Sorry about this post title, it sounds like something your Dad caught from the ’80s liaison mentioned earlier today. Anyway, this wonderfully nuts Model Team style hot rod comes from Flickr’s Nuno Taborda, and it’s as if he had the Elves in mind when he designed it. Enormous shiny engine? Check. Enormous shiny exhausts? Check. Enormous shiny rear wing? Check.
We must confess though that we like the resultant drag rod almost as much as the Elves do, especially as the bodywork can pivot at the rear to allow access to the faithfully detailed drag racing cockpit. There are more images to see at Nuno’s photostream – click here to make the jump and take a look.
Short of your Dad snorting coke from the bellybutton of a hooker, there is nothing that sums up the 1980s better than a Miami Vice-white Ferrari Testarossa. Each launched in 1984, the Testarossa and the Miami Vice TV show have become symbols of their decade.
Unusually for a successful American TV show though, it was actually the Ferrari that endured longer, with production of the design lasting until 1996, making the Testarossa platform one of Ferrari’s most-produced models.
It’s this particular Testarossa that we like the best, so gloriously and unashamedly ’80s is its appearance. It’s been built by Ciamoslaw Ciamek of Flickr, and there’s more to see of both the car and the characters from the hit TV show at his photostream. Grab yourself a rolled up $100 bill via the link above.
…and split. This deeply cool Volkswagen split-screen barn-door camper van complete with canvas extending high-top comes from TLCB regular Redfern. Chrome detailing is in abundance and you can see more at Red’s photostream by clicking here.
This is a Ferrari 250 GT California, one of the most valuable cars ever made (currently fetching around $20million), and this is one crashing backwards over a cliff.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t a real GT California used in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, and you can recreate the famous scene with your own plastic replica thanks to Flickr’s Peter Blackert, who has constructed the famous car beautifully in brick form.
Click the link above to see the full gallery, and where you’ll also find a link to Peter’s new book which explains how to build a Ferrari 250 GT California model yourself.
BMWs in TLCB’s home nation are everywhere. Whilst we appreciate that to much of our readership they’re seen as a slightly unusual luxury car, to this writer they are the epitome of the boring rep-mobile, driven by boring people on boring roads to impress their boring friends who also drive boring BMWs.
Not so this one though.
This slice of brown Bavarian brilliance is _Tyler‘s Lego reincarnation of Mike Burroughs’ fantastic BMW E28 rat rod. The polar opposite of every dull grey diesel on the roads here, Mike’s E28 reminds us of a time when BMWs were slightly unusual luxury cars. That his ratty coupe would also cause the Residents Association to call an emergency meeting to discuss its effect on their property prices is an added bonus.
There’s more to see of both the real car and _Tyler’s superb 7-wide Lego version via the links in the text above – click on each to make a jump.
Here at The Lego Car Blog we like to think we’re one of the most inclusive Lego sites on the ‘net. This is handy as we’re also quite possibly one of the laziest. Thus filling in for us today as a guest blogger is reader Markus Schlegel, who suggested a creation to us via the Feedback page. Over to Markus…
Regular readers of The Lego Car Blog will know that you don’t need a thousand bricks to build a decent Lego car. Sometimes you only even need a single official set to appear here and make the Elves go crazy. The master of alternate MOCs Nathanael Kuipers has done so by using only parts from the recently released official 31070 Lego Creator Turbo Track Racer. We can’t really tell if his Retro Roadster is more of a Cobra or of a Corvette, but what we can tell is that it looks magnificent from every single angle. Click the links to make the jump to Flickr or MOCpages and see more pictures of this alternate masterpiece.
Things were frosty between The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom back in the 1970s. Scary infomercials played on television explaining what to do in the event of a nuclear attack (die screaming we suspect), whilst every Bond Villain was an evil Russian.
However, political and economic differences aside, were West and Eastern Europe really so different? Take their approach to off-road workhorses for example. One is a simple, painfully slow, easily repairable vehicle of suspect build quality, designed for the state military but used the world over, and the other is, well… exactly the same.
We reckon that had the designers of the Land Rover Series 1 and UAZ 469 met they probably would have got along great. Perhaps there’s a lesson there… Anyhoo, these too charming mini-figure scale recreations of the Land Rover and UAZ come from Flickr’s Pixel Fox, and you can see more of each, as well as his other previously blogged off-roaders, via the link above.
You don’t need a million bricks to appear here at The Lego Car Blog. A few hundred will do, especially if they’re yellow, and especially if they’re arranged as exquisitely as this. This gorgeous Legoland style ’70s Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS comes from Flickr’s Peter Blackert (aka Lego911), and it captures the super-rare version of Porsches most famous model beautifully. There’s lots more of the Carrera 2.7 RS to see at Peter’s photostream – click the link above to make the jump.
Once every so often a car comes along that, for reasons mysterious and illogical, becomes more than just another metal box, a car that captures the imagination, and that becomes more than the sum of its parts. This is one such car, the legendary 1980s Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 / Sprinter Trueno.
If you’re a Japanese drift fan though, you might want to skip this next bit…
The Toyota AE86 was not a special car.
It was in fact a humdrum hatchback designed to take people from point A to point B reliably and at a reasonable cost. Just like every other humdrum hatchback at the time.
But it’s a manual with rear wheel drive we here you cry! It was indeed, but so was pretty much everything else on sale in Europe and Japan back then. So far so ordinary.
But then something strange happened. Moderately successful motorcycle racer / moderately unsuccessful car racer Kunimitsu Takahashi had started to throw cars sideways on track in Japan a few years earlier. Rookie racer Keiichi Tsuchiya liked what he saw, and applied the technique to the illegal street races that he was participating in, becoming a legend in the process.
Keiichi went on to forge a successful professional racing career following his antics on the street, and the car from his illegal racing days, his humble Corolla Levin AE86, became a legend as big as the man that drove it.
Japan’s illegal drift scene exploded, and the arrival of the Initial D manga cartoon in the mid ’90s, featuring a hero driver at the wheel of a Toyota AE86, did nothing to lessen the legend of both the man and the car credited with creating it.
The result is that the little Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 has become one of the most iconic and sought after cars of the ’80s, and as such prices have gone stratospheric. Pretty good for a humble hatchback designed to go to the shops.
If, like us, you don’t quite have the loose change to get your hands on a real AE86, Technic builder RM8 might have just the answer. This is his beautifully engineered AE86 model, and it captures the details of the real ’80s Corolla Levin brilliantly in Technic form. It’s also as fun to drive as drifting a real AE86 up a Japanese mountain pass (probably), with a Power Functions L Motor driving the rear wheels, a Servo Motor powering the steering, and a third-party SBrick bluetooth receiver controlling the signals to both.
There’s lots more to see of RM8’s Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 / Sprinter Trueno at MOCpages and the Eurobricks discussion forum, but much like the real car RM8’s model is something more than the sum of its parts. Take a look at RM8’s enthralling video below to see why…
It’s hard to do justice here to just how amazing the second generation Toyota MR2 was when it was launched in 1989. Toyota, like most of the Japanese manufacturers at the time, were on a roll. Even so, the arrival of the ‘W20’ series MR2 was one of the most shocking the automotive community had seen in ages. Looking like a mid-engined Ferrari and – in turbocharged form – going like one too, the effect would be like Hyundai launching a 458 rival today. Of course most people at the time didn’t know it was only humble Toyota with a four-cylinder engine…
This brilliant Model Team recreation of the early ’90s Toyota MR2 is the work of serial bloggee Senator Chinchilla, and he’s absolutely nailed it. Featuring opening doors, a well-replicated interior, an opening engine lid and a realistic engine, Senator’s MR2 is packed with quality detailing. There’s more to see at his photostream via the link to Flickr above, and if you can find a good second generation MR2 for sale – buy it. Their values are only going to go one way…
Japan’s product design may not have a reputation for originality, but the Japanese can take almost anything pioneered by another part of the world and make it better. See the Mazda MX-5 Miata, the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Nissan GT-R, and pretty much every electronic device ever invented.
We can probably add hot rods to that list now too, thanks to this gorgeous 1932 ‘Takehito Yamato’ Ford Deuce Coupe. This Lego recreation of the real-world car comes from Master MOCer and previous bloggee Andrea Lattanzio aka Norton74, and he’s replicated the original vehicle superbly in Lego form, even building a beautiful period-correct workshop in which to house it.
There’s more to see of the Takehito Yamato at Norton74’s photostream – click the link above to head over to somewhere inbetween America and Japan.
Apologies for using a well known catch-phrase from the laughter vacuum that is The Big Bang Theory in the title, but it fitted with today’s creation…
This is a ‘Zinger’, a ’70s phenomenon that we’re too young to understand, but apparently it involved shrinking your vehicle to an improbably small size, but leaving the engine and wheels as they were. Oh, and sticking a girl on the roof.
This brick-built example of the trend comes from Flickr’s Lino Martins, and there’s more to see of his rather neat Zinger Van at his photostream – click the link above to make the jump.
After publishing some weird vehicles yesterday we’re back with something that’s very The Lego Car Blog. This beautifully reconstructed 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS is the work of Flickr’s VR workshop, and it is – as you can see from the image montage below – quite brilliantly detailed inside and out.
With a highly detailed engine bay and interior, plus opening doors, hood and trunk, VR’s Chevelle is an almost perfect recreation of Chevrolet’s famous early ’70s muscle car. There’s lots more to see at VR workshop’s photostream – click the link above to make the jump.
Škoda, now successfully part of the Volkswagen empire, are making excellent – if painfully boring – cars. Prior to Volkswagen’s ownership though, they were an automotive joke in Europe, ranked alongside Lada at the bottom of the motoring barrel, a constant reminder of the folly of Communism.
Prior to Communisms’s vice-like grip however, Škoda were actually a thoroughly respectable forward-thinking vehicle manufacturer. This is one of their cars from that time, the absolutely beautiful Škoda 1100 OHC, which is probably as close to a real life version of ‘Speed Racer‘ that we’ll ever see.
This gorgeous mini-figure scale recreation of one of Eastern Europe’s most wonderful automotive efforts comes from previous bloggee František Hajdekr, and not only is there an extensive gallery of images available, František has also included building instructions and a ‘how to’ video so that you can build your very own 1100 OHC too. You can find all of the above at František’s photostream – click the link in the text to check it out.
Most modifying houses that apply their, er… ‘expertise’ to vehicles, well… let’s be honest, they absolutely ruin them. Not so with Porsche resto-modders Singer, who take Stuttgart’s finest vehicles and re-fit their inner workings for the modern age. And they often somehow end up looking cooler too. This neatly built Singer 911 comes from previous ‘Featured TFOL‘ Marco. qm, and you can see the full gallery on Flickr via the link above.
