The Ferrari F40, even with the immense fame and riches brought in by running this site, is a long way out of reach. Thus the closest this TLCB Writer is going to get to one is in the brick, but fortunately Flickr’s Fuku Saku has it covered, with his stunning 8-wide rendition of the Maranello masterpiece. As realistic as small-scale building gets, Fuku has recreated the F40 in stunning fashion, and he’s released instructions so that you can own the iconic Ferrari too. 400 pieces is all it takes, and you can find out more at Faku’s ‘Ferrari F40’ album via the link above.
Tag Archives: 1980s
Kodiak Moment
This fantastic creation is a first generation Kodiak C70, a 1980s medium-duty truck marketed across both Chevrolet and GMC for a variety of applications.
Built by TLCB Master MOCer Nico71, this outstanding Technic recreation of the American workhorse captures the Kodiak’s no-nonsense exterior beautifully, but it’s what’s underneath that is most impressive.
Featuring a remote control drivetrain linked to a V8 piston engine under the opening hood, Nico’s model includes all-wheel-drive, servo steering, suspended axles, a locking fifth wheel, opening doors, and either bluetooth control via the LEGO Powered-Up app or IR Control via LEGO Power Functions.
There’s more of the truck to see at Nico’s Brickshelf gallery, where a link to building instructions can also be found, you can watch the model in action via the video below, and you can read Nico’s Master MOCers interview here at The Lego Car Blog to learn how he builds models like this one via the first link in the text above.
YouTube Video
Monaco ’88
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the Toyota Corolla, and the Monaco Grand Prix. All simultaneously the greatest examples of their respective genres, and also the most boring.
But Formula 1 in Monaco wasn’t always a procession. Before the cars were the size of school buses, which these days makes overtaking impossible, Monaco could put on quite a show.
Back in 1988, even with the complete dominance of the McLaren-Honda MP4/4, the ’88 Monaco Grand Prix delivered. Twenty-six cars started – two of which were even called ‘Megatron’ (seriously, look it up!) – just ten finished, and Ayrton Senna was the class of the field.
Out-qualifying his team-mate Alain Prost by a staggering 1.4 seconds, Senna led the race by almost a minute… until he didn’t. A momentary lapse of concentration eleven laps from the finish and he hit the wall, whereupon he exited his broken McLaren and walked home.
Prost took the win (his forth and final Monaco GP victory), followed by Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari some twenty seconds back. Which means there’s perhaps some artistic license with the cars’ proximity in alex_bricks‘ stunning 1988 Monaco Grand Prix vignette, but in every other respect this is a spectacularly realistic homage to the Monte Carlo street race.
Recreating the circuit as it was in the late-’80s required Alex to watch old race footage (which is surely some of the most fun research required to build a Lego model), matching his brick-built version of the Mediterranean Principality to the televised imagery from the time.
The result is a replica of the streets of Monaco as they were in 1988 so perfect we can practically hear the noise from the Formula 1 cars bouncing off the walls of the buildings, with Alex displaying his incredible build at the Brickfair show earlier in the year.
Fortunately he’s uploaded a few images to Flickr too, so you can join TLCB Team immersing themselves in Monaco in 1988 via his photostream. Click the link above to head the greatest race on the Formula 1 calendar, long before it was boring.
Just like a Porsche
Skoda, one of the seemingly infinite number of brands operated by the Volkswagen Group, churn out absolutely competent yet stupedously dull boxes by the hundreds of thousands, as is the current Volkswagen Group diktat. Boring sedans, boring SUVs, boring crossovers, boring hatchbacks… Skoda make them all, and they are all quite fantastically bland.
There was a time however, pre-Volkswagen (and pre-capitalism…) when Skoda were much more interesting. Worse. But interesting.
This is probably Skoda’s most successful car from the communist era, the 120/Estelle. Launched in the late ’70s, the 120 was a compact rear-wheel-drive sedan powered by either a 1litre or 1.2 litre engine mounted in the rear. Yup, just like a Porsche 911.
The Skoda 120 also shared a few other Porsche 911 attributes, including motorsport success – regularly winning its class in rallying, and – rather less positively – the 911’s penchant for throwing itself into a hedge, despite it packing just 50bhp.
Still, that at least made the 120 interesting, as did its side-hinged front trunk, out-dated technology, likelihood of overheating, and incredibly low price.
Which means we’d take this lovely mid-’80s Skoda 120/Estelle by Flickr’s Legostalgie over a modern rebadged Volkswagen box all day, with his beautiful Model Team version including a detailed rear-mounted engine under an opening engine cover, a life-like (and suitably plasticky) interior inside four opening doors, and the weird side-hinged front trunk.
There’s more of this superbly-presented Skoda to see – including building instructions – via the link above, where you can also navigate to Legostalgie’s plethora of other Eastern European oddities, all of which are vastly more interesting than a modern Skoda SUV.
Forgotten Fuego
This slice of ’80s Frenchness is a Renault Fuego, a compact lift-back coupe built from 1980 to 1986 In Europe, and up until 1992 in South America.
Powered by a range of engines from a 1.4 to a 2.2, via 1.6 Turbo (this was the ’80s) and even a 2.1 turbodiesel, the Fuego was the best selling coupe in Europe and the UK at the time, and was the first car to feature steering-wheel-mounted stereo controls, one of the earliest available with remote central locking, and was once the fastest diesel production car in the world, with a top speed of, er… 110mph. It was even marketed in America where, conversely to Europe and the UK, no-one cared.
Despite its success in TLCB’s home market however, such is the rate of attrition of ’80s cars just eighteen Renault Fuegos survive on the UK roads today. Which is rather a shame, so here’s a brick-built homage to the forgotten French coupe, created beautifully in Model Team form by SIM CAMAT of Flickr.
Cunning brickwork, opening doors, a detailed interior, an opening bonnet, and a lifelike engine all feature, and there’s more of SIM’s brilliant Renault Fuego to see at his photostream. Click the link above to blip your key remote, get behind the controls on the steering wheel, and hit a diesely 110mph on a French autoroute.
Brick Space
Here at The Lego Car Blog we are fairly useless when it comes to science fiction builds. Still, they do feature from time to time, despite TLCB Team understanding literally nothing whatsoever about the source material.
With such elaborate fictional spacey contraptions it can be easy to forget that space travel exists today, and is not simply reserved for science fiction. In fact from 1981, it was almost routine.
Such normality was the result of this; the NASA Space Shuttle, a reusable low-orbital air/spacecraft able to deliver people and things to and from space. Five shuttles were constructed and operated 135 missions between them, before the three surviving units were retired in 2011.
This fantastic Technic recreation of the Shuttle pays homage to the design that normalised space travel, and comes from previous bloggee Jeroen Ottens who has packed his model with a suite of Power Functions motors to bring it to life.
The landing gear, cargo-bay doors, robotic arm lift and rotation, satellite solar cell unfolding, and aircraft pitch/roll surfaces can all be controlled remotely, thanks to some very clever packaging and a gearbox to multiply functions, with more to see at both Flickr and the Eurobricks forum.
Click the links above to head on a routine mission into space, plus you can click here to read our review of LEGO’s official Technic 8480 Space Shuttle set from 1996 that shares many of this model’s working features.
Black Box
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.
The Ultimate Driving Machine
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.
Cool Box
Like the Ford F-150 in America, the Honda Super Cub in East Asia, and the Toyota Corolla almost everywhere, the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter is background street furniture for a huge proportion of the world.
Built in half-a-dozen countries, across eight generations and six decades, and re-badged as a Hyundai, Nissan, plus a host of other brands, the Canter is one of the most widespread and ubiquitous vehicles on the planet.
This one is a fifth generation fridge truck version, as used in their thousands to deliver food produce in the world’s restaurant back-streets. It comes from Max Ra of Flickr, who has recreated the Canter brilliantly, picking out the details of what is essentially a white box to create an instantly-recognisable brick-built replica.
There’s more of the model to see at Max’s ‘Mitsubishi Canter 5th Generation Refrigerated Truck’ album, and you can take a look at all the images via the link in the text above.
Big Yellow Taxi*
NYC taxi cabs seem to be less, well… cabby these days. Toyota RAV4 hybrids and electric Nissan vans have taken over from the classic V8-powered three-box sedans, which is of course excellent news for air quality. And quite probably ride quality. But somehow less… cabby.
Of course we’re talking nonsense, because the old three-box sedans weren’t bespoke taxis like London’s ‘Black Cabs‘ anymore than a RAV4 is, and thus you were just as likely to see them being driven by the elderly in Florida as you were in yellow NYC form.
However even now, if asked to picture a NYC yellow cab, we would still think of a shape (and era) like this.
The Chevrolet Caprice was one of several V8-powered three-box sedans used for taxi duty in New York before their electrified replacements arrived, with this superb brick-built version being a 1989 example.
Constructed by previous bloggee Jakub Marcisz, the model captures the classic cab brilliantly, including four opening doors, hood and trunk, working steering, a detailed engine bay and interior, and some wonderfully authentic NYC Taxi License decals.
There’s much more of this Chevrolet Caprice NYC cab to see at Jakub’s photostream, and you can hail a ride in New York sometime in the 1990s via the link in the text above.
*Today’s title song (a cover version that features (we think) this very Chevrolet Caprice taxi in the video. Points for us!).
Ural-4320 6×6 | Picture Special
This magnificent model is a Ural-4320 6×6 truck, a Soviet-era general purpose military truck first built in 1977, and still in production today.
Powered by a naturally-aspirated V8 diesel or a V6 turbodiesel, the Ural-4320 is very slow, but able to carry a variety of loads, from troops to rocket launchers, over almost any terrain. Well, unless the Russian Army recruits behind the wheel abandon them and run.
Which is what has occurred in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with over six-hundred Ural-4320s destroyed or abandoned, and around fifty captured a repurposed by the Ukrainian military, according to Dutch open-source intelligence group Oryx. Which is marvellous.
This phenomenal fully remote controlled Model Team recreation of the Ural-4320 comes from Russian builder and previous bloggee Michael217, who has brilliantly captured not just the aesthetics of the real truck, but also much of the driveline too.
A LEGO Buggy motor powers all six wheels, each of which is suspended and fitted with a portal axle, there’s Servo steering (that turns the steering wheel too), a high/low gearbox, opening doors and hood, a detailed engine, and an open load area ready to be fitted with a variety of Russian (or Ukrainian…) equipment.
There’s much more of Michael’s amazing model to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum, you can find the full image gallery at Bricksafe here, and you can watch the truck in action via the video below.
YouTube Video
The Ultimate Driving Machine
BMW’s ‘E30’ generation 3-Series has become a cult car. Small, light, rear-wheel-drive, and without an over-complicated twin-scroll turbo in sight, the E30 is the antidote to whatever horror BMW is making these days.
Cue TLCB favourite Thirdwigg, who has recreated the late-’80s BMW 3-Series brilliantly in Technic form. Built in both sedan and estate forms, Thirdwigg’s E30s are subtly modified with lowered suspension, a modest body-kit, and – in the case of the sedan – a V8 engine swap.
We’d rather take the estate’s Inline-6 though, and with free building instructions for both (a hundred TLCB Points Thirdwigg!), presumably you can switch out the sedan’s V8 engine with ease. There’s also working steering, opening everything, and much more to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks. Jump back to a time when BMW’s marketing tagline actually meant something via the links above.
Rockin’ Robin
Here at The Lego Car Blog we spend a lot of time mocking other countries’ cars, mostly because you don’t know who we are or where we live. However our home nation isn’t immune from making a vehicular anomaly or two, so today we’re very much looking in the mirror and sheepishly recognising the plastic three-wheeled catastrophe peering back at us. Yup, it’s the Reliant Robin.
Britain produced a huge variety of tiny three-wheeled cars in the post-war years, a time when materials were rationed, many people were poor, and many more didn’t have driving licenses. Three-wheelers were one solution, requiring fewer parts (a 25% reduction in wheels alone) and only a motorcycle license to operate.
By far the most successful of these was the Reliant Robin, which was so numerous it remains the second best-selling fibreglass car of all time. This success led to it sticking around far longer than it should have done however, when Reliant – once Britains second-largest car maker by volume – really should’ve invested in other things. Production (and the Reliant company) finally ended in the early-2000s, and another British car manufacturer disappeared forever.
Today we’re paying homage to the humble slightly-rubbish British icon thanks to EvilEnderman and this heroically unstable BuWizz-powered Technic recreation, which is equipped with far more power than its three-wheeled chassis can handle. Cue a great degree of crashing, which you can watch at the Eurobricks forum here, plus you can find more images of the remote control Reliant at Bricksafe.
And if you want to see the real thing falling over, a lot, click on these words…
*Today’s title song, from way back when pop music could literally be about nothing more than the habits of a garden bird.
Build-an-F40
Ferrari may have built a surprisingly large number of F40s, but even with our big-time Lego Blogging Money, owning one is considerably out of reach. However this stunning Technic version is rather more attainable, and it features a working V8 engine, 5+R gearbox, independent suspension, opening clamshells, and pop-up headlights just like the real thing.
Eurobricks’ sebulba56 is the designer, and they’ve made building instructions available so you can create your own brick-built replica of Ferrari’s legendary 40th-birthday-present-to-itself too.
Full details can be found at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, where images of mechanical break-downs, a complete description, and a link to building instructions can all be found.
Pick-Up Bricks
This is a 1980s Toyota Hilux, and it is the best pick-up truck ever conceived.
Slow, small, and seemingly unbreakable, the ’80s Hilux is the pinnacle of Toyota over-engineering. It also wore some excellent side stripe decals, which immediately makes it cool, as does (and is) this brilliant Model Team replica of the iconic 4×4 from previous bloggee Vladimir Drozd.
Underneath the wonderfully accurate exterior – resplendent with period-correct stripes, roof lights and fender extensions – is a Technic chassis with both steering and suspension, and there’s much more of the model to see on Flickr.
Take a look at Vladimir’s brick-built version of the best pick-up ever made via the link above.