Tag Archives: mercedes-benz

An F1 Car for the Road

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…is always a terrible idea. Every few years a new ‘F1 car for the road’ is announced, and it is inevitably an unreliable, undrivable, top-trumps card.

But then Mercedes-Benz AMG decided to have a go, and the result is… an unreliable, undrivable top-trumps card.

However perhaps that’s not as daft as it sounds. All 275 units of the AMG Project One – each powered by a 1,050bhp 1.6 litre hybrid Formula 1 engine and costing $2.72 million – were sold out years before the first car was finished, to customers who will park them in their garages alongside seventeen other unused hypercars.

Which means the fact that the AMG Project One doesn’t work is as relevant to the ownership experience as calorie information is to a KFC bucket meal customer.

Cue 3D supercarBricks‘ excellent recreation of Mercedes-AMG’s ‘F1 car for the road’, complete with opening butterfly doors, 3D-printed wheels, and as much likelihood of actually being driven as its full-size counterpart.

Top drawer building techniques and high quality presentation abound, and there’s lots more of the model to see at 3D’s photostream. Grab a KFC bucket meal, ignore the calorie information, and take a look via the link above.

Genesis

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This is where it all began. Supercars, muscle cars, minivans, Tesla, drive-thus, The Fast and the Furious franchise, Magic Tree air fresheners, and the Pontiac Aztek. All trace their existence back to this, the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the world’s first commercially-available motorcar.

Designed by German engineer Carl Benz, and financed by his wealthy wife, around twenty-five Patent-Motorwagens were produced, each powered by a 950cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine making between 2⁄3hp and 1.5hp. The car transported Carl’s wife Bertha and their two sons on the first ever long-distance car journey (66 miles) to raise publicity for the machine, a feat that she undertook without Carl’s knowledge or approval from the authorities. Which makes her excellent.

It worked of course, and began Benz’s journey to becoming one of the most well known companies on earth, ushering in the complete dominance of the internal-combustion-engined motorcar too, with all the planetary consequences that followed.

This lovely recreation of the motorcar’s genesis comes from Simon Pickard, who has built and presented the Benz Patent-Motorwagen beautifully in brick form. Click the link above to take a look at where it all began.

Newnimog

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Making not only their TLCB debut, but their MOCing debut too, today’s creation publicises a newcomer to the online Lego community via a well-trodden path; the Mercedes-Benz Unimog.

We’ve featured dozens of brick-built Unimogs here over the years, and TLCB debutant Rajesh Sriram (aka Voldemort87) adds another to the roster, with his excellent fully RC truck trial version of the famous off-road truck.

PoweredUp motors deliver the all-wheel drive, steering, and high/low gearbox, whilst the cabin tilts, there’s a working piston engine, and all-wheel suspension too.

There’s more to see of Rajesh’s first published MOC at both Eurobricks and Flickr, and you can take a look via the links above.

 

Asshattery

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Wealthy criminals, Dubai-based influencers, rappers, and oil sheiks – this is your car.

The Mercedes-Benz AMG G63 6×6 is probably the most pointless vehicle produced today. OK, apart from this one, but the brief is pretty much the same; be an Ostentatious Asshat.

Still, if you’re reading this and you’re seven, a TLCB Elf, or one of the aforementioned Ostentatious Asshats, here at TLCB we cater to all tastes.

Cue w35wvi’s rather excellent recreation of Mercedes-Benz’s most improbable vehicle, which captures the absurdity wonderfully, and – rather appropriately – it’s presented in some kind of over-the-top underground garage too.

Instructions are available and there’s more to see at w35wvi’s ‘Mercedes-Benz AMG G63 6×6’ album on Flickr. Join us and other Ostentatious Asshats via the link!

Poop-Poop!

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Is there any car more worthy of a Toad-of-Toad-Hall-style ‘Poop-Poop!’ exclamation than this one?

The 1928-’32 Mercedes-Benz SSK is the very definition of Gatsby-esque opulence, with this Speed Champions scale recreation by Flickr’s Pixeljunkie capturing its excess brilliantly.

Yellow bodywork, shiny bits, bonnet straps, and an over-sized Mercedes-Benz badge ensure the peasants can’t miss you, and there’s more to see at Pixel’s photostream via the link.

Click the link above for even more Poop-Poopery.

Paaaal-finger…

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We thought about butchering the Shirley Bassey ‘Goldfinger’ theme song for this post, but re-writing iconic song lyrics to fit a truck-mounted-crane-company seemed a bit of a stretch, even for us. And we’ve stretched pretty far before!

We’ll stick to the model then, a beautifully presented Mercedes-Benz Actros 4140 truck, complete with a fully foldable Palfinger crane fitted behind the cab.

Previous bloggee Damian Z. is the builder, and he’s used some fantastic techniques to replicate not only the truck and crane’s aesthetics, but their movements too. A full gallery of top-quality imagery is available to view how it’s been done, and you can head there via the link above.

Yule Logs

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We’re back on track! With today’s other posts being a vehicle we vehemently hate and one with no tenuous Christmas link whatsoever, here’s one that ticks both boxes.

We love the classic ’70s Mercedes-Benz Unimog, and Lego recreations of it surely don’t come any better than this; proran’s beautiful Christmas-coloured Model Team U406 tipper, a creation five years in the making.

One image in particular caught our eye, in which proran has replicated a real-world U406 beside a log pile with wonderful attention to detail. We rarely publish images of real vehicles, but this is such a gorgeous composition we simply had too. Plus it makes the title work.

Alongside the stunning exterior, proran has faithfully recreated the Unimog U406’s mechanicals too, with solid-axle suspension, working steering via the wheel, four-wheel-drive linked to a 4-cylinder engine, a tipping bed, and front and rear PTOs selectable from within the cab.

A Power Functions motor can be applied to demonstrate the model’s functions, which you can watch via the excellent video at the end of this post, and an extensive gallery of imagery is available showing proran’s creation and the real-world U406 that inspired it via Bricksafe.

Click the link above to take a closer look, or here to visit the Eurobricks forum for full build details and to join the discussion.

YouTube Video

I Predict a Riot…

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There’ll be no tenuous Christmas links in this post! No, this writer is altogether more gloomy, as COVID sweeps back across Europe, several nations have imposed strict lockdowns once more and – as is the want of a small but very vocal minority – that will mean some noisy protests. Because the main aim of this global conspiracy is clearly to stop people drinking in groups larger than six.

Sigh.

The Dutch look prepared though, at least if Ralph Savelsberg‘s Mercedes-Benz Vario riot van is anything to go by. Wonderfully constructed, Ralph’s riot van features opening doors, some really trick building techniques, and pair of suitably protected riot police officers.

Join the protest against, er… masks, maybe – we’re not sure – via the link above!

*Today’s title song.

Moggy Christmas

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It’s only two more sleeps ’til Christmas! Which means as the Elves have returned to TLCB Towers they’ve been placed back into their cages for their enforced Christmas ‘break’. They don’t mind working over Christmas of course, but we’d rather be down the pub, er… we mean ‘working at the homeless shelter’, so they’re confinement is necessary if we aren’t to come back to the office to find all the glue sticks have been eaten.

Seriously though, Christmas is far more important than this dumpster fire of the internet, so this is the last creation to appear here before we pause for a few days. It’s a really good one though!

Built by previous bloggee Wigboldly/Thirdwigg, this brilliant Mercedes-Benz Unimog U430 is everything we like to see in a Technic creation. There’s working steering and suspension, all-wheel-drive, a 4-cylinder engine underneath a tilting cab, a tipping load bed, and front and rear power-take-offs with the option of pneumatic attachments.

All in it’s really not far off the much larger official Technic 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog set, so if you missed your chance to buy that when it was on sale, Thirdwigg’s U430 is an excellent alternative you can build at home. Yup, he’s even made instructions available too.

There’s more of Thirdwigg’s build to see at his ‘U430’ album on Flickr, and you can check out his equally good Technic Unimog U500 and Unimog U400 models that have appeared here previously via the bonus links.

Click the coloured words in the text above to make the jumps to all things Unimoggy.

Rundhauber

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TLCB debutant Nick Kleinfelder was suggested to us by a reader, and we’re glad he was, because he’s working on an expansive ’80s train layout filled with beautifully detailed vehicles like this one.

Apparently these Mercedes-Benz ’round bonnet’ trucks were still popular in Europe in the ’80s, which this TLCB Writer is too young to vouch for. What he can confidently confirm though, is they’re very popular today crawling impossibly slowly up Asian mountainside roads pulling improbably enormous loads of illegally logged timber.

Which is both mightily impressive and exceedingly sad. Still, this one isn’t doing that, rather it’s being used for ‘Raiffeisen’ according to Nick, and whilst we have absolutely no idea what that means, it’s definitely better than illegally destroying the rainforest.

There’s more of Nick’s lovely round bonnet Mercedes truck to see at his photostream, and you can check out both it and Nick’s other creations via the link in the text above.

LEGO Technic 42129 Mercedes-Benz Zetros Trial Truck | Set Preview

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Things are about to get very big. And very expensive.

This is the brand new LEGO Technic 42129 Mercedes-Benz Zetros Trial Truck, it measures a hefty half a metre long, and it’s due to carry an equally huge price-tag when it goes on sale later this year ($300/£275).

However that enormous sum of money unlocks the most powerful motorised truck that LEGO have ever built, with three Large motors, one Medium motor, and bluetooth control via the LEGO Control+ App.

Those motors power all four wheels, the steering, and – for the first time ever – remotely locking differentials. All-wheel-suspension, a working gearbox, and a ‘detailed engine’ (which might just be a spinning fan) also feature, which compared to yesterday’s reveal isn’t all that much, but then, 42129 looks mega off-road.

LEGO have made some properly bold claims about climbing angles in their press release, and included in the set are some marker flags so that owners can test these via setting their own off-road courses at home.

A smorgasbord of amusingly generic racing stickers are included too (‘Oil’, ‘Intake’, ‘Rack’, and – our personal favourite – ‘Axle Beam’), although these actually look OK, and 42129 is blessed with the same enhanced level of detail as other recent Technic sets.

Aimed at ages 12+, the 2,110 piece LEGO Technic 42129 Mercedes-Benz Zetros Trial Truck looks like an excellent (if monumentally expensive) addition to the Technic line-up, and perhaps the most fun way to use the Control+ App yet…

Mechanical ‘Mog

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LEGO’s official Technic 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog U400 set earned a stellar 9/10 rating here at The Lego Car Blog when it was reviewed way back in 2011. Fantastic functional realism, excellent use of motorisation, and an on-board pneumatic compressor make 8110 one of the finest sets we’ve ever reviewed. However, whilst expensive then, 8110 is ludicrously pricey now.

Cue previous bloggee thirdwigg, who has created his own superbly engineered Technic Unimog U400, only all-mechanical.

The loss of Power Functions components hasn’t reduced the functional realism though, with thirdwigg’s U400 equipped with all-wheel suspension, four-wheel-drive connected to an inline-4 engine under a tipping cab, working steering, a front and rear PTO, three-way tipping bed, and a pneumatic take-off too.

It’s a brilliantly simplified (but in no way simple) take on the original 8110 set, and one that you can build for yourself, as thirdwigg has released instructions for his model alongside the excellent imagery you see here.

If you missed out on the official LEGO Technic 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog U400 set a decade ago, and baulk at the price of them today, check out thirdwigg’s wonderfully engineered 4/5ths version at his ‘U400’ album via the link above, plus you can watch all of the model’s features in action via the video below.

YouTube Video

Not all Mercedes are Posh

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It may come a surprise to some of our readers, but not all Mercedes-Benzes are posh. Far from it in Europe in fact, where not only can you buy a compact Mercedes-Benz with a 1.5litre Renault diesel engine, the three-pointed star is a common sight in construction zones, fruit markets, and scrap merchants, where almost unfathomably battered Mercedes vans and trucks are put to work until they’re sent to the banger track.

Our European readers will therefore be very familiar with a vehicle such as this one, a Mercedes-Benz Vario crew-cab truck loaded with a variety of contructiony things in the bed, and with a cab full of old tabloid newspapers, drinks cans, and other assorted detritus.

This one comes from regular bloggee Damian Z. (aka Thietmaier), and it could only be more realistic if the cab included old tabloid newspapers, drinks cans, and other assorted detritus. Damian has both built and presented his Vario superbly, and there’s lots more to see of it, plus a mini-excavator, compressor, and a dump truck too, on Flickr via the link.

Double Dutch

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This is a Mercedes-Benz Actros and Nooteboom step-frame trailer, as operated by Dutch heavy haulage Mammoet. This one is hauling a Liebherr wheel loader, with all three models the work of TLCB favourite Ralph Savelsberg, and there’s more to see of the truck, trailer and load on Flickr via the link.

My Other Truck’s a Jeep

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The Jeep Wrangler is one of the best off-roaders available, but what if even it isn’t quite off-roady enough? There aren’t many vehicles more capable than a Wrangler in the dirt, but one of them is the Mercedes-Benz Unimog, which will drive right over a stranded Wrangler and carry on without noticing.

Cue mpj of Brickshelf, who has turned LEGO’s 42122 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon set into a mighty Unimog tow-truck, complete with a working winch and functioning steering. Further images and instructions are available and there’s more to see of mpj’s 42122 alternate via the link above.