Tag Archives: 1980s

A Whale of a Time

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We’re not sure why whales are renowned for having such a good time, but we guess their partying reputation fits with the matra ‘Go Big or Go Home’.

Whatever the reason, Porsche decided that their 911 could do with being a bit more whaley in the 1970s, and fitted it with a huge ‘whale tail’ spoiler. And a turbo.

Said turbo added to the whaley fun, providing absolutely no power at all for a long time, and then suddenly all the power at once. This meant ’70s 911 Turbo drivers did indeed have a whale of a time right up until the point when they were upside-down in a field. That’s ‘Go Big or Go Home’ again we suppose…

This brilliant Porsche 911 Turbo comes from barneius, who has recreated the whale-tailed classic superbly in 8-wide Speed Champions scale. There are more beautifully sharp images available to view on Flickr, where you can also find a link to building instructions so that you can recreate chronic turbo lag and snap oversteer in miniature at home!

Click the link above to have a whale of a time!

Soviet Snowrunner

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This is a UAZ 3151, one of the Soviet Union’s many fantastically-boringly-titled, but actually very capable off-roaders. Built by Keymaker, this stunning fully RC recreation of the Russian off-roader not only looks the part in both standard and off-road modified forms, it’s absolutely packed with brilliant Technic engineering.

Drive for all four wheels comes from two L Motors whilst a Servo controls the steering. A Medium Motor operates front and rear remotely locking differentials, and not only are both axles suspended, the suspension height can be adjusted via an L Motor to vary the ground clearance.

These off-road mods are apparently inspired the video game ‘Snowrunner’, and Keymaker has gone further with his Technic model equipping it with a removable hardtop roof, removable bodywork, folding rear seats, an opening glovebox, opening and locking doors, a working inline-4 engine, and LED head and tail lights.

It’s an incredible build and one that’s definitely worth a closer look. Head to Eurobricks for full details and a video of the UAZ in action, and to Bricksafe for the complete image gallery, where you can find outdoor shots and pictures of the model in various states of off-road modification.

Blazin’ Trails

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This TLCB Writer rather likes old square 4x4s, particularly if they have winch, roof rack, and assorted adventuring stuff piled on top. Suggested by a reader, Andrea Lattanzio’s classic Chevrolet Blazer has appeared here before in various guises, and there’s more to see of this one – including the wider diorama of which it is part – on Flickr here.

Carrying Cars

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LEGO’s range of officially-licensed Creator sets keeps on growing, and they’re mostly ace. But for collectors with limited shelf space, storing this growing range of vehicles may be a problem. Flickr’s Arian Janssens has the answer though, with this superb DAF FA 2500 car transporter, capable of storing eight LEGO Creator Expert sets.

Pictured here transporting the 10248 Ferrari F40, 10262 Aston Martin DB5 ‘Goldfinger’, 10252 Volkswagen Beetle, 10242 Mini Cooper, and 10265 Ford Mustang (with room for three more), Arian’s DAF looks the perfect place to stack up some sets.

There’s much more to see at Arian’s ‘DAF FA 2500 DHS Car Transporter’ album on Flickr, and you can do just that by clicking these words.

Mystery Machine

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OK, we might be as bad with farm equipment as we are with Star Wars, but we’re pretty sure we’ve got this red and yellow contraption by Flickr’s Damian Z right.

Damian’s wonderfully intricate Mechanised Spaghetti Twirler is being pulled by a Mercedes-Benz Trac 1600, a Unimog-based tractor manufactured in the ’70s and ’80s before the design was sold on to Werner-Forst-und-Industrietechnik, who still produce it today.

Clever detailing abounds on both the MB Trac and the Maximum Penetration Autopump behind, and there’s loads more to see of both the tractor and the Industrial Decombobulator in tow at Damian’s ‘MB Trac 1600’ album by clicking here.

Seriously though, we know it’s a Uniformly Regulated Simultaneous Ice Cream Dispenser. Obviously.

Dirt Danger

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Is there a more dangerous vehicle than a quad bike? Of course there is, because back in the ’80s you could have one with a wheel missing.

The logic was probably of the bar-stool variety, in that three legs don’t wobble. However when an engine and rider are attached, and one of those legs moves about from side to side, wobbling, followed by crashing, was very much the order of the day.

Still, we would totally have a go, because the fear of tipping over and being pinned to the ground by a ferociously hot lump of clattering metal was half the fun!

Flickr’s Pat Lacroix is helping us reminisce, and you can see more of his superb ’80s ‘Dirt Trike’, complete with rear suspension, steering, and a chain driven engine via the link above. Just have a first aid box ready.

Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 | Set Preview

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Yes yes yes! LEGO’s partnership with real-world vehicle manufacturers is probably the best thing the company has done since inventing the brick itself, and in no set is this more evident than the brand new 10295 Creator Expert Porsche 911.

Containing a whopping 1,458 pieces and aimed at ages 18+, the 10295 Porsche 911 sets a new high for the Creator Expert series.

Two iconic ’80s versions of the Porsche 911 can be built from 10295; the pretty Targa, or the yuppie-killing Turbo. Each measures over 35cm in length and features working steering, opening doors, engine cover (under which the Turbo features a replica turbocharged flat-6 engine) and front trunk (under which the Targa’s removable roof can be stowed).

An excellent (and very brown) interior contrasts beautifully with the white bodywork, and makes this – in our opinion – probably the finest Creator Expert set yet.

The new Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 set will reach stores in March of this year with a recommended retail price of $150/£120, which is rather a lot for a toy, but not a lot at all for a classic Porsche 911. Plus there’s also the 75895 Speed Champions version so you can get your brick-built classic 911 fix for pocket money.

Top job LEGO!

Moustache P.I.

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This TLCB Writer is too young to know anything about Magnum P.I, but it seems to have been mostly about a moustache galavanting around Hawaii in a Ferrari 308. And was therefore probably excellent. Also excellent is this; Laszlo Torma’s Speed Champions Ferrari 308, complete with a pair of mini-figures and an all-important moustache. Building instructions are available and there’s more to see here.

The Countach Conundrum

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Crap cars come in all shapes and sizes. This is one of them.

The Lamborghini Countach was like nothing else on earth when in arrived in 1974. It was almost un-drivable, miserable to be in, but it looked fantastic. And then the ’80s came around…

The era of excess threw everything it had at Bertone’s pioneering design, and by ‘everything’ we mean ‘a butt-ton of plastic’.

Widened arches, sills, bumpers, and an enormous yet aerodynamically pointless rear wing turned the Countach into some sort of caricature of itself, ruining the original design and making the car even less usable than it was before.

You’d have to be an obnoxious tasteless moron to like the ’80s Countach, so outlandish, over the top, and borderline unusable had it become. Which is why this TLCB writer absolutely loves it.

It’s this version of Lamborghini’s icon that was suggested to us by a reader, who has photographed his finished build of Rastacoco’s Countach LP5000 QV, which is available on Rebrickable with downloadable instructions.

Rastacoco’s design replicates the ’80s Countach superbly, with the model including opening scissor doors, a detailed interior, and the most perfectly replicated exterior we’ve seen built in brick form yet.

Images of Rastacoco’s model in black, white and red can be found at Bricksafe, with full details, building instructions, and the images supplied by a reader used in this post available on Rebrickable here.

Forbidden Flatness

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Porsche are perhaps the best known manufacturer to use flat engines, despite the fact that these days most of their cars are powered by Volkswagen Group Vs or Inlines. However Ferrari too once powered their cars by boxer engines, the first of which was this; the Berlinetta Boxer.

Ferrari’s first mid-engined twelve-cylinder road car, just over two-thousand Berlinetta Boxers were produced between 1973 and ’84 before the Testarossa picked up the flat-twelve mantle, although none were officially imported into the Unites States as Enzo Ferrari thought the flat-twelve was too much for U.S. 55mph speed limits and increasing emissions regulations.

This excellent Technic recreation of the ‘BB’ comes from previous bloggee and TLCB Competition Winner  James Tillson, whose model includes working suspension, steering, pop-up headlights, plus opening doors and rear clamshell, under which is – of course – a functioning 12-cylinder piston engine.

There’s much more of James’ superb Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer to see at his photostream, including a photo of the flat-twelve engine. Click the link above to take a closer look. Even if you’re in the U.S.

Two Horse Race

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There was something of a kerfuffle in TLCB Towers today. In a not uncommon event, two TLCB Elves had returned with a model each – in this case a pair of Speed Champions classic Ferraris – and immediately fought over whose was best. For newcomers to this corner of the internet, ‘fought’ in the case of the Elves usually means extreme physical violence.

Fortunately for the Elven duo both of their finds were blogworthy and thus each received a meal token, so the violence – as is so often the way – wasn’t really necessary. Jonathan Elliott‘s wonderful Ferrari GTB/4 (above) and barneius‘ magnificent Ferrari 288 GTO (below) can be found on Flickr. Click the links above to pick your favourite. Just don’t tell the Elves which one it is.

A Canadian in Siberia

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Canadians are known for their politeness and generosity. Although that might just be in comparison to their noisy neighbour in the basement. Still, even Canadian inventions demonstrate this altruism, with the country responsible for insulin, the pacemaker, the garbage bag, the electric wheelchair, road lines, and the Wonderbra, all of which – we’re sure you’ll agree – have been massively beneficial to mankind.

Cue today’s creation, a Ural 5920 tracked off-road truck, based on a design shared by the Canadians (of course) in the early 1970s. The Soviets took another decade to copy re-engineer the Canadian design, fitting a Ural 375 cab and starting production the mid-’80s until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This magnificent fully remote controlled Technic recreation of the Ural 5920 captures the Canadian Soviet tracked truck brilliantly, including the two huge track bogies that swivel thanks to motorised linear-actuators. An XL Motor drives each pair of tracks (plus the V8 piston engine under the hood), and each track wheel is suspended by an individual torsion beam, allowing the model to traverse a landscape as varied (albeit smaller) as that travelled by the real thing.

Previous bloggee Samolot is the builder behind this amazing creation and there’s more to see – including a video of the model in action and detailed photos of the remarkable drivetrain – at the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus the complete image gallery can be viewed via Bricksafe here. Click the links above to head into the wilds of Siberia.

#vanlife

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Ergh, #vanlife.

Once the preserve of smelly hippies and families who liked to sleep in a field, the humble camper van has transformed into some kind of sustainable-living fashion statement, despite the fact that the occupants are literally burning oil with every unnecessary YouTube video uploaded following their drive to the nearest Starbucks. But if they only eat ethically-sourced all-natural vegan peace-crisps then it’s all OK…

This cheery mini-figure enjoying #vanlife has himself a 6-wide Volkswagen T3 Westfalia camper, complete with a brilliant pop-up roof, sliding door, and a fully fitted interior. Built by PalBenglat of Flickr it could only be more realistic if said mini-figure had a beard and a top-knot.

Join him trying to access the free WiFi at the nearest Starbucks via the link above!

368-F40

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LEGO’s new Speed Champions canopy has popped up all over the place since its release on the the 75890 Ferrari F8 set. It looks great in many applications, and this superb Ferrari F40 continues that trend. Builder barneius has used 368 pieces to create his Speed Champions F40 making his design an easy one to recreate at home. Instructions are available so you can do just that and you can find out more via the link!

White Christmas

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We’re back! After the Elves’ enforced Christmas break they’ve been re-released out into the web to continue their search for the best Lego vehicles that it has to offer.

One particularly speedy Elf has already returned to TLCB Towers with this, the gloriously eighties Ferrari Testarossa, in Miami Vice white.

Of course Miami Vice often dealt with a very different sort of ‘snow’ to the type our title is referring to, but it’s Christmas – the season of tenuous links!

This excellent Speed Champions style Testarossa comes from The G Brix of Flickr, and you can get your snow fix in Miami via the link above.