Building an instantly recognisable vehicle from Lego bricks isn’t always easy, and it becomes increasingly difficult the smaller the scale becomes. That’s why LEGO have recently upped the size of their Speed Champions sets, to better capture the real-world cars they aim to imitate (with varying degrees of success).
Cue previous bloggee RGB900, who has not only constructed this immediately identifiable Honda NSX, he’s even managed to do so in the ‘old’ 6-wide Speed Champions scale. A few of the building techniques probably wouldn’t pass LEGO’s requirements for an official set, but there are no sticker-based cheats here!
There’s more to see of RGB’s excellent NSX on Flickr, and you can do just that via the link above.
Honda’s current range of drab uninspiring boxes shows just how far a manufacturer can fall from their height.
Back in the 1990s Honda were on top of the world, winning Formula 1 races, building exceptionally popular cars most of which had a fun version, and even pioneering Hybrid technology before – for reasons unknown – looking that gift horse in the mouth.
All of which makes Honda’s current range of cars look narcoleptic by comparison. We mean, just look at this one.
No car highlights how far Honda’s slide into dismal mediocrity has come from than this; the amazing Honda NSX.
Built to be an everyday supercar, the NSX wasn’t massively fast (although little was back in 1990), but it was joyously engineered, comfortably beating Ferrari, Lamborghini and others in terms of its technical accomplishment.
Despite this, badge snobbery was just as prevalent in the 1990s as it is today, and the NSX was largely overlooked in favour of the established (and worse) competition. Not so now, where NSXs (and all cars from Japan’s heyday) are in serious demand, perhaps helped by the fact that Honda now make absolutely nothing exciting whatsoever.
This means that Honda’s spectacular engineering masterpiece is now way out of reach of us here at The Lego Car Blog, despite the vast fame and riches that blogging Lego models brings.
Cue TLCB debutant Pingubricks, who has recreated Honda’s finest moment brilliantly in brick form. Pingu’s Model Team NSX captures the design of the real car wonderfully, and there are opening doors, trunk, engine cover, and even working pop-up head lights via a lever in the cabin too!
There’s more to see of Pingu’s spectacular Honda NSX at the Eurobricks forum, and you can join us there via the link in the text above.
Honda’s NSX broke new ground when it launched in 1990. Whilst not the fastest or the most exotic supercar, it brought reliability and usability to a vehicular segment that had –in some cases – completely ignored these attributes in favour of silly doors.
This of course meant that the NSX was seen as a bit boring at the time, or even ‘not a super car’, at all, but time has been kinda Honda’s experiment, and it has become one of the most revered and iconic ’90s cars ever, with prices exploding in recent years.
This puts the NSX out of reach for most of us, but fortunately regular bloggee SP_LINEUP has constructed one that’s far more attainable, and just as awesome looking.
A detailed interior behind opening doors, a beautifully accurate engine under an opening cover, and – get this – working pop-up headlights via a lever in the cabin(!) all feature, and there’s much more to see of SP’s superbly presented build on Flickr. Click the link above to make the jump!
The Elves have been working hard lately, and we have a bumper haul for you today. These are two of their finds, both ’90s Japanese sports cars, both roughly Speed Champions scale, and – most importantly – both with pop-up headlights.
SP_LINEUP‘s modified Nissan 240SX (above) and dazzz99‘s Honda NSX (below) capture the details of their real-life counterparts brilliantly, and remind us of a time when Japanese cars were at then top of their game.
When tuning companies take their hammers to supercars they usually get it very wrong (see here, here and here, and try not to be sick), but there is one exception; Rocket Bunny. Founded in Japan by Tops Racing Arts Kyoto, Rocket Bunny kits are produced in a humble little workshop, with careful attention to detail and a few of very ordinary cars parked outside – the very opposite of the flashy (and hideous) European tuners above. The results have become world-renowned, and there are few tuning brands cooler than Rocket Bunny anywhere right now.
This brilliant Lego recreation of a Rocket Bunnied Honda NSX comes from TLCB regular Simon Przepiorka, who has not only captured the brand’s signature look to near perfection, he’s made instructions available so that you can too. Head to Simon’s photostream via the link above for the full gallery and to find the all-important instructions link.
Few cars of the 1990s had as much impact as this one. Honda’s NSX shocked the world upon its launch at the start of the decade. A mid-engined supercar from the makers of the Civic, priced at just over half that of a comparable Ferrari 348. Sure it made ‘only’ 270bhp – a figure beaten by a Hyundai i30 these days – but it weighed little, being the first mass-produced car with all-aluminium bodywork, and the V8-powered Ferrari only had 30bhp more.
Honda continued building the NSX right up until 2005, although only around 18,000 were made in that entire production run. Today the NSX is worth substantially more than the Ferrari it undercut at the time, making it, and many other Japanese icons from the ’90s, properly profitable investments.
Fortunately for those of us who can’t afford the real thing serial bloggee Simon Przepiorka has a brick-built solution in the form of this superb small-scale Lego recreation. Simon has captured the NSX’s aesthetics brilliantly, and there’s even a detailed interior and engine behind the opening doors and engine cover.
There’s more to see of Simon’s fantastic Honda NSX at his photostream – click the link above to make the jump to when Honda were at the very top of their game…
After over a decade out of the supercar game Honda’s new NSX supercar has just gone on sale, a near-600bhp hybrid-powered torque-vectoring computer with wheels. But that’s not the one we have here today.
Launched in 1990 the original Honda NSX was designed to take on the established supercars from manufacturers such as Ferrari, only at a lower price point, and to upset the supercar order through the virtue of it, well, being a supercar that actually worked.
Honda F1 driver Ayrton Senna helped to tune the handling in the final stages of development, and although the NSX was powered by ‘only’ a transversely mounted naturally aspirated 3.0 V6 making 270bhp (albeit with an 8,000rpm redline), it quickly gained a reputation for being one hell of a drivers’ car.
Lightweight (the NSX was the first mass produced car to be made from aluminium) and beautifully nimble, Honda showed that you didn’t need all-wheel-drive, turbos, or a prancing horse on the hood to build a superb supercar. And unlike pretty much every other supercar at the time the NSX was reliable, because above all else, it was a Honda.
These days something of the original NSX’s simplicity is missing from the latest crop of overpowered, over-assisted supercars – the new NSX included, and arguably the same is true for their Technic equivalents. Packed with Power Functions electric motors, remote control, and bluetooth, we seem to have lost the joy of hands-on mechanics. Luckily for us though, Nico71 has not only recreated one of the finest old-school supercars ever made, he’s done it in a profoundly old-school way too…
This is Nico’s Technic Honda NSX, and it’s as delightfully manual as the real car. An accurate transversely mounted V6 engine is turned by the rear wheels, which are independently suspended along with those at the front. The front wheels also steer by hand, thanks to a connected steering wheel plus a ‘hand-of-God’ connection mounted on the roof. The pop-up headlights are also manually raised and lowered via lever mounted on the dashboard, and the seats can slide fore and aft manually too. Lastly the doors, hood, rear window, engine cover and glovebox all open by hand, and there isn’t a Power Functions motor in sight.
Nico’s Honda NSX is – much like the real car – a triumph of mechanical engineering, and well worth a closer look. Check out the full details at Nico’s discussion topic at the Eurobricks forum, and you can find all the images, a video of the model’s features and instructions (yes, really, so we we won’t be getting the usual ‘Can I have instructions?’ messages for once!) at Nico’s own excellent website – Click here to take a look.
