Tag Archives: 2013

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We’ve had the first wave of Technic sets for 2013, and they’re pretty good; although I still say that F1 car looks messy…

The real goodies arrive in August; have a gander at this:

Lego Technic 42009 Crane

New for 2013: 42009 LEGO Technic Crane

It’s the 42009, Mobile Crane MkII, and has to be the most hotly anticipated Technic set since the Unimog. It’ll have over 2000 pieces and retail at around £150, according to the bush telegraph.

It seems to incorporate one power functions motor which can control any one of four functions via a gearbox. There’s a three piece extending boom, four steered axles and four linked stabilisers. All in all, a fitting follow up to the sainted 8421. Can’t wait.

As if that weren’t enough, feast your eyes on this:

Lego Technic 42008 Truck

New for 2013: 42008 LEGO Technic Recovery Truck

Set number 42008, a very green recovery truck that’s pretty impressive, if a size smaller than the crane. It’ll probably be around £100.

There goes the summer holiday…

Start Your Engines!

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Lego F1 Racer 2013

Is that David Coulthard at the wheel?

With the 2013 Formula 1 season nearly upon us, Lego Builders brings us his mildly updated generic racing car. Life imitates Lego this year, and the changes to the 2013 cars are minor, in readiness for the new V6 turbos arriving in 2014. So, who do you think can challenge Vettel and Red Bull Racing for the Championship in 2013?

Vote for the NEW Technic 4×4!

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Lego Technic Competition

Ten finalists have been chosen from fan creations uploaded to Lego.com. Vote for your favourite!

It’s the Grand Final of LEGO’s ‘You Design It, We Make It’ competition! Fans have been uploading their versions of the 9398 4X4 Crawler for the past few weeks, and we’re now down to the final 10! The winning creation will be turned into a new official LEGO Technic set. Make your vote count:

The Ten Finalists: Vote here!

The King

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Lego Helicopter, Erickson Air-Crane

Insert quiff and sparkly suit for twice the awesome

This enormous orange behemoth is an Erickson Air-crane, nicknamed ‘Elvis’. At over 4m long and 1m high it contains over 100,000 LEGO bricks. Pro builder Ryan McNaught, aka TheBrickMan, spent one month designing and building this creation for the Brickvention 2013 show. You can see more of Elvis at Ryan’s Flickr photostream here. Uhuhuh.

Lego Mindstorms EV3 Preview

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Lego Mindstroms Robot EV3

New for 2013; Lego Mindstorms EV3

New 2013 LEGO Mindstorms on the way!

Time for some BIG news. Today LEGO unveiled the next generation of their incredible Mindstorms Robotics System, titled ‘EV3’. This isn’t just big news for the Lego Community, Mindstorms have taken the computing and robotics world by storm, with the previous RCX and NXT incarnations in use by many of the world’s top universities, NASA, and of course, the First LEGO League.

Apple Compatible 

Due for release in the second half of 2013, Mindstorms EV3 will be faster, more intelligent and more easily programmable than ever before. And, for the first time ever, LEGO Mindstorms is now compatible with Android and Apple’s OS. Using the latest Linux OS firmware, EV3 has been designed with more emphasis and education; a complete sequence can be programmed in less than 45 minutes (so school classes can successfully complete a program in one period). Debugging is built in to the program; if the EV3 recognizes a command that doesn’t match up with expected hardware, it will immediately alert the user to the error.

As with the previous Mindstorms versions EV3 is open-source so it can be programmed outside of the Mindstorms software via programs like LabView and RobotC, as well is in other languages like Java. Expect to see some hugely advanced robotics hitting the internet a few weeks after launch.

Powerful Programming

The new LEGO Mindstorms EV3 programmable brick uses an ARM 9 300 MHz processor and has 16 MB of Flash memory and 64 MB of RAM (expandable to 32 GB with a mini SDHC card). There are 4 output and 4 input ports, as well as USB 2.0 for daisy chaining EV3 programmable bricks. A 178 x 128 high resolution display allows for graph reading and sensor data observation, while also allowing for basic programming via a three-color, six button interface.

Lego Mindstorms EV3

New for 2013: Lego Mindstorms EV3 Elephant

Pricing and Release Date

We expect the Mindstorms EV3 kit to reach stores towards the end of summer, priced around £300 / $350, with a variety of bolt-on goodies released alongside the main kit, or soon afterwards.

The internet will soon be buzzing with Preview information, so to get you started visit Wired Magazine, and start saving…

Happy New Year! 2012 Year in Review

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2013 is nearly upon us, and as we’re all still here we assume that we’ve got at least another 5,125 years of LEGO blogging in us. So before we look ahead to 2013, let’s look back on the year that was 2012.

Lego 2013 New Year

Happy New Year!

TLG:

The LEGO Group turned 80 years old, and 2012 was another strong year for the corporation’s production of vehicles, with the continued success of the Modular Town theme bringing some stunning buildings and vehicles to go with them.

Technic too, continues to flourish, even before the arrival of the 2013 sets which we previewed earlier in the year, with Power Functions dominating, but also Pneumatics and Remote Control making welcome returns.

Finally, The LEGO Group also woke up to the power of social media, launching their blog collaboration tool, ReBrick, and gave The Lego Car Blog a hugely appreciated shot of legitimacy.

So what about us? Well we had a great 2012 too…

The Lego Car Blog continues to grow, with visits climbing towards a projected half million a year mark. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning, or discovered us for the first time today, thank you for your readership, we’d be nothing without you.

Visits have come from almost every country on earth, with the U.S, U.K, Netherlands and Germany leading the pack. However, it’s also worth noting those countries where one person has found us; Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Benin, Micronesia, San Marino, Fiji, Iran, Suriname, French Guiana, New Caledonia, Tanzania, Liechtenstein and Dominica. If you are the sole reader in each of the countries listed, a massive thank you to you too; you are unique in your nation!

Our top posts have all been LEGO news related, with Previews of upcoming Technic sets taking the top spots, and Reviews of existing sets just behind them, but it’s your LEGO creations which earn the most comments. If we’ve featured your work on TLCB during 2012, congratulations and thank you!

Lego Technic 4x4 Crawler

Set Reviews like the 4×4 Crawler drew huge visitor numbers

Coming up in 2013…

The Elves are out foraging for the coolest creations, LEGO news and set sneak peeks as you read this; 2013 is going to be a bumper year for posts!

And… we can bring you some very early news of upcoming sets for 2013! But not just yet.

Oh all right then, just a little;

  • LEGO will be bringing back the Wild West theme, complete with steam trains, horse drawn carriages and gun-toting baddies
  • Legends of Chima will see some truly nuts vehicles launched, none of which really interest us at TLCB, but the parts they yield might…
  • LEGO Technic will launch two new flagships in August 2013. Our Preview of the new sets for 2013 revealed a few gaps in the numbering system. These will be filled in August with the release of four new Technic sets in addition to those you’ve already seen. We’ve seen the prototypes and will bring you Previews soon. Trust us, it’ll be worth the wait!

Happy New Year from all at The Lego Car Blog!

…

Green Day

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Claas Arion Tractor

Basket Case

With 2013 just round the corner, The Lego Car Blog Elves detained over Christmas were re-released last night. Their search for 2013 is unchanged from 2012; to find the best car-related LEGO creations, news and groups on the web. After a period of hunger and boredom whilst locked in their cages they do seem rather keen to earn themselves some dinner. As such today we have three great MOCs to share with you right out of the box. By coincidence, or through some kind of Elf pact, all today’s posts are on the green side.

The first (above) is this stunning Claas Arion tractor from Flickr builder thietmaier, complete with mowing attachments. View more at thietmaier’s Flickr page or on MOCpages.

Lego Rocket Launcher

Know Your Enemy

The second MOC of today comes from Andy L on MOCpages. Based on a childhood toy, Andy’s truck is a 1950’s rocket launcher platform. It really fires rockets too. See more at Andy’s MOCpage via the link above.

Lego Porsche 964

Hitchin’ a Ride

Our final Green Day post is from a TLCB regular; the incredible Malte Dorowski. Famous for his beautifully detailed Porches, Malte sees out 2012 in style with this absurdly green RWB Porsche 964. Underneath the curves the MOC features working suspension and steering, plus one the most detailed interiors we’ve ever seen. View more of Malte’s stunning cars by clicking the link above.

And with that we end our green-themed finale to 2012. Thank you for your readership, comments and suggestions during the past year – we look forward to hearing from you all in 2013, where we’ll continue to bring you the best LEGO cars on the world wide web : )

2013 Technic Sets – Complete Line-Up

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2013 Lego Technic Sets

The complete Q1 2013 LEGO Technic Range

Following our 2013 Set Previews, Utahlug have brought all of the Q1 2013 LEGO Technic sets together in one glorious image. Despite the fact that it’s seriously messing with our OCD (why isn’t 42000 in a box too… argh), we thought it was worth sharing. Unless you have OCD too, in which case, sorry. To see The Lego Car Blog’s Preview of each of the 2013 Technic releases, click on ‘News’ to the left of this post, or use the Search function at the bottom of the page.

New 2013 Technic Elements Preview

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Technic Cog

New for 2013; Revised 8-tooth Gear

Possibly our most boring post to date, but if you’re a studless builder, perhaps one of our most important ones too. The Technic 8-Tooth Gear has been reworked so that it no longer slips inside studless beams. Hurrah! Each tooth has an additional step added to each side, forming a new ring that effectively widens the gear.

Also available in 2013 will be LEGO’s new Pull-Back Motor, first previewed in sets 82010 and 82011. Pictures courtesy of slfroden.

New Technic pull-back Motor 2013

New for 2013; Technic Pull-Back Motor

Technic 42000 F1 Racer Preview… er, again

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Lego Technic 42000 F1 Racer

New for 2013; LEGO 42000 F1 Racer

Finally… The last Elf thrown over The LEGO Group’s perimeter fence returned today. We were beginning to think it’d been eaten by the guard dogs. Anyhow, now that it’s found its way back to The Lego Car Blog Towers we can complete our preview of the 2013 LEGO Technic lineup, with this, the 42000 F1 Racer.

We’ve actually previewed this set already, because someone (probably now an ex-LEGO employee) put one up for sale on eBay a few months ago. However, we thought it was still worth bringing you some high quality pictures.

LEGO’s 42000 marks a return to F1 style cars, although due to licensing regulations it may not actually be called an ‘F1’ car. In comparison to their previous officially licensed efforts from Ferrari and Williams, we’re actually a little disappointed by this set, but that’s probably a little unjust as 42000 will almost certainly be cheaper than its predecessors.

42000 will sit at the top of the early-2013 LEGO Technic range, and whilst it has no Power Functions or Pneumatics, it does feature some good old-fashioned mechanics, including; a working V8 engine, suspension and steering, and one of those slightly annoying ‘gearbox-that’s-not-actually-a-gearbox’ things to control a variety of functions. We predict these will be an opening engine cover (why not just have it on a hinge and give us a real gearbox LEGO?), and possibly a Drag Reduction System (DRS) on the rear wing, as employed by the 2012 Formula 1 cars.

Expect 42000 to be near the top of the tree price-wise when it’s released in early 2013. However, we think it’s not so far up LEGO’s pricing structure that it’s eliminated the need for a new flagship… You heard it here first!

Lego 42000 B-Model

Bonus picture; LEGO 42000 ‘A’ and ‘B’ models

Technic 42004 Excavator Preview

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Lego Technic New 2013, 42004

New for 2013; LEGO Technic 42004

The penultimate set* in our search for LEGO’s 2013 Technic releases arrived today, scooped from deep within The LEGO Group’s fortified labs. And at first glance 42004 might not look particularly impressive. However, we think this may be one of the best sets of 2013.

Firstly, 42004 has two lovely one-piece buckets. People will buy this set for these parts alone. The design, like most modern Technic, is almost all studless beams, but unlike a lot of modern Technic (see our review of 42010 and 42011) this set has no Power Functions / Pull-Back Motor / Linear Actuator gimmickry.

Instead, it features lots of proper mechanical functions. It steers via articulation in the middle, the front bucket can be raised / lowered and tipped, whilst the rear bucket can swing, extend and tip. All of this is accomplished by simple levers and mechanics, making it one of the most functional, and yet cheapest, LEGO Technic sets in ages.

LEGO Technic 42004 will go on sale in early 2013.

*Actually we previewed LEGO’s 42000 F1 Racer some months ago, because we’re awesome, but we’ll be posting an updated Preview (as soon as the slovenly Elf looking for new pictures returns) in order to complete the 2013 set. Plus it gets loads of hits…

Technic 42010 & 42011 Pull-Back Racers Preview

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Lego 42010, New 2013

New for 2013; 42010

Lego 42011, New 2013 Technic

New for 2013; 42011

Two Elves returned together today, each holding one the new Technic sets for 2013 stolen from The LEGO Group’s dungeons. These two are the ‘starter’ sets, and major on robust fun rather than technical functions. As such they feature a new pull-back motor and, er… nothing else. But they do have some new parts and cool stickers, and will no doubt be a great introduction into the world of Technic for younger builders. 42010 and 42011 will join the LEGO Technic line-up in 2013, sitting at the bottom of the range. For details of the other 2013 Technic releases, search our ‘News’ category.

Technic 42006 Excavator Preview

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Lego Technic 42006 Claw, New 2013

New for 2013, the LEGO Technic Excavator Claw

Welcome to No.3 in our 2013 Technic Previews series, and this is the Big One. LEGO’s recent line in construction equipment has been excellent, and it looks set to continue with the 2013 release of 42006, the Tracked Claw Excavator.

Like many of LEGO’s previous offerings, the functions of the new model are enabled by LEGO’s linear actuators. This time there is no motor to power them (so expect lots of handle winding!), and as such this set should be cheaper than the preceding motorized models. It will be easily modified to take Power Functions parts though, so don’t worry if you’re winding hand is weak!

Sought-after parts include a new design for the four fingers for the grab, grey tracks and the return of the large Technic turn-table. Expect 42006 to be released towards the start of 2013, sitting mid to top of the pricing structure. Stay tuned for the final 2013 Technic set previews here on The Lego Car Blog, and to view the other 2013 sets posted so far, use the search function at the bottom of this page, or click ‘News’.

Technic 42002 Hovercraft Preview

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Lego Technic 42002 Hovercraft 2013

New for 2013; Lego Technic Hovercraft

Today another Elf returned from the secret mission set deep within the basements of The LEGO Group’s labs in Billund, Denmark. Tasked with uncovering the as-yet-unreleased 2013 Technic sets, our Elves have been snooping for pictures of the sets you’ll be able to buy next year. The second Elf to return (hot on the heels of the first scoop posted earlier in the week) entered the office grasping this; the new Technic Hovercraft 42002.

LEGO have dabbled in Technic Hovercraft sets before, with mixed results, and this one to our eyes sits firmly mid-table amongst its forebears. Like all the 2013 releases it’s a 2-in-1 set, which is basically a fancy way of saying there’s a ‘B’ model too. 42002’s alternative build is a small propellor plane, and both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ models feature a V2 piston engine powered by forward movement, and… not much else. But the new Hovercraft is pleasing to look at, robust and it looks quite zoom-able.

Stayed tuned for the remaining 2013 new releases!

Technic 42007 Moto-Cross Bike Preview

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2013 Lego Technic 42007

New for 2013; LEGO Technic Moto-Cross Bike

Following some unusual generosity from TLCB Team towards our Elf-based workforce, normality has been restored by chucking a few of the little buggers over The LEGO Company’s walls in order to uncover the new releases for 2013. Today one of the ‘lucky’ Elves chosen for this mission returned to the office holding this; the 2013 Technic Moto-Cross Bike.

Resplendent in KTM orange, 42007 continues the decent return to form that Technic has been enjoying over the past few years. There are new dirt tyres, a V-Twin engine, all-round suspension via some rather lovely shock-absorbers, and some funky looking decals too.

We expect this to be a mid-entry in LEGO’s Technic pricing structure, probably being the lowest priced of the ‘proper’ Technic sets, with some ‘mini’ Technic sets slotting underneath it.

As the Elves find their way back to The Lego Car Blog Towers we’ll bring you sneak peeks of the other 2013 Technic sets, so watch this space for more posts in our ‘News’ category.