Tag Archives: Bombardier

Air Canada Express

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Diet America, better known as Canada, quietly produces rather more than you might think. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Drake, and even Pamela Anderson all hail from America’s attic, whilst Trivial Pursuit, the Wonderbra, insulin, and peanut butter are all Canadian too.

Transportationally speaking, Canada is responsible for building the Toyota RAV4, the Honda Civic and CRV, a variety of boring Chryslers, and two of the most ‘American’ cars ever; the Ford GT and the Dodge Challenger. Yes, even the Hellcat.

At least half of the entries on the list above we thought were American (which speaks volumes about how uninformed the staff here at TLCB are, and/or how Canada quietly gets on with being awesome whilst America shouts loudly and frantically waves a flag back and forth), but one company we definitely did know is Canadian is the engineering giant Bombardier.

Over their 80 year history, Bombardier have produced trains, snowmobiles, ATVs, buses, military equipment and aircraft, the latter of which the company concentrates on today.

This is the Bombardier CRJ-200, pictured appropriately in Air Canada livery, and it comes from Tom Clair of Flickr. Tom has recreated the 1990s business jet beautifully in brick form, with a complete interior, opening cabin doors, and working ailerons too, plus some superbly realistic decals to replicate the aforementioned national livery.

There’s lots more of Tom’s excellent CRJ-200 to see at his Flickr photostream – fly on over via the link above, whilst we search the web for classic Wonderbra adverts. For research. We love Canada.

Water Bomb

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Lego Canadair CL-215

Ah Canada. The United States’ slightly boring neighbour. Home of singing-horse Celine Dion, the catchy pop of Carly Ray Jepsen, and perennial annoyance that is Justin Bieber. Fortunately they also know how to make some cool stuff up there, thanks almost entirely to transportation giant Bombardier.

Founded in the 1930s Bombardier began by making snowmobiles, and have since expanded to build ski-doos, trains, ATVs and aircraft. It’s the latter we have here, in the form of a Canadair CL-215 water-bombing amphibious plane. Designed in the late 1960s to operate at low speeds and in tricky winds, the CL-215 was sold to eleven countries for fire-fighting and search and rescue operations, with 125 units produced until the design was replaced in 1990.

This lovely replica of the Canadair CL-215 comes from previous bloggee Dornbi of Flickr and he’s captured the unusual shoulder-mounted engine configuration of the aircraft brilliantly. There’s more of the build to see at Dornbi’s photostream – click the link above to drop the world’s biggest water bomb.