Do you wear a mullet, loiter in alleyways chewing toothpick, and think that recycling is a socialist plot? Then we have the car for you!
This glorious black-and-gold 1977 Pontiac Trans Am is the work of previous bloggee RGB900, and – despite being just 8-suds wide – captures every identifier of the real car brilliantly bar a flaming bird motif on the hood.
There’s more to see at RGB’s photostream, and you can make the jump to it via the link above. Mullet optional.
Here in Europe we have strict pedestrian safety regulations. This is good news for two reasons; firstly that if you get hit by a car it’s designed to do as little harm as possible, and secondly that we won’t ever have to see a Tesla Cybertruck, which has seemingly been designed to cause the maximum chance of fatalities and is thus illegal.
Taking the Cybertruck approach to vehicle design is the appropriately-named Bloodred_Bricks, who has created this quite fantastically aggressive post-apocalyptic vehicle based on the muscle cars of decades past.
Armoured with a be-spiked bull-bar, wheels mostly made of knives, and some kind of rear-mounted rotavator, Bloodred’s ‘Mad Max’-esque build looks only marginally less lethal than Musk’s stupid truck.
Which of course means TLCB Elves love it, and are now running around the office smashing into one another armed with various pieces stationery equipment.
We’ll clear them out with Mr. Airhorn shortly, so whilst get on with that you can check out Bloodred’s wild post-apoc ride on Flickr. Click the link above to take a look – just don’t step out in front of it.
In the 1960s, General Motors were phenomenally adept at spinning different cars from the same platform. Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Pontiac were all successful brands in their own right, being positioned, marketed, and priced to separate segments of the U.S auto market, but all sharing considerable commonality underneath.
Pontiac were priced towards the lower end of GM’s portfolio, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t produce fast, desirable products. This is one of them, the fabulous first generation Pontiac GTO, which shared its componentry with the mid-’60s Chevrolet Malibu, Buick Skylark Grand Prix, and Oldsmobile 442.
Built by Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber, this wonderful recreation of the Pontiac GTO also shares its parts with a Chevrolet, being constructed solely from the pieces found within the excellent LEGO 10304 Icons Chevrolet Camaro Z28 set.
Using 1,322 of the Camaro’s 1,456 parts, Firas’ GTO looks so good you’d be hard-pressed to know it’s an alternate. Working steering, opening doors, hood and trunk, plus a detailed interior and engine bay all feature, as per the donor set, with the model presented absolutely beautifully.
There’s lots more of Firas’ incredible Pontiac GTO to see at his album of the same name, plus you can find out how he creates models such as this one at his Master MOCers interview here at TLCB, accessible via the first link in the text above.
This is one of those cars that is probably familiar to all of us, and yet may also not be at all. This is a Geo Tracker, built by 2GodBDGlory, and in fact it’s his Geo Tracker, being a Technic recreation of his real-world vehicle.
But it’s also a Suzuki Vitara (the name we know it as here in TLCB’s home nation), a Suzuki Sidekick, a Chevrolet Tracker, a GMC Tracker, an Asuna Sunrunner (what?!), and a Pontiac Sunrunner.
Which is confusing. Thus, because the Tracker/Vitara/Sunrunner is a Suzuki designed, engineered and produced product, with General Motors simply rebadging it and pretending it was theirs, we’re going to call it a Vitara from here on, and 2GodBDGlory’s is excellent.
Powered by two L Motors with Servo steering, and featuring all-wheel-drive, a remotely-operated high/low range gearbox, working suspension, LED head and tail lights, and a removable roof, 2GodBDGlory’s Technic Vitara is as capable off-road as his real one, and there’s much more of the model to see of both at Eurobricks and Bricksafe.
Whatever you know the Suzuki Vitara as where you’re from, click the links above to be impressed.
Are you a fan of the LEGO Icons 1034 Chevrolet Camaro Z28, but don’t have a handlebar mustache and spend your nights chucking dice in an alley? Then why not rebuild your Camaro set into something altogether different?
Cue Nathanael Kruipers‘ stunning Pontiac Firebird, constructed entirely from the pieces found within the 10304 Camaro set, yet rebuilding the set to create a car driven by… OK, exactly the same stereotype.
Still, the Camaro and Firebird were the same cars underneath, so perhaps that’s not surprising, and it makes creating the Firebird from the Camaro rather appropriate.
Building instructions are available and there’s much more of Nathanael’s brilliant 10304 alternate to see at his photostream. Click the link above to join him in the alley.
Car manufacturers are sometimes a little… er, ambitious with their names. The ideal car for running on the salt flats of Bonneville is not one of the largest production vehicles ever produced, fitted with drum brakes and a three-speed gearbox.
The Pontiac Bonneville first launched in 1958 as a two-door hardtop or convertible, based on the luxurious Pontiac Star Chief, but de-specced to bring the price down. By the fourth generation – pictured here – the range had expanded to include four-door hardtop, sedan and station wagon body-styles, all of which were powered a range of variously-sized V8 engines, and the luxury had been reinstated to make the Bonneville Pontiac’s most expensive model.
This beautiful Model Team recreation of the Bonneville two-door ‘Sports Coupe’ from 1966 captures the excess of the car superbly, with builder Jakub Marcisz replicating the full-size barge in stunning detail.
Opening doors reveal a wonderfully accurate interior, a lifelike V8 engine sits under the opening hood, and the trunk opens to reveal, well – some complicated building techniques, but the real car’s trunk was almost unfeasibly large, thanks to a total vehicle length exceeding 5.5 meters.
Come to think of it, maybe Jakub’s Pontiac Bonneville isn’t so optimistically named after all. It’s really very large, and very yellow, just like its desert namesake, and there’s much more to see at Jakub’s ‘Pontiac Bonneville 1966’ album on Flickr. Head into the heat of Utah via the link above.
We miss Pontiac. Sure they were part of the raging dumpster fire that was General Motors by mid-1990’s, and they created atrocities like this (and this. And this)*, but they also built some of America’s coolest cars.
From Solstice to the Firebird Trans-Am, there are a few Pontiacs we’d be proud to have in TLCB Towers car park, but none more so than this; the ’68 GTO.
Produced from 1963 to 1974 (and again as rebadged Holden in the mid-’00s), the GTO is credited with popularising the muscle car genre in the late ’60s. With a choice of V8 engines, a range of rubbish gearboxes (two-speed automatic anyone?), and also sold by GM’s other brands (see the Chevrolet Chevelle, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Buick Special), there was a GTO for everyone.
This neat Speed Champions recreation of Pontiac’s finest hour comes from yelo_bricks of Flickr, making their TLCB debut. Both built and presented beautifully, there’s more to see at yelo’s ‘1986 Pontiac GTO’ album – click the link above to take a look at all the images.
*No we hadn’t forgotten the Aztek. We like the Aztek. And so should you.
If there’s a car more likely to be driven by people who are usually found chewing a toothpick in an alley wearing a leather jacket and a bad moustache than the ’77 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, we’re yet to find it.
This Speed Champions scale Trans Am comes from Rolling Bricks, complete with a lift-out T-top, opening doors, and a golden flaming bird motif.
Don your leather jacket and head to an alley to chew a toothpick via the link above.
We’re not sure why robots in the eighties were uptight nerds, but KITT was the wheeled equivalent of C-3PO.
However unlike Star Wars’ anxious golden bi-ped, KITT had flame throwers, lasers, a tear gas launcher, a giant taser, and ultramagnesium charges at his disposal. And we don’t even know what that last one means.
Equipped with none of that, but looking rather cool nonetheless, is Jerry Builds Bricks‘ 8-wide Speed Champions version of the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which captures the TV star car beautifully.
There’s more of KITT to see at Jerry’s photostream, and you can head there to deploy some ultramagnesium charges via the link above.
This is a Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am, a car made famous by the ’77 movie ‘Smokey and the Bandit’, and possibly the only car in history to look kinda-cool with pin-striping. Plus a giant flaming bird motif of course.
This exceptional 1:8 recreation of the American icon is the work of Chris Radbone of Flickr, who has not only replicated the exterior of the ’77 Trans-Am beautifully, complete with pin-striping and giant flaming bird motif, his model is a qualified Technic Supercar underneath.
A Technic frame holds a working V8 engine, all-wheel suspension, functioning steering, and a D-N-R gearbox, all of which are concealed behind the wonderfully accurate Model Team exterior.
It’s a great way to finish the year and there’s more to see of Chris’s superb ’77 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am ‘Bandit’ at his photostream. Click here to make the jump to Flickr for the complete gallery of images, here to see the Smokey and the Bandit movie trailer in which this car stars, and we’ll be back soon with our 2020 round-up.
It’s the early ’80s, perms are big, jackets are leather, and 200mph, self-driving, talking cars exist only in the imagination. And then NBC shoved C-3PO into the dashboard of a Pontiac Trans-Am. Perms remained big and jackets remained leather, but the 200mph, self-driving, talking car was now a reality, on screen at least.
The Knight Industries Two Thousand (K.I.T.T) became the coolest car for every eight year old in ’80s America, and even though most of the technology it featured is now hilariously out-of-date (even Mrs. TLCB Writer’s compact hatchback can do more* today), it’s still one of the most famous and enduring TV cars of all time.
Capturing K.I.T.T superbly in mini-figure scale, László Torma has constructed a 6-wide version of the camp coupe complete with a mini-fig Michael Knight, and he’s made instructions available too so that you can build your very own. Head to Laszlo’s photostream via the link above to take “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man that doesn’t exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the powerless, and the helpless in a world of criminals that operate above the law“. It doesn’t get any more ’80s than that!
*OK, it can’t do 200mph, despite the way Mrs. TLCB Writer drives it.
This might just be the most American thing we’ve ever seen. Apart from Police brutality of course. This is the late ’70s-early ’80s second generation Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, GM’s sister car to the Camero, and the Mustang’s fiercest rival.
Powered by an expansive choice of enormous V8 engines ranging from 4.3 to 7.5 litres, plus some marginally less enormous six-cylinder motors, all of which produced about as much horsepower as a European or Japanese engine half the size, the Trans Am completely erased the words ‘oil crisis’ and replaced them with a giant flaming bird motif. Because America.
The iconic slant nose arrived in 1977, bringing with it huge sales numbers, with this iteration of the Firebird selling between 150,000 and 210,000 units annually until emissions regulations finally caught up with it in 1980. The Trans Am’s starring role in Burt Reynolds’ 1977 movie ‘Smokie and the Bandit’ can’t have hurt its popularity either, a film basically about little more than trucking, car chases, and beer*. Because America.
Recreating this icon of American automobiles is TLCB Master MOCer, regular bloggee, and all-round excellent human being Firas Abu-Jaber, who has captured the ’77 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am in astonishing detail. Firas’ model replicates the Firebird’s famous exterior beautifully, with opening doors, trunk, and hood (complete with giant flaming bird motif), plus an amazingly accurate interior, and with presentation as stunning as the model itself.
Over a dozen spectacular images are available to view at Firas’ Pontiac Firebird Trans Am album on Flickr, where a build commentary can also be found. Click the link above to take a closer look, and the first link in the text to read Firas Abu-Jaber’s Master MOCers interview here at TLCB to learn how he creates incredible creations like this one.
*Well, Coors, which is nearly beer.
Founded in the late 1920s, mis-managed into administration, and then closed down in the last decade or so, Plymouth and Pontiac are best known in recent times as victims of the Big Three’s sorry tale of arrogance, greed and incompetence.
But before all that there were some good times. Really good times. In the late-’60s to early-’70s the muscle car was in a golden age, and both Plymouth and Pontiac were riding the crest of that wave.
Plymouth’s Barracuda (above) launched in the mid-’60s with a range of engines beginning at just 100bhp, yet by 1970 it was making up to 425bhp from an enormous Hemi V8. Unfortunately 425bhp didn’t sit really suit the market once the oil crisis hit in 1973, and production ended shortly afterwards, but if anything that short life has helped the ‘Cuda become one of most sought-after muscle cars in history.
General Motors were also in on the muscle car action in the 1960s, bringing – via their Pontiac brand – the GTO (below) to market in ’64. By the 1970s they too were making over 400bhp, with stock cars delivering 13.4 second 1/4 miles times straight from the forecourt. Like Plymouth the oil crisis put an end to that, but in its hay-day the Pontiac GTO sold almost 100,000 units annually, despite its slow steering and ‘amazingly inadequate’ brakes. The roads must have been a fun (if slightly terrifying) place!
The two superb Speed Champions versions of the Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda and Pontiac GTO pictured here are the work of Thomas Gion, who has faithfully recreated both cars in just 6-studs of width, capturing the styling cues of each brilliantly.
Today both brands are gone, but the legendary cars they created in the 1960s and ’70s mean they won’t be forgotten for some time yet.
It’s a bumper haul today at The Lego Car Blog, thanks to Tim Henderson and his wonderful collection of retro-futuristic hover cars. Loosely based on all manner of classic American machinery, Tim’s hover car concepts update their historic counterparts with a whole lot more vertical ability.
Models include a Buick Skymaster (apt name!) station wagon (pictured above), a pair of Pontiac Grand Prix (pictured below) and Mercury Meteors (more apt naming!) (top), and a very cool Blacktron-esque Dodge Charger and Chevrolet Caprice (bottom).
There’s more to see of each build, all of which contain a mini-figure and some delightful detailing, plus many more besides, at Tim’s ‘Hover Car’ Flickr album. Click on the link and leave gravity behind!
*Today’s title song, which has instantly made this blog 37% classier.
Ralph Savelsberg, aka Mad Physicist, is one of the most prolific bloggees here at TLCB. One of our Master MOCers and a writer for the The Brothers Brick (everybody boo!), Ralph has been building stunning Miniland scale vehicles for years, and years, and years. His creations number in the hundreds, but until now he’s had no-where to put them. Finally though, a few are getting a home!
This brilliant classic car workshop, inspired by some of the workshop-builders that have appeared here in recent times, contains everything you’d expect to find in a modern repair facility, plus of course, some wonderful classic American cars. Six of the eight vehicles have appeared here at TLCB in some form or another, with the Ford F150 pick-up and a Hudson Hornet making their debuts today (we think!).
Amongst the classics are a Pontiac Bonneville, Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria Skyliner, Buick Riviera, Chevrolet Impala, Chevrolet 3100 Stepside pick-up, and the aforementioned Hudson, all expertly recreated in miniature. There are also two dreadful modern pick-ups; a ’90s Ford F150, and if that wasn’t bad enough there’s the simply awful (but superbly replicated) Dodge Ram too.
We’ll stick with the classics, and there’s more to see of each beautiful ’50s-’60s slice of Americana via the links above to the respective articles here at The Lego Car Blog, and you can see more photos of the complete workshop via Ralph’s Flickr photostream – click here and enjoy!