Tag Archives: News

Bricks on Track | LEGO Documentary Trailer

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LEGO’s extensive new partnership with Formula has brought every single Formula 1 team to bedroom floors in brick form. Which of course meant some extensive marketing was needed too.

Cue the 2025 Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix drivers parade, in which nineteen of the world’s best racing drivers (and Lance Stroll) took to the circuit in life-size, drivable, 400,000 piece replicas of their real Formula 1 cars, giving the Alpine drivers their best chance of an overtake all season.

The hugely ambitious project was filmed throughout its year-long gestation, with an hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary soon due for release, showing how LEGO and Formula 1 pulled off one the greatest racing marketing stunts of recent times. The official trailer has just dropped, and you can get ready for the slowest, but perhaps best, Formula 1 race of 2025 via LEGO’s YouTube channel above.

LEGO Star Wars 75419 Death Star | Set Preview

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That’s no moon. But the price is lunacy. This is the brand new LEGO Star Wars 75419 Death Star.

Arriving outside the atmosphere of a planet near you on October 1st, 75419 brings Star Wars’ most iconic energy project into LEGO’s Ultimate Collector Series, with over 9,000 parts, thirty-eight mini-figures and an array of movie scenes held within a thin slice of space-station.

These include the crushing trash compactor, Princess Leia’s cell, the hangar control room infiltrated by Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, the tractor beam control deactivated by Obi-Wan Kenobi, Emperor Palpatine’s throne room, the Imperial Shuttle hangar bay, and the planet-destroying Superlaser. And all for $999.

Yes, it’s finally (if inevitably) happened, 75419 is the first one-thousand dollar LEGO set. With a recommended retail price of $999 / £899, it actually translates to over $1,200 in our home nation at today’s exchange rate. Which sounds, and is, a galactic amount of money. But perhaps black boxes and purple Imperial Dignitaries don’t come cheap.

If you’re head of a Galactic Empire you can get your black gloved hands on the new LEGO Star Wars 75419 Death Star set from October 1st. For the rest of us in the Republic, we haven’t forgotten that LEGO is supposed to be a toy, so we’ll be playing with what we’ve got.

Carbon Fiber Lego Wheels

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Carbon Fiber. (Or ‘Fibre’ if you spell it correctly. Ed.) The wonder material from which Formula 1 cars, the Ferrari F40‘s bodywork, the Lexus LFA‘s tub, and fancy road bikes are all made.

Which also means that, inevitably, carbon fiber fakery is everywhere too. Car interior trim, vinyl wraps, even wallets, laptops and suitcases can all be found in finest farbon ciber, mostly looking terrible.

But today we have the real deal, because this is the world’s first genuine carbon fiber Lego wheel. It may not look much, but it’s bona-fide carbon fiber, and its maker PlasticGear has detailed how he constructed it.

Take a look at PlasticGear’s pioneering project in the video above, you can join the discussion at the Eurobricks forum, and don’t even think about wrapping your wing-mirrors/spoiler/centre console in fake carbon, because we’ll laugh at you.

Bleugh! Ads!

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Running a world-famous Lego website has its perks. Fame… Girls… Riches… Probably. Still, running this shed in the corner of the internet also has its perks, and we do earn a little from all your eyeballs and the ads they linger on.

Except for the last few days the ads have gone berserk. Now it might be because our equipment and operating systems are older than some of our readers, but nevertheless ads started to appear over images, over post text, and – in delicious irony – even over other ads.

If you’ve been affected by this ad explosion, rest assured we changed nothing to prompt it. But we have summoned all our technical prowess to correct things. Which basically means we’ve turned off advertisers’ ability to place ads anywhere they like.

This might mean that TLCB treasure chest is a little emptier than usual, but seeing as we give its contents to those who need it more than we do, and there won’t be any contents if you all get annoyed and leave, it’s the right thing to do.

Anyway, we hope it’s all fixed now. Let us know if not. And do please linger on the ads that do appear – it makes it all worth it.

TLCB Team

LEGO Icons 10357 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C | Set Preview

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LEGO have released a wonderful array of Icons vehicles to date. And the Transformers Bumblebee. But this is the coolest. Because it’s a Cobra.

Constructed from 1,241 pieces, the brand new Lego Icons 10357 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C brings one of the most famous Anglo-American collaborations to the Icons range, at it looks excellent.

Opening doors, hood and trunk, working steering, a fully kitted toolbox, and the Shelby’s iconic twin stripes (courtesy of some stickerage) all feature, as does a detailed replica of the huge Ford V8 that Shelby squeezed under the hood of the little AC Ace in the 1960s to create the Cobra.

Priced around £140 / $160, 10357 is surely going to be one of – perhaps the – most popular Icons sets yet, and you’ll be able to get your hands on it from July 1st. Alternatively, if you fancy turning one of your existing sets into Shelby’s monstrous ’60s sports car, take a look here.

LEGO 43277 Cruella de Vil’s Car | Set Preview

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Well here’s a new vehicle set that we didn’t spot coming… this is the LEGO 43277 Cruella de Vil’s Car.

Aimed at aged 9+ and constructed from 378 pieces, which include the rather sought-after balloon/fenders and train window, 43277 captures the cartoonesque appearance of Cruella’s vintage car in mini-figure scale. Except the wheels are taller than she is, so… Icons scale? Creator? Um, we’re not sure, but the set does include a Cruella de Vil mini-figure (plus a dalmatian puppy), opening doors, and working steering via the spare wheel on the back.

If we’re honest, 43277 looks more like a set to be acquired for its parts. Kinda like Cruella’s reason for acquiring those puppies… Sheesh that was dark. Anyway, expect 43277 to cost around $50/£45 when it arrives on September 1st, and for builders to make a fine coat out of its pieces.

LEGO 76304 Batman Forever Batmobile | Set Preview

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Batman has had more reinventions than this website has had angry letters. And that’s a lot. Which means that LEGO have a seemingly endless back-catalogue of Batmobiles to plunder for officially-licensed sets. This is the latest, the brand new LEGO 76304 Batman Forever Batmobile.

Exactly thirty years since the late Val Kilmer’s rubber-suited vigilante squeaked onto screens in the outlandish ‘Batman Forever’, and he’s arrived in mini-figure form, alongside one of the wildest Batmobiles of them all.

Constructed from 909 pieces, LEGO’s interpretation includes “a moulded windscreen, rotatable wheels, authentic decorations, and an opening cockpit”. Which sounds like a lot of style over substance to us, but does make it the perfect brick-built metaphor for the cinematic mess that spawned it.

Aimed at ages 12+ 76304 will cost £90 / $100 when it reaches stores later this year. Where for us, like the 1995 movie, it’ll stay,

LEGO Icons 10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft | Set Preview

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Does anyone remember the LEGO 6544 Space Shuttle Piggy-Back Plane from the 1995 Town range? No – just us? Well here’s a really big version! Which is itself a really small version of the real-life NASA Space Shuttle transport. This is the brand new LEGO Icons 10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft!

Constructed from over 2,400 pieces, 10360 measures over 60cm long and recreates both NASA’s remarkable modified Boeing 747, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise it carried. Although interestingly considering LEGO’s penchant for ever longer set titles, 10360 mentions neither by name.

Although definitely aimed as an adult display piece (see the black box and 18+ target age), 10360 still includes eighteen wheel deployable landing gear, a working shuttle mounting system, opening shuttle cargo-bay doors, and detachable engines, and you’ll be able to get your hands on LEGO’s latest Icons aircraft set when it lands in stores for around £200 / $230 later this year.

Life-Size LEGO F1 in Miami

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Today is the Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix, and this year there’s even more plastic than usual.

The plastic surgery capital of America, Miami is used to seeing tons and tons of petroleum-based polymer. Most of it walking around. But this year there’s an additional fifteen tons of it, and none of the extra is in the faces of the race-goers. Because LEGO have recreated all ten of the 2025 Formula 1 teams’ cars in life-size form, from a staggering four million bricks.

A year in the making, each 400,000 piece, 1,500kg replica was produced by LEGO’s Kladno studio in the Czech Republic, who constructed each car around a metal frame and accurately recreated every team’s livery and sponsors.

Best of all, all ten 1:1 scale Formula 1 cars have been fitted with working steering, brakes, and an electric motor, which means that right now (literally as we type this), 2025’s Formula 1 drivers are aboard their own life-size LEGO Formula 1 cars driving around the Miami circuit.

With the cars limited to 20km/h, the parade lap will take a little longer than the Miami lap record, but that’ll give the fans plenty of time to watch actual Formula 1 drivers trundling around a racetrack in LEGO. And Lance Stroll will still probably find a way to stack it.

You’ll be able to watch the drivers in action in their very own 1:1 scale LEGO Formula 1 racers at the Miami Grand Prix on YouTube once Formula 1 upload it, you can see Lando Norris getting some sneaky life-size LEGO-driving practice in here, and you can check out the full range of officially-licensed LEGO Formula 1 sets, which the life-size models have been built to promote, by clicking this bonus link.

LEGO Technic H2 2025 | Set Previews

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The days are getting longer, skirts are getting shorter, and The Lego Car Blog Elves have returned from their ‘volunteering’ trip over the perimeter wall of LEGO’s HQ. Yes it’s time for us to reveal the brand new LEGO Technic sets for summer 2025, and there are twice as many as last year!

LEGO Technic 42208 Aston Martin Valkyrie

The first of the eight new sets for summer 2025 is this, the 42208 Aston Martin Valykrie. Constructed from 707 pieces, many of which are debuting in dark turquoise, 42208 features a working miniaturised V12 engine, opening doors, working steering, and a tie-up with the ‘Asphalt Legends Unite’ video game. For, um… reasons.

The usual stickerage is deployed for the headlights, lime green pin-striping, and badging, whilst a brand new three-hole-with-cross-axle lift-arm appears for the first time. Aimed at ages 9+ 42208 will cost around £55 / €60 / $65 when it reaches stores this summer.

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LEGO Technic 42209 Volvo L120 Electric Loader

Also aimed at ages 9+, but with around 250 more pieces, is the brand new 42209 Volvo L120 Electric Loader. And it looks brilliant.

An all-mechanical set (hurrah!), 42209 features three linear actuators – turned by hand via cogs mounted at the rear – to raise and tip the new bucket piece. Articulated steering is also controlled via a cog, whilst the ‘engine’ cover lifts to reveal, um… some spinning cylinder thingies. It’s an electric loader after all.

Well-placed decals enhance the visual realism, whilst we expect 42209 might be the pick of the range when it comes to mechanical engineering. Expect it to cost around £90 / €100 / $120 when it arrives later this year.

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LEGO Technic 42210 2 Fast 2 Furious Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) Car

Ten-year-olds rejoice! Because the Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) from ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ is sliding into the LEGO Technic range! Yes, this is the brand new 42210 2 Fast 2 Furious Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 Car.

We’re not sure why LEGO felt the need to add ‘car’ to the title, but no matter; Nissan’s iconic R34-generation Skyline GT-R is finally available in bricks. Over 1,400 of them in fact, which means that the aforementioned ten-year-olds are eight years below the advised age on the box.

We wouldn’t worry about that though; LEGO’s black box and ’18+’ age stamp are purely to make it more acceptable for dads to buy one, and they’ll get a suite of functionality when they do.

A working inline-6 engine lives under the opening hood (which might be driven by all four newly-hub-capped wheels), there’s steering and all-wheel-suspension, opening doors, an adjustable wing, and, um… some balls drop from underneath.

We’d better explain that. Like the 42111 Dom’s Dodge Charger set, 42210 includes a play feature that allows the model to replicate scenes from the movie in which it was featured. In this case a pair of balls can be lowed to raise the rear wheels off the ground, allowing the model to drift. Which whether you’re ten or a dad, is sure to make it more fun to drive on the kitchen floor.

Large stickers recreate the movie car’s livery (which is rather necessary here), but most of the other details are brick-built, and you’ll be able to get your hands on 42210 for around £130 / $140 when it drifts into stores this summer.

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LEGO Technic 42211 Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle

We think this set might be based in space. The new 42211 Lunar Outpost Moon Rover Space Vehicle is so spacey LEGO gave it three different space references in the name alone.

Following on from the Technic Space range that surprised all of us last year, 42211 looks… incoherent. A strange robotic crane of sorts, 42211 nevertheless includes some interesting Technic engineering, including oscillating suspension, all-wheel-steering, a rotating and extending crane, and two smaller lunar rovers, one of which appears to munch up rocks and – joy of joys – crystals. LEGO just can’t let them go.

The crane and two smaller rovers all fold neatly into the main rover, and 42211 does feature some unconventional parts, including rubberised tracks not seen for a few years and new wheel covers.

Aimed at ages 10+, the new 1,082-piece set will cost around £90 / €100 / $100 when it lands in stores this summer. Let’s get back to cars…

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LEGO Technic 42212 Ferrari FXX K

…and one that looks really rather good. This is the new 42212 Ferrari FXX K, a 900-piece recreation of Ferrari’s track-only V12 hypercar. Featuring working steering, an opening engine cover and butterfly doors, a V12 piston engine with differential, and another tie-up with the ‘Asphalt Legends Unite’ video game, 42212 is rather formulaic, but it’s a good formula.

Several pieces make their debut in red, and we’re getting used the heavy reliance on stickers. Aimed at ages 10+, expect 42112 to cost £55 / $65 when it reaches stores later this year.

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LEGO Technic 42213 Ford Bronco SUV

With a few more pieces, but a slightly lower target age, the new 42213 Ford Bronco SUV brings Ford’s iconic off-roader to the Technic range for the first time.

We think it looks great too, with opening doors, working steering (via the spare wheel), front and live-axle rear suspension, a V6 engine under the raising hood, plus new fender parts and tyres.

Expected to cost £55 / $65, 42213 looks to be quite good value (these things are relative), and is perhaps our pick of the cars for H2 2025.

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LEGO Technic 42214 Lamborghini Revuelto

The seventh new set for H2 2025 continues another longstanding brand partnership, as Lamborghini’s new supercar joins the Technic line-up in the form of the 42214 Lamborghini Revuelto.

Lamborghini claim the Revuelto is “The first HPEV (High Performance Electrified Vehicle) hybrid super sports car”, which conveniently ignores all the other high performance hybrid supercars that have proceeded it.

Still, let’s not get bogged down in marketing, because LEGO’s Lamborghini Revuelto is electrified too, with motorised steering, drive, head and tail lights, all controlled remotely via the Control+ app.

Aimed at ages 10+, 42214 will charge into stores later this year, with 1,135 pieces, ‘Asphalt Legend Unite’ness, and an £160/ $180 price-tag.

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LEGO Technic 42215 Volvo EC500 Hybrid Excavator

And finally, the eighth model to join the H2 2025 Technic line-up is the new flagship; this is the 42215 Volvo EC500 Hybrid Excavator.

Weighing in at over 2,300 pieces, 42215 is a fully motorised – but not remote control – recreation of Volvo’s fifty ton excavator, deploying a mechanically operated gearbox to switch between various functions.

These include the boom, arm and bucket/drill attachments, whilst the superstructure and tracks can rotate manually. That enormous boom is raised and lowered by LEGO’s XL linear actuators, which appear in black for the first time, with a single motor providing the power.

Motorised functions via a mechanical gearbox is a combination we like, as evidenced here, here, and here, so we’re rather excited about the big Volvo. We’re less excited about the price however, as despite that single motor 42115 is expected to cost £350 / $430, meaning it’ll excavate your wallet before it excavates anything else.

Aimed at 18+ (perhaps legitimately this time), 42215 will be available to buy later this year, if you’re diggin’ it.

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There you have it, eight new Technic sets, seven officially-licensed real world vehicles across six different manufacturers, one vehicle from space, and one that’s got balls. Here at The Lego Car Blog at least, we think it’s a rather good line up.

LEGO Super Mario 72037 Mario & Standard Kart | Set Preview

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LEGO’s expansive new Formula 1 range is now on sale, bringing every single Formula 1 team into the line-up. Which is cool and all, but Formula 1 will never be as entertaining as an Italian plumber racing to free a Princess from the clutches of a giant tortoise. Or something. We’re a bit hazy on the plot to be honest, but who cares when you can fire shells and drop banana skins in front of your foes!

Yes Mariokart is now skidding into the LEGO line-up, with the brand new LEGO Super Mario 72037 Mario & Standard Kart set!

Aimed at ages 18+ and constructed from nearly two-thousand pieces, 72037 brings the aforementioned Italian protagonist to bedroom floors and – more likely given the price – shelves everywhere, and includes a posable Mario figure in his Standard Kart, mounted on a stand that “enables fans to display the kart at dynamic angles, as if Mario is speeding through a high-stakes race or drifting in true Mario Kart fashion”.

We note that none of those two-thousand pieces are to create a green shell or a banana skin, which feels a bit miserly, but those printed eyes and Mario’s new moustache piece almost make up for it.

On sale from 15th April 2025, the new LEGO Super Mario 72037 Mario & Standard Kart can be had for €169.99 / $169.99 / £139.99 (just bring your own banana skin), or if you fancy something for less than half the price but with equally amazing nasal topiary, there’s always Nigel Mansell…

LEGO Introduces Tyres Made From Fishing Nets

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After a week in which the news has been dominated by two classroom bullies picking on the clever kid because he doesn’t have the latest sneakers, we’re in need of some good news. And, thanks to LEGO’s ongoing journey towards more sustainable products, we have some!

LEGO bricks, made from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, are a ‘virgin’ plastic; non-biodegradable, and crude oil based. Which means they last for ages, but are created by drilling through the earth’s crust and sucking out the carbon-intensive liquid dinosaurs within.

Experimentations with recycled plastics have so far not yielded environmental improvements (and massive respect to LEGO for saying so), but this week the world’s largest tyre manufacturer (yes, that’s LEGO!) announced a breakthrough in their tyre technology,

“Indistinguishable from the existing tyres fans know and love”, LEGO have developed a new compound made from 30% recycled materials, including old fishing nets (a scourge of our oceans), rope, and used engine oil.

Due for roll-out (hah!) in 2025, 120 different LEGO sets are due to adopt the new tyres, which means if you buy a six-wheeled set such as the LEGO Technic 42203 Tipping Dump Truck, the equivalent of two of its tyres are completely recycled. And better yet, a little less fishing net will be indiscriminately killing marine life.

You can read The LEGO Company’s full press release about their new recycled material tyres at the LEGO Newsroom, and today we like LEGO even more than we did before.

Brickshelf Stay of Execution

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A few weeks ago we published the news that due to the passing of its founder, Brickshelf – and the two-and-a-half decades’ of Lego creations it stored – would cease to be available on March 1st 2025.

Unchanged since the turn of the millennium, Brickshelf was a time capsule for both the Online Lego Community and the internet itself, with both the site and the creations it housed being rather basic, right-angled, and unsophisticated. And it was excellent.

Admirably the estate handling Brickshelf’s cessation took the approach of alerting its users to the impending closure*, a message sites like this one could amplify (which we duly did on January 30th), allowing users to retrieve their images, and maybe even a new owner to be found.

Just two days on from our post, and Brickshelf’s alert was amended to include the following update;

“The initial notice generated many responses, including people interested in purchasing Brickshelf. Based on this response the estate will plan to keep Brickshelf online through mid April as discussions move forward with interested parties to purchase Brickshelf”

Whether or not new ownership is successfully established, this reprieve does provide users with a longer period to retrieve their images should they wish to, but of course we hope that this news means that the first (and last remaining) dedicated creation-sharing website may yet live on…

*See Sean Kenney, it’s not hard.

Fairwell Brickshelf

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As of 1st March 2025, Brickshelf is dead.

Older than YouTube, Facebook, Amazon Prime, and some of you reading this, Brickshelf has served the Online Lego Community for two-and-a-half decades.

With almost five million files across 430,000 albums, countless creations are hosted on Brickshelf and nowhere else. In particular these date from decades past, giving a glimpse into a time before unlimited parts access, digital designer, high resolution photo editing, and even many LEGO piece types themselves.

Many creations on Brickshelf therefore look rather right-angled, basic, and poorly presented by today’s standards, but – dare we say it – they were probably more fun. There was no pressure to find the perfect pieces, pay an extortionate price for them on Bricklink, nor spend hours in a home studio getting the lighting just right. You built, you published, and that was it.

That really was it too, as Brickshelf had no comments function, no html, no messaging, no groups, and not even the ability to use the spacebar in folder titles. It was simply a giant library of creations, and has stayed that way over the last twenty-five years. If you’d like to see not just what Lego creations were like at the turn of the millennium, but websites too, take a look at Brickshelf!

Time to do so is short however. Sadly Brickshelf’s founder Kevin Loch passed away last year, and thus his estate has begun the process of closing the site. Unless a buyer offers to take it on, access to Brickshelf and the five million files within it will cease on March 1st 2025, whereupon it will join MOCpages in the graveyard of creation-sharing websites.

Unlike MOCpages however, Kevin Loch’s estate have notified Brickshelf users ahead of time, providing the opportunity to retrieve files, maybe find a buyer, and meaning that even a dead guy has managed to do a better job than Sean Kenney did.

For us here at The Lego Car Blog it means one fewer place to send our Elves in search of the best Lego vehicles the web has to offer, and that from 1st March 2025 any links to Brickshelf will no longer function, including those in this post.

Until then, we’d like to say a big posthumous thank you to Brickshelf’s creator Kevin Loch, and to his estate for handling its cessation with thoughtfulness and care. And to our readers; click here take a look at Lego-building circa-2000 whilst you still can!

2024 | Year in Review

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It’s the start of a brand new year! Which here at The Lego Car Blog means it’s dark at 4pm, the adverts are all for holidays, and we look back on the last year with an image of the current one, which makes no sense but we’re a decade in so we’re not changing it.

Anyway, on to what happened at TLCB in 2024!

Stats

We published almost exactly the same number of posts in 2024 as 2023, with 347 hitting the front page. These generated 16% fewer visitors however, with the site now around half its peak of over a million several years ago. That still means that hundreds of thousands of you are turning up to read our gibberish though, something to which we remain astonished.

2024’s most viewed posts were the new LEGO set reveals, with Speed Champions coming out on top of the pile. The Review Library and our new A-Z of car manufacturers (plus bikes and trucks) were next in line, along with the most viewed individual creations (‘That’ Toyota Supra, Nosing Ahead, and ‘Oh My gosh, It’s Oshkonoggin!‘, none of which were actually posted in 2024).

Likes for 2024 were down 56% year-on-year yet comments were up 18%. As these were (mostly) nice ones, it seems people are perhaps over ‘liking’ things. Good. Social media is poison.

Which is a bit of a pain, as more and more creations are appearing there only. These are often suggested to us, but to ensure our readers don’t have to create an account and hand over their souls to Meta, Musk, or the Chinese Communist Party, we only publish creations that are free-to-access. Thus if you do use socials to publicise your works and you’d like them to appear here, do consider replicating your images on a free-to-access platform such as Flickr, Eurobricks, Bricksafe, or Brickshelf – that way we can direct our readers to them without fear of a ‘Create an Account’ gateway appearing.

That said, thousands of you still joined us from Facebook, and hundreds-of-thousands from Google. Whether you found what you were looking for or found us by accident, you’re very welcome!

The USA easily remained the top visiting country  in 2024, followed by Germany, UK, and Netherlands, whilst there are just four countries on earth remaining with an all-time visitor count of one. Hello to the four people from St. Helena, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Palau!

2025…

We’re here to continue publishing the best Lego vehicles the web has to offer, unless you get bored of this (or we do). Expect more cars, trucks, motorbikes, ships, and even sci-fi builds throughout 2025, and if enough of them arrive from an as-yet-un-listed manufacturer, said car maker will join those already in the A-Z, where you can find every creation to feature here categorised by the badge on the bonnet.

We’ll also continue to publish (and assess) the brand new LEGO sets due to reach stores during the year, along with brick-based vehicle news, builder interviews, and probably a few Your Mom jokes.

Thank you for taking the time to join us here at The Lego Car Blog, it’s your views and clicks that keep this site running (and enable the advertising revenue to be donated to causes more noble than this one), and we hope you’ll enjoy what we publish in 2025.

TLCB Team