Tag Archives: Japan

Hot Hatch Zenith

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We go from the beginnings of the hot hatch in a small factory in Scotland in the late-‘70s, to their zenith some 45 years later. Yes, the days of the hot hatch are numbered, what with imminent safety, CO2 and fuel legislation, which will effectively outlaw small, fast, fun cars in favour of EV crossovers. Sigh.

Still, they’re going out with a bang, with several hot hatches now making more power than even supercars of a few years ago.

This is Subaru’s last hurrah in the genre, the Japan-only Impreza WRX STI Spec-C.

Packing over twice the power of the world’s first hot hatch, the WRX STI Spec-C features all-wheel-drive, over 400Nm of torque, and a lightened and stiffened body.

This amazing Model Team replica of the ultimate WRX comes from Mihail Rakovskiy of Flickr, who has captured it brilliantly in brick-form, with opening doors, hood and tailgate, a life-like interior, and a superb recreation of the 308bhp turbocharged boxer engine.

There are more excellent images to see at Mihail’s ‘Subaru Impreza WRX STI Spec C’ álbum on Flickr – take a look at the zenith of the hot hatch via the second link in the text above, and you can jump back to its genesis via the first.

Golden Air

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We haven’t written a post regarding golden air transport since we blogged about Donald Trump’s Air Force One showers*. Today though we’re back to golden air travel, courtesy of Ralph Savelsberg and this lovely Mitsubishi Fuso Canter box truck, wearing the livery of Japan’s ‘Meitetsu Golden Air Cargo’ company.

Ralph has captured both the truck and livery beautifully in Miniland scale, and there’s more of the Meitetsu Mitsubishi to see at his photostream. Click here for golden air delivery.

*Trump likes to be pissed on.

My Other Car’s a Ferrari

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Once seen as a knock-off Ferrari, yet now revered more than the Maranello products it sought to take on, Honda’s NSX is often regarded as the pinnacle of driver’s cars.

It’s fitting then, that this stunning Technic recreation of the first generation Honda NSX is built only from the parts found within an official Ferrari product, the LEGO Technic 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3.

Built by Eurobricks’ Romanista, who is making not just their TLCB debut but also posting their first ever creation online, this amazing alternate includes all-wheel double-wishbone suspension with positive caster, working steering with Ackermann geometry, a V6 engine linked to a functional gearbox, pop-up headlights, and opening doors, front trunk and engine cover.

Full details and further imagery of Romanista’s spectacular 42143 alternative can be found at the Eurobricks discussion forum via the link above, and if you’d like to check out TLCB’s huge archive of brilliant B-Models that have appeared here over the years – many of which have building instructions available – you can start your search by clicking here.

Type-BWAAAA

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The Lego Car Blog Elves are running around the office making VTEC noises. Which isn’t annoying at all. Still, said racket is at least accurate, because – around TLCB Towers at least – the nighttime streets echo to the sounds of the youths of today driving their ageing Civic Type-Rs fitted with silly exhausts on full throttle. Everywhere. BWAAAAAA!

Still, the clientele isn’t really Honda’s fault, and the late-’90s first generation Civic Type-R (based on the sixth generation Civic) is rapidly heading to genuine classic status. Which will soon make it too expensive for the aforementioned youths to be irritating with.

This one (and the source of the Elven office ‘BWAAAAA!’ing) is the work of previous bloggee Daniel Helms, who has absolutely nailed the first generation ‘EK9’ Civic Type-R in Model Team form.

Opening doors reveal a life-like interior, which accurately recreates the real Civic’s ’90s plasticky dashboard via some excellent bespoke decals, there’s a realistic replica of the 185bhp, 8,200rpm 1.6 litre naturally aspirated ‘B16B’ engine under the opening hood, plus the model features an opening tailgate, working suspension, and custom ‘Type-R’ stickers and Honda badging.

There’s loads more of Daniel’s terrific Type-R to see at Eurobricks, Flickr, and Bricksafe, and you can head there on full throttle at 8,200rpm via the links above. BWAAAAA….

Diggidy

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We like giant yellow diggers here at The Lego Car Blog. Because we’re six. Luckily for us one of the Elves found this one, a 20-ton Komatsu PC200, as replicated in brick-form beautifully by previous bloggee Y Akimeshi. With a posable arm and bucket, slewing superstructure, and a mound of brick-built earth to dig, Y’s creation is one of our favourites so far, and there’s more of the model to see at their photostream. Click the link above if you’re diggin’ it too.

Cool Box

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Like the Ford F-150 in America, the Honda Super Cub in East Asia, and the Toyota Corolla almost everywhere, the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter is background street furniture for a huge proportion of the world.

Built in half-a-dozen countries, across eight generations and six decades, and re-badged as a Hyundai, Nissan, plus a host of other brands, the Canter is one of the most widespread and ubiquitous vehicles on the planet.

This one is a fifth generation fridge truck version, as used in their thousands to deliver food produce in the world’s restaurant back-streets. It comes from Max Ra of Flickr, who has recreated the Canter brilliantly, picking out the details of what is essentially a white box to create an instantly-recognisable brick-built replica.

There’s more of the model to see at Max’s ‘Mitsubishi Canter 5th Generation Refrigerated Truck’ album, and you can take a look at all the images via the link in the text above.

The Slowest Car in the World

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You might think that the slowest car in the world would be some steam-powered contraption from the late 1800s, or perhaps the thing that moves the space shuttle. But no, if the internet is to believed the slowest car ever is in fact a 200bhp sports car from the late 2010s.

Which just goes to show how the internet’s comments sections are filled with more nonsensical hyperbole than the inside of Donald Trump’s head.

The Subaru BRZ and its Toyota GT86/Scion FRS siblings are throughly brilliant analogue (as much as a modern car can be) rear-wheel-drive sports cars, with low weight, modest power, and – admittedly – the same torque as a smoothie-maker.

Still, that just made getting the most from the sublime chassis even more fun, and we’re pretty sure that when everything is electric, automatic, and festooned with electronic safety interference (which is the reason the car’s second-generation will last just a few short years), the BRZ and GT86 will become highly sought-after classics.

This fantastic Model Team recreation of the slowest-car-in-the-world-according-to-the-internet comes from Flickr’s Mihail Rakovskiy, who has replicated the Subaru BRZ brilliantly. Opening doors, a superbly realistic engine under the raising hood, an opening trunk, and a life-like interior all feature, and there’s lots more to see at Mihail’s ‘Subaru BRZ’ album. Click the link above to make your way very slowly there.

2000GT

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In this writer’s opinion, the most beautiful car ever made is not a Ferrari, Bugatti, or other exotic… it’s a Toyota. A white one.

This is the 2000GT, Toyota’s record-setting 1967 sports car built in conjunction with Yamaha, and surely one of the most perfect car designs of all time.

This lovely Speed Champions recreation of the bewitching 2000GT comes from Thomas Gion, apparently taking eight iterations before the shape was right. 3D-printed wheels and some inspired parts choices make this well worth a closer look, and you can make the jump to 1967 via the link in the text above.

Shine On

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The Lego Car Blog Elves, as well as liking racing stripes, flame-throwers, and monster trucks, also have a penchant for all things shiny. Cue much excitement when one of their number found this, ianying616‘s ‘Takada Shingen’ motorcycle. Named after “one of the most powerful Sengoku-period daimyos” (we Wikipedia-ed it…), ianying’s creation packs in a whole lot of chrome, and there’s more to see of his exceptionally shiny motorbike at his photostream. Take a look via the link, or alternatively head down a Wikipedia 16th century Japanese rabbit-hole…

Porco Rosso

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This ace looking aircraft is a Savoia S.21 racing floatplane, as featured in the Japanese animated movie ‘Porco Rosso’. Like most things from Japanese cartoons (fighting robots, ball-stored transforming creatures, giant lizards, and improbably-proportioned schoolgirls to name a few), the Savoia S.21 not real, but it is titled after (and vaguely inspired by) an actual 1910s Italian floatplane.

Flown by a cigarette smoking, wine drinking, moustachioed pig, the S.21 is used to hunt air pirates, who are like regular pirates, only in the air. Look, it doesn’t have to make any sense, the plane’s still cool, and there’s more to see of this Lego version courtesy of LEGO7 on Flickr via the link.

A Supercar. Only Smaller

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Japan’s wonderful ‘Kei car’ class, which restricts size, weight, and power in favour of tax breaks, is one of our very favourite things in the automotive world. The antidote to the SUV arms-race, it includes vehicles of almost every type, from one-box people movers to off-roaders, fire engines, and tipper trucks. Back in the early ’90s, it even included a supercar. Kinda…

This is the Autozam AZ-1 / Suzuki Cara, a gull-wing doored, mid-engined, turbo-charged coupe built in collaboration between Mazda and Suzuki, that took all of the ingredients of a ’90s supercar, and miniaturised them.

With a government-mandated 67bhp, the speed was miniaturised too, but then would you really want to do 180mph in something the size of a large shoe?

This one is even smaller, being a Speed Champions recreation of the mad ’90s original, it comes from Ilya M, there are free building instructions available, and there’s more to see on Flickr. Shrink a supercar via the link above!

Drift Tax

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Do you own a Japanese sports car from the 1990s? If so, your retirement is paid for. Because at the current trajectory, previously near-worthless Japanese metal will be valued at around $1billion a piece by 2030.

Supras, worth under £10,000 in TLCB’s home nation just a decade ago, are now up to £50,000. MR2s, which were scrap value just a few years ago, now make £10,000. And the humble Nissan 240SX – even a knackered ‘project car’, now costs five figures, with good examples north of £20,000. For a thirty year old Nissan!

We don’t pretend to understand it, but we suspect much of the hype is down to the video games Gen-X-ers and Millennials played two decades ago, which were awash with modified Japanese metal.

The resultant phenomenon today is a boom in ’90s Japanese sports cars, with all of them ending up looking likes this; 1saac W.’s superb modified Nissan Silvia / 240SX. Wide wheels, silly camber, a phat exhaust, and huge aero tick all the drifty boxes, and you can take a closer look at 1saac’s immensely valuable Nissan at his photostream.

Click the link above to pay the Drift Tax, whilst we rue the fact that Gran Turismo didn’t feature the sheddy old Rovers that make up TLCB carpark instead of ’90s Japanese sports cars…

I Said a Ten Second Car

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Here it is. The car responsible for more hype, mis-understood physics, and ignorant YouTube comments than any other over the past two decades. Yup, this is Brian O’Conner’s modified Toyota Supra Mark IV from first film in the seemingly never-ending ‘The Fast and the Furious’ movie franchise.

Complete with retina-searing orange bodywork, the single worst decals ever applied to an automobile, and various unspecified modifications, the star movie car would became an icon. An icon that, despite LEGO having a license both with Universal Pictures and Toyota, is yet to become an official LEGO set.

Cue previous bloggee barneius, who has recreated that Toyota Supra from 2001’s ‘The Fast and the Furious’ brilliantly in Speed Champions scale. Retina-searing orange bodywork, the single worst decals ever applied to an automobile, and various unspecified modifications have all been faithfully replicated in brick form, and if you fancy your owning your very own ‘ten second car’ there are building instructions and purchasable stickers too.

More superbly presented images of barneus’ build are available to view at his ‘Toyota Supra MK4 The Fast and the Furious’ Flickr album, and you can live your life a quarter-mile at a time via the link in the text above, before starting a fight in the comments about how the Toyota Supra Mark IV is the best and most awesomest car ever.

Speed Champions 76917 ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) | Set Preview

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Our sneaky Elves have unearthed another new-for-2023 LEGO set, and the names just keep getting longer. This is the brand new Speed Champions 76917 ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34).

As featured in the Oscar-winning 2003 ‘The Fast and the Furious’ sequel… wait, no that’s not right… Ah yes, the awful 2003 ‘The Fast and the Furious’ sequel, Brian O’Conner’s modified Nissan Skyline GT-R was as integral to the plot as street racing culture, something about drugs, and saying ‘bruh’ in every line of dialogue.

LEGO’s officially-licensed Speed Champions set recreates Brian’s whip really rather well to our eyes, with a decent balance between brick-built detail and decals, utilising plenty of ‘SNOT’ techniques.

Aimed at ages 9+, the Speed Champions 76917 ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) set includes 319 pieces, a ‘Brian O’Conner’ mini-figure, and will reach stores in early 2023. Will that Supra be next?

A Supra Set of Mods

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Toyota’s Supra has – thanks to car culture, hype, a certain move franchise, and internet exaggeration – become a legend impossible for anything, even the Supra itself, to live up to.

But get past the internet commenters, and the A90 Supra is really rather good, and as modifiable as its predecessor too.

Flickr’s 3D supercarBricks has recreated the latest Toyota Supra in fine fashion, capturing the exceptionally difficult curves of the car’s form superbly in Danish plastic.

Of course, being a Supra on the internet, it has to be modified too, with 3D duly obliging via a set of wide arches, an enormous rear spoiler, and some phat rims. Extra internet points scored.

There’s more of the build to to see at 3D’s photostream, and you can click the link in the text above to make the jump.