This particular tumbler isn’t the Dark Knight’s latest set of wheels, it’s the work of Vimal “vlmn8r” Patel and Peter “Mahj” Kreuger. The “Bugroll” zooms along and then performs an acrobatic front flip. Mahj has a history of building cars that move in unusual ways and we featured his “Cadmium” lowrider earlier this year. Once you’ve watched the YouTube video below, click on this link to Mahj’s Flickr Photostream to see the details of how the car works.
Okay, we admit it, the Elf Riot was our fault. It all started when we promised our pointy-eared workers a night off, watching a DVD. The story was based on a book by the man who wrote James Bond and the film features some explosions and a transforming car. What could go wrong?
The Elves settled down in expectation of seeing something with Megan Fox, fireballs, Megan Fox, Optimus Prime, Megan Fox… Well you get the idea. Dick van Dyke just didn’t cut it. The Elves who made it through the ensuing mutiny and endured 144 minutes of 1960s musical spectacular have been irredeemably scarred.*
Anyhow, relax and feast your eyes on Ralph Savelsberg’s latest creation in his series of vehicles from film and TV. Featuring detachable wings and a brick-built Caractacus Pott, this Lego version of the most expensive theatre prop of all time looks splendid on its vintage, 1970s wheels. Click the link in the text to see more photos of this car, including WIP shots and Ralph’s neat solution to building Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s long exhaust pipe.
*They’ve started to demand payment in Toot Sweets instead of Smarties.
Ok, Calvin Sun’s Roadster has a few more pieces than fifteen, but nevertheless it does prove you don’t need oodles of bricks to makes something blogworthingly cool. Check it out on Flickr here.
Many of Angka Utama’s cars are like the Elves, complex and small. The Toscana is a good example of this, including a drop down rear engine. Actually, on second thoughts the Elves are a worryingly simple bunch. On third thoughts, the Elves’ diet of sugary Smarties and fizzy drinks means that they’re getting a bit tubby too. Please click on this link to Angka’s Flickr Photostream to have a closer look at the Toscana’s features, whilst we go and find some better similes.*
*I didn’t want to be a blog writer anyway. I wanted to be a lumberjack.
The inside of Vince Toulouse‘s mind must be an interesting – and rather beautiful – place to live. Vince has appeared here previously with his wonderfully art-deco spaceships, and he’s now transferred his uniquely brilliant style to wheeled wonders. These two spectacular creations can be found at Vince’s most excellent Flickr photostream, click the link above and submerge yourself in Vince’s sea of brick-built loveliness.
As long-term readers will know, over the past two years we’ve been running the Master MOCers Series, in which we’ve interviewed the very best Lego vehicle builders anywhere in the world. In fact, if you were trying to score highly in Google’s page rankings you could say something like they’re the Top 10 Lego Car Builders Ever! Fact*.
With our final Master MOCer inducted into the Hall of Fame last month we now need a new series to fill the (rather large) shoes vacated by our Master MOCers.
So starting soon – and working in partnership with a popular Flickr-based Lego vehicle group – we’ll be bringing you a multi-part series showcasing the all-time Top 5 builds in a variety of Lego categories.
We’ll reveal more details in due course, in the meantime – and to neatly Segway towards the exciting new series – remind yourself of the Top 10 Lego Car Builders (fact*) by clicking on the link below.
(*This may not actually be a definite fact)
It’s green Smarties all around today at TLCB. First up, Flickr’s Nannan Zhang shows us what it’ll be like to drive in the future if you’ve got no friends or family. See his single-seat ‘Izara Roadrunner’ here.
Our second of today’s double comes from car-building extraordinaire Lino M, with his Bugster concept. See it and his other cars via his photostream here.
F@bz has attracted the attention of the Elves on previous occasions for his unusually shaped spacecraft but his latest creation is a car. Being a Citroen and therefore a French car, it has to have some novel feature designed into it such as the Renault 4’s gear stick or changing a wheel on a Citroen DS. This futuristic build has blue wheels, which light up, perfect for night-time blasting along those dark, empty autoroutes. They are made from the alien eggs that can be found in the latest Galaxy Squad sets. You can see more of this car by following this link.
We’re not sure if Peteris Sprogis took inspiration for his ‘Condor’ concept car from the 1975 movie in this post’s title, or from the massive vulture-y type bird of the same name, but it’s the only quote we could find with the word ‘Condor’ in it, so it’s going to stay. His creation will only be blogged for the usual one day too, so the quote is a bit pointless, but… shut up.
See more of Peteris’ latest work on Flickr here.
It’s time for some of your suggestions here at The Lego Car Blog. These three creations were brought to us in the Feedback page or in the comments during the last week. We can’t publish all of your suggestions (well we can, but some aren’t quiet good enough, have blurry photos, or aren’t vehicles at all) but we do consider each submission. Congratulations to (from left to right) Alexander Paschoaletto, Peteris Sprogis, and Joel Seow.
A recent trip to MOCpages resulted in this rather cool race car made by Davanchi M. Not only has he done a great job on the styling and colours of the car, he also focused on interior and engine details. The chassis underneath the removable body almost looks real and the rollcage really does help if it ends on its roof. See Davanchi’s work by clicking the link above.
The lucky Elf that found these beautifully strange cars by Peteris Sprogis has a smile on its face at the moment. One meal token, but three smarties; brown, yellow and green were the reward. Peteris’ creations have always been a little weird, and recently they seem to have gathered a cohesive design which, combined with the background, makes them amongst the most interesting creations on the net. See all of them at Peteris’ Photostream.
Who are the top five car building TFOLs to follow in 2013? The teenaged staff of TFOL World have brought you their top picks, so read on and find out!
We’ll start off with frequent bloggee of both TFOLWorld and The LEGO Car Blog – Jonas (Legopard). A German TFOL who has recently begun posting vehicle models, he’s created everything from Steampunk Bat Tumblers to classic little mopeds. And don’t worry, if you’re into futuristic vehicles he’s got you covered too.
Our next builder to make this post is the incredibly prolific Senator Chinchilla. Master of speed building replicas of large cars, Senator Chinchilla uses a range of techniques to keep his posts interesting. From brilliant creations, various backdrops, witty captions, and the occasional space MOC, you will always find something entertaining.
Rounding out the middle of this feature is Raphael Granas (r a p h y), who is creating some of the best tiny turbos of the year. Dedicated to building the best looking replica possible, Raphael does not shy from shaving unnecessary pieces away – literally. His occasional slash and hack may turn the stomachs of purists, but it’s hard to argue with the results.
Next up we have veteran Featured TFOL Harry Gravett. This guy really knows how to shape a car, and his use of a myriad of techniques (including the classic cylinder+brick round tower technique) allows him to form top-notch eye candy. Our favourite of his MOCs is the Gravity GZ3 Tornado (featured below) for just that reason.
Last but not least, Alexander Paschoaletto is our fifth and final builder. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t pack his models with NPU, textures, rare bricks, or all that stuff we’ve come to know and love. No, Alex instead produces builds which are refreshingly simple at first glance, though subtly complex as you look deeper. His MOCs are built to look good, and few car builders can match the sheer beauty of his vehicles.
And that wraps up the TFOL World list of the top five TFOLs of the year! Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check each of these talented teens out, they’ll definitely be building even more top-tier motors as 2013 rolls on.
One of our Brickshelf-based Elves returned with this today, a beautiful fully-studless RC car in an eye-popping paint scheme. Underneath that bright bodywork is a Power Functions RC system including an ‘L’ drive motor and return-to-centre steering. VKyppwnsall is the builder behind it and you can see all the details, including the RC chassis design, on Brickshelf.
This beautiful bright red flatbed tow truck complete with a lovely matching-era sedan was uncovered by one of our Elfish workforce over on Flickr. Guy H aka V&A Steamworks is the builder (although you’ve probably deduced that already) and you can see more of his classically-themed creations via the link above.