Tag Archives: Ferrari

Galactic Thievery

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If there’s one thing we pride ourselves on at The Lego Car Blog, it’s beating The Brothers Brick to publishing creations. OK, that and ‘Your Mom’ jokes. Two things*.

Cue much Elven shuffling and looking at the floor therefore, when we found these superb space-based Speed Champions racers at the aforementioned website fun-vacuum, instead of being brought to us by one of our smelly little workers.

Still, much as we hate losing a race with The Brothers Brick, we do rather like the idea of racing in space, particularly if the racers feature the repurposed decals and printed parts from LEGO’s excellent Speed Champions sets.

TLCB newcomer Eric TheSkeleton owns the hands behind them and there’s more to see of each glorious galactic racer at his photostream. Jump to the action via the link above, whilst we post something that’s not stolen from a vastly more competent Lego site…

*And Putin-has-a-tiny-penis jokes. Beating The Brothers Brick, Your Mom jokes, and mocking Putin. Three things.

Build-an-F40

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Ferrari may have built a surprisingly large number of F40s, but even with our big-time Lego Blogging Money, owning one is considerably out of reach. However this stunning Technic version is rather more attainable, and it features a working V8 engine, 5+R gearbox, independent suspension, opening clamshells, and pop-up headlights just like the real thing.

Eurobricks’ sebulba56 is the designer, and they’ve made building instructions available so you can create your own brick-built replica of Ferrari’s legendary 40th-birthday-present-to-itself too.

Full details can be found at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, where images of mechanical break-downs, a complete description, and a link to building instructions can all be found.

What Might Have Been

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The story of the 2022 Formula 1 season is one of what might have been. After years in the doldrums, Scuderia Ferrari finally had the fastest car on the grid, and not only that, they had one of the most talented driver pairings too. Ferrari duly won two of the first three races, with fastest lap at all three, and with only one podium place dropped. And then – courtesy of some inexplicable tactical decisions – they threw it all away.

Now longstanding readers of this crumbling ruin in the corner of the internet will know that we aren’t Scuderia Ferrari’s biggest fans, what with them being immoral scumbags and everything, but if they stopped us having to see Christian Horner’s smug face every week we’d have taken it. However, unfortunately for Ferrari’s drivers – and us – some of the worst decision making in modern Formula 1 history gifted Red Bull’s Max Verstappen a second consecutive World Championship, and Horner’s smugness gained its own gravity.

Still, Ferrari’s 2022 F1 car looked rather lovely, and probably was the fastest car of the season, if only the team weren’t run by muppets, and it looks just as stunning in brick form courtesy of Noah_L, who has added the F1-75 to his amazing catalogue of Scuderia Ferrari racers.

Noah’s astonishing attention to detail is brought to life by some truly masterful building techniques, with superbly replicated decals and impeccable presentation making his Scuderia Ferrari F1-75 one of the most realistic real-world cars of the year so far.

A beautiful gallery of imagery is available to view on Flickr, where links to Noah’s previous Scuderia Ferrari racers and building instructions for the F1-75 pictured here can also be found. Build your own 2022 title challenger and reenact Ferrari’s strategic incompetence (not pitting under the safety car, pitting two cars at once, pitting for the wrong tyres…) via the link above. Just don’t be surprised if Christian Horner appears out of nowhere looking smug.

Life Begins at Forty

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Or so people in their 40s like to say. For Ferrari however, it’s very probably true, as – despite their amazing pre-1980s back-catalogue – the Maranello marque’s all-time high water mark came in 1987 with its fortieth birthday present to itself, the astonishing F40.

Pioneering twin-turbochargers, a kevlar and carbon-fibre body, and semi-flat under-tray, the F40 was the fastest, most powerful, and most expensive Ferrari yet, and the last to be personally approved by Enzo Ferrari himself before his death in 1988.

All of which means F40s are now worth around $1.5million, even though they are not – at least in supercar terms – rare cars, with over 1,300 produced during the model’s five year production run.

Unfortunately the result of such iconic status is that even TLCB’s executive team can’t afford one, despite the immense riches that blogging about Lego brings, but no matter because today we have the next best thing; Lachlan Cameron’s brilliant Technic Ferrari F40 replica.

Utilising the latest parts from the official LEGO Technic 42143 Ferrari Dayton SP3 set, Lachlan has faithfully recreated the definitive Ferrari in brick form, complete with a v8 engine and 5-speed gearbox, working steering and suspension, opening clamshells and doors, a highly detailed interior and engine bay, and pop-up headlights.

Accurate decals, chromed pieces, and printed tyres maximise the realism, and there’s lots more to see of this incredible creation at Lachlan’s ‘Ferrari F40’ album on Flickr and at the Eurobricks forum.

Join Ferrari’s fortieth birthday celebrations via the links in the text above, plus you can find out Lachlan builds amazing models like this via his interview here at The Lego car Blog; click these words to read more.

Ferrari LaFerrari | Picture Special

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You might think Japan has the stupidest car names. The Isuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard, the Daihatsu Naked, the Mazda Bongo Friendee, and (most ironically) the Mitsubishi Carisma – to name a few – are all incredibly daft, but the most ludicrous car name of all is surely the Ferrari The Ferrari.

The Ferrari LaFerrari is stupid only in name though, as in all other respects the Ferrari Ferrari Ferrari is one of the greatest hypercars of the modern age.

The first production car to feature an F1 kinetic energy recovery system, the LaFerrariFerrari produced 950bhp from its combination of a 6.3 litre V12 and an electric motor, whilst – somewhat superfluously – improving fuel economy over past V12 Ferraris by around 40%.

This jaw-dropping Technic replica of the Ferrari FerrariLaFerrari comes from T Lego of Eurobricks, who has recreated the 2013 hybrid hypercar in astonishing detail.

An unbelievably accurate exterior, complete with opening butterfly doors, engine cover and  front trunk, hides a modular chassis equipped with a V12 engine hooked up to an 8-speed sequential paddle-shift gearbox, dynamic suspension with nose-lift connected to the working steering, a deployable spoiler and aero flaps, and bespoke 3D-printed wheels.

It’s an incredible Technic creation and one you can take a complete in-depth look at via the Eurobricks forum, where a wealth of incredible imagery and full build details can be found. Click the link above to check out T Lego’s amazing model of the car so good that Ferrari named it twice.

Speed Champions 2023 | Set Previews

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It’s the final part of our 2023 Set Previews, and today it’s perhaps LEGO’s most successful and well-regarded range of recent times; the fantastic officially licensed Speed Champions theme.

LEGO’s decision to bring real-world cars to bedroom floors everywhere at pocket money prices was an inspired one, and the list of partner manufacturers is now at eighteen strong. Yup, that means there’s a brand new manufacturer joining the line-up for 2023 – read on to find out who!

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76914 – Ferrari 812 Competizione

The 2023 Speed Champions range kicks off with this, the 76914 Ferrari 812 Competizione. For $25 / £20 you can own one the greatest Ferraris of recent times, constructed from 261 pieces including a mini-figure, a printed canopy, and a lot of stickers. Too many? Well to our eyes yes, but LEGO know what appeals to 9 year olds, and they’ll be on to a winner.

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76915 – Pagani Utopia

Yes the eighteenth manufacturer to join the Speed Champions line-up is Pagani! Maker of wild AMG-powered carbon-fibre hypercars, the Utopia is the brand’s latest, with an 850bhp 6 litre twin-turbo V12 and an ultra-exclusive 99-unit production run, although we suspect there will be a few more owners of the car in brick-form. Expect 249 pieces, lots of stickers, a slightly lazily-printed canopy, and a $35 / £20 price.

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76916 – Porsche 963

2023 will finally see the expansion of the prototype series at Le Mans, with a raft of manufacturers joining to challenge Toyota’s dominance. Two categories will race within the top-tier class; LMH (Toyota, Peugeot, Ferrari), in which full works-built prototypes can be built using entirely bespoke components, and LMDh (Cadillac, Acura, Alpine and Porsche), using spec chassis and hybrid systems. 76916 brings Porsche’s entry to the Speed Champions range, with 280 pieces, clever SNOT building techniques, and stickers on every surface.

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76918 – McLaren Solus GT & McLaren F1 LM

2023’s final Speed Champions set is a double, featuring two cars from the McLaren range. OK, one really, as the 25-unit, V10-Judd-engined, track-only Solus GT that we hadn’t heard of exists only in Gran Turismo at the moment. But let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be buying 76918 for that…

The reason we all want 76918 is for the fantastic McLaren F1 LM, which looks absolutely magnificent in orange bricks. It doesn’t even need many stickers. 581 pieces, two mini-figures, and some genuinely tricky building techniques feature, making it one of the best Speed Champions cars to date. And there’s a Solus GT or something too.

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That’s the brand new 2023 Speed Champions line-up; five new sets (including the previously-revealed 76917 ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ Nissan Skyline GT-R R-34), one new manufacturer, and six-hundred new stickers. We’ll be taking the 76918 McLaren F1, and consider it an expensive single model set, but with a bonus pack of white and black parts thrown in for free. Couldn’t LEGO have made it with two F1s instead?…

Life at the Top

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For those lucky enough to be fantastically wealthy, they’ll probably be slightly more so by the time you’ve finished reading this post. That’s because to make money, all you need is… money.

Take the Ferrari Enzo, a $660,000 car when it was new twenty years ago, and now worth just over $3million. Even inflation-adjusted that’s still an increase of $2.1million. That rise equates to $8,750 a month over the last two decades – double the median wage in America, tax free, and without working a day.

With a bleak economic forecast ahead we can expect many will suffer hardship probably not seen since the 2008 crash, but the new (unelected) Government of the TLCB’s home nation (it’s complicated…) has just slashed tax for the wealthy. Because to make money all you need is money. We’d make a joke about trickle-down economics, but 99% of readers wouldn’t get it.

Thus we won’t be previewing LEGO’s newly revealed $600 set, because it seems in rather poor taste at the moment (plus it’s Star Wars), and instead we’ll use this rather excellent recreation of an early-’00s hypercar by Flickr’s 3D supercarBricks to moan about the growing poverty in the sixth largest economy on earth.

So keep your eyeballs on the ads on this page, click them if you’re interested, and we’ll give away what we can of the proceeds. It might be needed more than ever this winter.

The Most Expensive Car in the World…

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…can now be yours! The Ferrari 250 GTO is today worth approximately $70 million. That’s the equivalent to the entire annual value of smallest economy in the world (Tuvalu), 3,500 new Toyota Corollas, 1/3 of a Zlatan Ibrahimovic, or 1/35th of an Elon Musk. Which puts it slightly out of reach even for us here at The Lego Car Blog.

Flickr’s barneius can help though, having built this most excellent 314-piece Speed Champions recreation of the world’s most valuable car, and made building instructions available too, so you can create it for yourself. Click the link above to pretend you’ve got more money than Tuvalu.

Tinder Lies

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This is a Dino 246, the late-’60s to mid-’70s Ferrari-that-wasn’t-a-Ferrari.

The Dino 206 and 246 compared favourably with the Porsche 911 and other sports cars of the time, but the 2.0 and 2.4 litre V6 Fiat engines fitted were considered too entry-level for the main Ferrari brand, despite Ferrari upping the horsepower figure by 20bhp.

By ‘upping the horsepower figure’ we do mean that literally; Ferrari’s number may have been 20bhp higher than Fiat’s, but the engine was identical. It’s the ’60s motoring equivalent of adding a few inches to your height on Tinder…

Despite the outright lies we do rather like the Dino, and time has been kind to it, with a quick search revealing the Dinos for sale today are all listed as ‘Ferraris’. And they probably have an extra 20bhp in the performance figures too.

This lovely Speed Champions recreation of the not-quite-a-Ferrari comes from Flickr’s Thomas Gion, who has captured the Dino 246 GT beautifully. There’s more to see at Thomas’ ‘1969 “Ferrari” Dino 246 GT’ album‘ on Flickr – take a look via the link above whilst this TLCB Writer makes a minor amendment his Tinder profile.

Carbon Clam

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The Ferrari F40 was a technical marvel when it was revealed in 1987. The last car personally approved by Enzo Ferrari, the F40 deployed twin-turbo-chargers to produce around 500bhp from its relatively small 2.9 litre V8, featured electronically adjustable suspension, and became the first series-production car in the world to be built from composite materials; carbon fibre and kevlar.

Often overlooked, it’s the F40’s composite bodywork that is its most ground-breaking feature, and Darren Thew has recreated the complex opening front and rear carbon fibre clamshells brilliantly in Technic form.

Working steering, suspension, pop-up headlights, and a realistic V8 engine live underneath the huge opening pieces, and there’s more to see of Darren’s excellent Technic Ferrari F40 on Flickr.

Click the link above to take a look inside the clam.

Technic 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3 | Set Preview

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This is the brand new flagship LEGO Technic Supercar, and it’s a rather special one…

Following the Technic 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, 42083 Bugatti Chiron, and the 42115 Lamborghini we’d never heard of, this is the brand new 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3, the fourth 1:8 scale officially-licensed Technic Supercar to join LEGO’s already impressive back catalogue.

Constructed from 3,778 pieces (four of which are some beautiful new bespoke wheels), 42143 offers spectacular visual realism for a Technic set, with authentic badging, a highly detailed interior behind spring-loaded opening butterfly doors, and a host of working Technic features.

These include a V12 piston engine (with full-size 2×2 pistons), working suspension via some awesome-looking shocks, functional steering, an eight-speed paddle-shift operated sequential gearbox, and functional ‘air boxes’, although we don’t know what that last one means.

Measuring 59cm / 23in in length, the LEGO 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3 is geared as much towards being a display piece as a functional model, as evidenced by the ’18+’ age (also known as the “It’s not just a toy, honest!” excuse), presentation display stand, ‘exclusive packaging’, and the rather wanky optional accompanying coffee table book, ‘The Sense of Perfection’, for an additional $80.

The rather splendid looking LEGO Technic 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3 will be available from the LEGO online store from June, costing a hefty $400 / £350, with other retailers following in August, and you can see more of LEGO’s incredible new Supercar set (and the wanky $80 book) at the dedicated 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3 page via LEGO.com here.

Acceptable in the ’80s

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Things were different in the ’80s. Shoulder pads, ‘greed is good’, florescent clothes, cassette tapes, and Russian totalitarian oppression. Wait, that last one’s making something of a comeback…

Ferrari were big in the 80’s too, but whilst we’re glad they’ve stuck around today (unlike Russian totalitarian oppression), we still think they were better in the decade of parachute pants and the mix tape.

The reasons for this are three-fold; 1. Ferrari were more interested in selling cars than merchandise, 2. they hadn’t even thought of making an SUV, and 3. their cars were fabulous.

The 308 GTB, Testarossa, and – of course- the magnificent F40 graced countless ’80s bedroom walls, and Flickr’s Laszlo Torma has recreated all three beautifully in Speed Champions scale.

Laszlo has used the same cockpit piece for all three, yet with clever building techniques and smart attention to detail, each car resembles its real-world counterpart brilliantly.

There’s more of the classic Ferrari trio to see at Laszlo’s photostream, where a link to building instructions can also be found so that you can recreate these iconic ’80s supercars for yourself!

One Part Three Speed

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LEGO’s increase to eight studs of width for their Speed Champions range has added a dose more realism to the real world vehicles represented in brick form. Key to this change was a new windshield piece, which is somehow perfect for all manner of completely different supercars.

Previous bloggee Fabrice Larcheveque has utilised this part superbly, creating a myriad of instantly recognisable Speed Champions supercars centred around a uniform cockpit brick. We have three of his builds here today, with a Ferrari F40, Lamborghini Countach, and Ferrari 512 BB from left to right.

Each captures its real world counterpart brilliantly, with clever sticker use – as per LEGO’s official Speed Champions sets – making them even more authentic.

Building instructions are available and there’s more to see of these three ’80s supercars, plus many more besides, at Fabrice’s photostream. Take a look via the link.

Acceptable in the ’80s

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And the 2020s it seems, as the once fairly unfashionable Ferrari Testarossa is now a bonafide millionaires’ toy, worth much much more than the entire contents TLCB office car park.

This one comes from Technic-building legend Lachlan Cameron (aka LoxLego), whose Technic recreation of the ’80s supercar includes a full remote control drivetrain, LED lights, custom (and really rather accurate) wheels, working suspension, a flat-12 engine, pop-up headlights, and opening doors, front trunk and engine cover.

There’s much more of the build to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum and on Flickr, plus you can read Lachlan’s interview here at TLCB in the Master MOCers series by clicking here.

*Today’s title song.

Life Begins at Forty

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Or so say people over the age of forty. For Ferrari, with whom we have a love/hate relationship here at TLCB Towers, Enzo decided to celebrate his brand’s big 4-0 with a spectacular present to itself; a carbon-fibre, twin-turbocharged racing car for the road.

This was back in 1987 too, so the F40 was nothing short of a sensation. 35 years later and Ferrari’s big launch is an SUV…

Still, we suppose it’s not Ferrari’s fault that the best selling Lamborghini (by miles) is an SUV, the best selling Bentley (by miles) is an SUV, and the best selling Porsche (by miles) is an SUV, but the future of cars is looking bleaker by the day.

Which is probably why classic cars like the F40 are worth astronomical sums these days, as people rail against the SUVness of everything new.

Flickr’s LN TEKNIK is the builder giving us license to reminisce about ‘how things were better in the olden days’, with this gorgeous 1:10 scale Technic Ferrari F40.

Equipped with the full suite of Technic Supercar functions, LN’s recreation of the definitive Ferrari includes working steering, suspension, gearbox and engine, plus pop-up headlights, opening doors, and front and rear clam-shells. And some slightly dodgy looking non-LEGO wheels.

Which means in this post we’ve moaned about SUVs, non-standard wheels, and declared that things aren’t as good as they used to be. And the TLCB is only 10 – imagine how grumpy we’ll be in 30 years! Still, life begins then…