump regularly and that’s been fine. Maybe Putin’s more powerful than we thought!

Hopefully we’ll reappear soon, but if not thanks for following us there. If we have been unpublished for raising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and the threats we have received when we’ve criticised the Russian Premiership), we’ll stand by it, and with Ukraine.

TLCB Team

Ukrovery

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The news from Ukraine is heartbreaking. Almost eight decades of peace in Europe has ended, and the human cost is going to be enormous.

We’ve pilloried Putin before (and received threats as a result), but the mask is off now, and what lies beneath it is monstrous.

As such we hope blue and yellow vehicles might feature here a bit more prominently for a while following our recent call, which Flickr’s Frost has answered, rounding off Febrovery with his final lunar rover looking wonderful in Ukrainian colours.

So that’s it for Febrovery 2022, but sadly not Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’, which – thanks to the heroism of those defending Ukraine – looks far from being over. If you’re one of the 5,000 TLCB readers from Ukraine, or indeed one of the 17,000 from Russia and are as dismayed as the rest of us, a special welcome to these pages to you.

If you’re looking to help the situation in Ukraine but don’t know how, check out the Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal and the UN Refugee Agency Appeal where donations are now open.

Alright M8

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This rather excellent Technic Supercar is a BMW M8 Competition, BMW’s 600bhp, twin-turbo V8, all-wheel-drive flagship.

Constructed by IA creations, this recreation of BMW’s super coupe includes a wealth of Technic functionality, with both traditional mechanical ‘supercar’ elements and motorised remote control.

A working V8 engine, all-wheel-drive, steering, and double-wishbone suspension take care of the former, whilst a BuWizz bluetooth battery powers twin drive motors, servo steering, and three sets of LEDs for the head and tail lights, enabling programmable bluetooth remote control.

It’s a fantastically well engineered creation and one that you can build for yourself too, as IA has made instructions available. Head to the Eurobricks forum for full details, plus you can find the complete image gallery of IA BMW M8 Competition on Bricksafe.

Finally, you can win an awesome BuWizz 3.0 Pro like the one powering IA’s magnificent M8 by entering TLCB and BrickNerd’s Festival of Mundanity competition! This M8 Competition is definitely much too interesting of course, but a grey 320d… that could do very well indeed!

Under the Mask

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Most LEGO pieces can be used in almost infinite ways. It’s the very purpose of LEGO. However there are a few parts that seem to be defiantly single-use. The Primo ride-on elephant. Anything from the awful Galidor range. And the wearable Bionicle mask.

Designed so that kids could pretend to be defending Mata-Nui or something, the mid-00’s were clearly a difficult time for LEGO. And yet out of adversity comes triumph, in the form of Scott Wilhelm‘s magnificent ‘Mobile Reactor Transport’.

Wearing the life-size Toa face like a tortoise wears its shell, the until-now-pointless-part looks purpose-made for Scott’s half-track rover. Delightful greebling is visible through the mask’s orifices and there’s more to see of the build, including the epically inventive parts usage, at Scott’s photostream.

Click the link above to see what’s under the mask.

Theory of Evolution

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LEGO’s Speed Champions range has evolved a bit over the years. Jumping from six studs of width to eight has upped the realism, as has a the more widespread use of decals, allowing for the recreation of real-world liveries and sponsorships.

Previous bloggee Fabrice Larcheveque has moved with the times as well, updating his Peugeot 206 T16 rally car to fit LEGO’s latest Speed Champions aesthetic, with it looking rather wonderful a as result.

Fabrice’s original 205 T16 featured on this site half a decade ago, and The Lego Car Blog has evolved a bit since then too, with the standard of presentation required to appear here considerably higher than it was back then. The incompetent writing and woeful site management remain though…

Fabrice’s significantly upgraded and perfectly presented Peugeot 205 T16 is available to view on Flickr, where building instructions are now available too. Click here to join the evolution.

Build in Blue & Yellow

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We published a post last year in which some famous lyrics were mildly amended to highlight a certain murderous rat-faced tyrant. In it we wrote, but then left out, a verse about his intent to invade Ukraine. It was too provocative and an unnecessary addition we thought. We thought…

Perhaps we should build only in yellow and blue this week.