Tag Archives: 356

Humble Beginnings

The Lego Car Blog is a site with humble beginnings. We’re not famous Lego Show exhibitors, Lego User Group leaders, or even upstanding members of the Online Lego Community. Nope, this site was created by idiots, but look how far we’ve co… Wait, that probably isn’t a good example.

But there are great examples of automotive humble beginnings, including two now-titans of the German motor industry; Porsche and BMW.

Porsche’s first car (depicted above) was the 356, which looked a lot like the Volkswagen Beetle, because… well, it kinda was one. BMW on the other hand began by making aero engines during both World Wars. Fortunately for this site’s home nation, the military machine to whom they were supplied didn’t win either of them, and strict metal rationing after Germany’s defeat meant creating cars like the one depicted below, the tiny BMW Isetta ‘bubble car’.

They were simple, slow, and not very expensive, and both shown here are the work of TLCB debutant Filippos Tsialidis, who has created them rather humbly too, using just a handful of pieces for each. They join a host of other classic cars at his ‘Cars’ Flickr album, and you can take a look at beginning of Porsche, BMW, and many others too via the link above.

Three Little Pigs

We’re going to have a very fat Elf today. One of our mythical little workers brought back these three blogworthy Porsche 356s, meaning it receives three meal tokens. Will said Elf spread them out in order to moderate its intake, or binge on all of them on one go? We all know the answer to that…

Anyway, the three models are appropriate for the aforementioned piggy Elf, as each is a glorious Porsche 356, as built beautifully in Model Team form by ZetoVince of Flickr. All have opening doors, a detailed interior, and passive steering, with the red version available to buy in this year’s Creations for Charity fundraiser.

There’s more to see at Zeto’s photostream via the link above, and if you’d like to own the red car for yourself you can jump straight to the Porsche’s Creations for Charity page via this bonus link.

Don’t Mention the War

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This bizarre looking vehicle is a Porsche 356 Carrera GTL Abarth, a lightweight racing car from 1960 resulting from a rare collaboration between Germany and Italy.

Previous partnerships between the two European powers were – thankfully for mankind – disastrous failures, but the Porsche 356 Carrera GTL Abarth was… OK, not great either.

It overheated, the steering couldn’t turn enough, and there were a few ‘differences of opinion’ between Porsche and Abarth when it came to acceptable build quality.

However unlike their 1940s effort, the two nations persevered and re-engineered the 356 Carrera GTL to the point where it became a rather excellent racing car, successfully competing across Europe and taking three consecutive class wins at Le Mans.

This neat Model Team recreation of the German-Italian racer comes from Tim Inman, who has managed to replicate the 356 Carrera GTL’s decidedly odd bodywork in brick form.

Opening doors and a lifting engine cover reveal a detailed interior and rear-mounted engine respectively, and there’s more to see of Tim’s Porsche 356 Carrera GTL Abarth at his photostream.

Click the link above to join the Axis Powers’ 1960 campaign, which was a lot better than their 1940 effort…