21103 | The Lego Car Blog

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The Lego Car Blog Review My Set Competition is drawing to a close, so there’s just enough time to fit in one more fan review! Today’s reviewer is a previous bloggee himself, and today he’s on the other side of the screen after joining us here at TLCB to pen the final reader review of the competition. Over to Nils O to pick up the story…

A Dream (Almost) Come True…

The LEGO Ideas set of the Back to the Future (BTTF) time machine could have been one of the best LEGO sets ever. For me the project on LEGO Ideas (then still called CUUSOO) is still one of the best on the platform. The pictures of the car / time machine are so cool that as a BTTF and LEGO fan you just want one thing: To own that model!

The set that hit the shelves was another thing entirely. If you want to be nice you could call the look weird, but let’s be honest; it’s ugly. I think most BTTF fans still want the set, but they also want to do something more; modify it to make it look better.

But first things first. 21103 comes in a high quality black box featuring a cool BTTF design. There’s a book with instructions for the time machine from all three parts of the movie franchise, including a hover function and 1950s’ wheels and ‘electronic components’, and the parts are included for all three versions of the car. There are also unique mini-figs of Marty and Doc which are instantly recognisable, and additionally you get a skateboard, but no – no Hover Board.

But what you do get is a handful of excellent printed parts (yes, printed parts, no stickers) (Hurrah! Ed.): License plates for 1985 (‘OUTATIME’) and 2015 (bar code), a time computer and, of course, a Flux Capacitor. The only part I’m not a 100% happy with is the Flux Capacitor. I just don’t like the 1x2x2 panel, for me a 1x2x2 printed brick or a 2×2 printed tile would have been a better choice.

After building the set (I built the version from Back to the Future Part II) the second thing you notice (after realising how ugly it really is) is the untypical fragility of the set. You can’t really touch it without something falling off. I had to modify the thing, especially the 4-wide roof which didn’t look right. Surprisingly I could build a 6-wide roof and matching A-pillars and doors just using parts from the set. So, why didn’t the LEGO designers do something similar? We will never know. Continue reading →

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The third and final post for today’s Movie Vehicle Special is another car we seem to feature every other month; the DeLorean DMC-12 time machine from the cult 1980s trilogy Back to the Future. Misterzumbi is the latest builder to take a crack at the infamous vehicle, and a sterling job he’s done too. You can see all the details of his mini-figure DeLorean on Flickr via the link above.

You can also see LEGO’s own version of the star movie car in our Brick To The Future 21103 Preview, and if you want to know the real story behind the DeLorean car, including the drugs, bankruptcy, and conned celebrities, make sure you read ‘Failure, Cocaine and Marty McFly’ via The Lego Car Blog Archive.

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With all the excitement following LEGO’s release of the Cuusoo Winning 21103 Back To The Future DeLorean Time Machine set, here at The Lego Car Blog we thought it was time the real car, the one without a flux capacitor, got some press too.

The true story of DeLorean, one of conned celebrities, entrapment, cocaine smuggling and bankruptcy, is even more remarkable than the film…

John DeLorean, a talented automotive engineer at General Motors, decided in the late 1970s to design and build his own car. Called the DMC-12 it was everything an ’80s supercar should be, mid-engined, wild doors, wedge design and fantastically exclusive.

He needed serious funding to put it into production, and so – much like a modern Kickstarter project – he contacted his wealthy celebrity friends to secure investment, and then presented his idea to governments in need of a glamorous employer to solve their unemployment issues. Northern Ireland, then in an unemployment crisis, was selected on the basis of a massive government grant and a new factory was built, despite the area having zero car manufacturing experience.

The progress on the car was less positive. DeLorean took it to Lotus for further development, who were staggered at how bad it was (and this was at a time when Lotus themselves weren’t making anything much good either). Lotus extensively redesigned the car and it was fitted with a V6 Renault engine, which – in US emission specification – made… 130bhp, well short of the 200bhp expected.

Two years late the car was pressed into production anyway, right in the middle of the largest automotive slump since the Great Depression. Requiring urgent funds John DeLorean decided to take one hell of a risk, and was subsequently arrested for drug trafficking. The DeLorean Motor Company went bankrupt, losing the UK government $100m, and John’s celebrity friends their investments too. A few years later the DMC-12 ironically featured in the cult trilogy Back To The Future, but sadly for the Northern Irish factory workers, it was too late to save their jobs.

Without the fame and status brought by the film, the DeLorean DMC-12 would have been another AMC Gremlin or Ford Pinto; an embarrassing failure pushed under the automotive carpet. Marty McFly’s shocked line of ‘You built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?’ may have secured the car’s cult status, but he was as surprised as the rest of us.

The excellent Lego model in this feature is the work of Razvy_cluj_ro, and you can see more on Flickr.

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Great Scott! LEGO’s Cuusoo scheme – where fans can publish their creations on the LEGO Cuusoo site, and those reaching 10,000 votes or more are considered for limited production – has generated its fourth fan-designed official LEGO set!

m.togami and Sakuretsu’s mini-figure scale DeLorean time-machine from the superb Back To The Future movie franchise was recently approved by LEGO’s ‘Jury’ of designers for production, and The Lego Group this week released images showing how the set will look when it reaches stores later in the year. The new set – numbered 21103 – will contain 401 pieces, including both ‘Doc Emmett Brown’ and ‘Marty McFly’ mini-figures, a skateboard, and of course, a DeLorean with a few ‘modifications’.

It’s too early for us to say what the pricing for 21103 will be, however the really cool news is that the designers have decided that the revenue they receive as a commission reward for creating the Cuusoo-winning product (1% of the total generated) is to be donated to the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation. If The Lego Car Blog gave out awards for the heroes the Lego Community of 2013, m.togami and Sakuretsu are surely top of the list.

So watch the video below, start saving, and join the discussion on Eurobricks. And congratulations to the winning duo, from all of us here at The Lego Car Blog, for making this exceptional project a reality.

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Tag Archives: 21103

21103 – Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine – Review

Back to the Future… Again

Failure, Cocaine and Marty McFly

Lego 21103 Preview – Brick To The Future!

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