Tag Archives: IX

Tokyo Drift

When the ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise headed for Japan for its third instalment, abandoning its main characters in the process, drifting was the new street racing. And the obvious car for drifting is an all-wheel-drive saloon famed for its grip…

Still, a lot more of the plot made a lot less sense than the inexplicable choice of a Mitsubishi Evo IX, so we’re willing to look the other way. Particular as it’s led to a creation as brilliant as this.

Recreating Sean’s modified Mitsubishi Evo IX from the movie, previous bloggee ArtemyZotov has constructed a superb homage to the Japanese super-saloon, with working steering and suspension, a highly detailed transverse 4-cylinder engine, opening doors, hood and trunk, and movie-accurate decals.

Building instructions are available and you can try to get sideways in Tokyo in a deeply inappropriate car at the Eurobricks forum via the link above.

The Future of Racing. Kinda.

The days of petrol-powered racing are numbered. As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the need to race with them is declining also. But electric racers… er, let’s just say they don’t match internal combustion yet.

Retaining the noise and spectacle of motorsport is therefore at forefront of organisers’ minds, with several options including synthetic fuels and hydrogen combustion being explored to replace petrol.

Cue SFH‘s superb recreation of the ‘Forze IX’ hydrogen endurance racer, which – being a fuel cell rather than combustion – solves precisely none of the noise and spectacle issues that plague electric motorsport. Oh.

But what a fuel cell does do is enable electric racing without the need for a giant heavy battery. A battery that requires recharging, taking hours to do so (or – as per early Formula E racing – changing cars half-way through the race, which was profoundly stupid), nor the mining of rare-earth metals to create it.

Able to refuel in roughly the same time as a petrol racing car, a hydrogen fuel cell allows for endurance racing without the need to blow-up dead dinosaurs. And that’s awesome.

It’s just not quite as awesome as blowing up the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, which creates all of the noise of petrol, but none of the emissions. We know which we prefer.

Christmabishi

The seamlessly Christmas-linked titles keep coming here at The Lego Car Blog. You don’t get that kind of professionalism at The Brothers Brick. Anyway, here’s another definitely-Christmassy post, in the form of a mid-00’s Mitsubishi Evo IX, as created by Daniel Helms (aka danielsmocs).

There’s working rubber-band suspension, opening doors, hood and trunk, a detailed and removable engine, lifelike drivetrain and interior, and custom decals and wheels, with more to see at both Eurobricks and Flickr.

Have a Merry Chrismabishi via the links above!