Tag Archives: Isetta

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.

My Other Car’s Also Really Small

Fiat’s original 500 was really small. But back in the 1950s you could go even smaller.

Microcars, often dubbed ‘bubble cars’, were popular in post-war Europe, thanks to limited metal supplies, a need for cheap transportation, and a population that was still largely moving itself about by motorcycle. Or horse.

This is one of the most well known bubble cars, the BMW Isetta. Less well known is the fact it was actually an Italian design by ISO Rivolta that BMW produced under license, so it’s fitting therefore that this one is also built from the bits of an Italian car.

The work of previous bloggee Tomáš Novák (aka PsychoWard666), this beautifully presented BMW Isetta is constructed only from the parts found within the official 10271 Creator Fiat 500 set, although such is its accuracy you’d never know. Unless you see it alongside the 10271’s rather pointless easel of course…

Building instructions are available and there’s lots more of Tomáš’ BMW B-Model to see (including that give-away image) at both Eurobricks and Flickr – click the links above to take a look.

Thrifty Tuesday

After the extravagance of yesterday‘s posts it’s time for a vehicle more befitting of this site’s status. Small, slow, and a little bit rubbish, the BMW Isetta ‘bubble car’ was the product of a continent in ruins after World War 2. Metal was in short supply, it could be driven on a motorcycle license, and taxing it was cheap. So was the car of course, mostly because it wasn’t really a car at all.

As is often the way with weird classic cars, the BMW Isetta is now quite sought after, despite being about as cool as a G-Wiz in the ’50s. Maybe the G-Wiz will be cool in 60 years? Stranger things have happened.

This neat recreation of the ’50s German oddity comes from Flickr’s OutBricks, and you can see more by clicking here.

Royal Baby

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We round off today’s bumper edition of The Lego Car Blog with the news everyone’s talking about; the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s baby boy (or ‘Wills and Kate’ if you’re a reader of the British tabloid newspapers), third in line to the British throne.

We do sometimes like to link TLCB to current events, and we think we’ve done it rather well this time, with Brickshelf user mijasper‘s lovely BMW Isetta bubble car, which is about as ‘baby’ as a car can be.

‘But’, we hear you say, ‘..the Isetta’s German!’. Yes it is. However, the British Royal Family have a slightly German secret.

There, you see! A seamless link after all.