We’ve got gas today, courtesy of Dan the Fan, who is here making his TLCB debut.
It won’t be long before finding gas might be rather tricky, as gas stations – so integral to society for almost a century – are about to enter a period of mass extinction.
Ultimately that’s a good thing, but it’ll be shame for the many family-owned businesses that will close, and – sometimes – the gas stations themselves disappearing, as occasionally they can be quite interesting.
Dan the Fan’s in one such interesting gas station, complete with some rather excellent ‘Shell’ lettering, a gas pump, kiosk, elevated tank, billboard, and some cool-looking mini-figure bikers.
There’s more to see at Dan’s ‘Gas Station’ album on Flickr – click the link above to get gas.
Andrea Lattanzio (aka Norton74) is becoming a regular at The Lego Car Blog with his beautiful vintage motoring scenes. This wonderful Bugatti Type 35 has appeared here before, pictured being unearthed in an elderly farmer’s barn. This time Andrea takes us back to the when the car (and farmer) were a little younger, with this brilliant historic gas station scene. We’re not sure the Bugatti would be a new car, even in this era, as something much more recent seems to be poking out of the garage, but nevertheless we’re willing to bet that the Type 35 caused a bit of a stir at the Shell Service. There’s more to see of Andrea’s gorgeous build on Flickr – click here to step back in time, or here for today’s title song.
We regularly post beautiful Lego creations here at The Lego Car Blog. From sports cars to trucks and motorcycles to fighter jets, the produce of the online Lego community is often jaw-droppingly good, and it is of course the very reason that this website exists.
Today though we think we may be publishing the most beautiful vehicle-related creation that we’ve found in our five years of blogging. This is Andrea Lattanzio’s ‘Art Deco Gas Station’, and it is unbelievably perfect.
Based on a real-life gas station in Tucson, Arizona, Andrea’s incredible creation returns to the golden age of pumping gas, when stations such as this one were meeting places in their own right, rather than simply tools enabling people to get to the place they want to go.
With two period-correct Shell gas pumps underneath a wonderful curved awning, a fully equipped store, diner, and workshop, Andrea’s build offers more than just a fill up.
Three lovely Town scale vehicles feature in the build too; a neat step-side pick-up truck, a gorgeous tan-coloured hot rod coupe, and a brown hot rod roadster receiving some attention in the garage.
There’s a lot more to see of Andrea’s spell-binding build at his Flickr photostream, plus you can read our interview with the builder as part of the Master MOCers series by clicking this link.
This is an ultra-rare Ferrari F40 GT, built from 1991-92 to take Ferrari back into endurance racing. Just seven GT’s were built, each featuring a stripped-out interior, fixed perspex headlights (replacing the pop-up units fitted to the road car) and an engine upgrade to the tune of near 600bhp. That upgrade actually included a restrictor to limit the power produced by the twin-turbo V8 in order for it to meet national championship regulations, the full-fat LM version was rumoured to produce over 900bhp in qualifying trim…
This superb recreation of the 1991 Shell-liveried racer comes from Flickr’s Nuno Taborda, and much like the real F40 GT it’s based on the production version, in this case LEGO’s excellent 10248 Creator set. Nuno has upgraded the set’s bodywork and interior to GT specification, and re-liveried the car in Shell’s iconic white, red and yellow sponsorship.
There’s lots more to see of Nuno’s 10248 modification at his Flickr photostream – click the link above to go GT racing circa 1991.
Greenpeace, probably the world’s best known global activism charity, have been on the campaign trail, and oddly it affects our favourite little plastic bricks.
The LEGO Group has had a 50 year partnership with Royal Dutch Shell, featuring the petroleum brand on its Town sets before the arrival of the fictional ‘Octan’ brand in 1992, and more recently selling unique LEGO sets in Shell petrol stations.
Shell are an oil exploration company, and thus they explore the furthest reaches of our planet in the search for black gold. Most recently this has involved exploration in the arctic, much to the annoyance of Greenpeace.
In response the charity started a rather clever and actually quite original campaign to pressure LEGO into dropping Shell as a partner. Despite LEGO stating Greenpeace should take up their issues with Shell directly, the company has now bowed to pressure and decided not to renew their partnership with Royal Dutch Shell. What this means for LEGO’s other partnerships (e.g Ferrari, which are themselves sponsored by Shell) is unclear, but it will likely result in the end of the exclusive Shell sets in the near future.
We’re not quite sure how the termination of this partnership protects the arctic, or that Greenpeace understand irony (LEGO is made from plastic, and plastic is made from oil), but it does show that LEGO is seen as beloved moral brand, and that this is perceived to be at odds with some of their partnership choices.
We, being a car blog and understanding both irony and global economics, disagree with Greenpeace on this particular issue, but props to them for raising awareness of the LEGO brand – it’s done The LEGO Group no harm at all.
You can read more about the Greenpeace campaign and the response from both The LEGO Group and Royal Dutch Shell here, and you can watch Greenpeace’s slightly depressing campaign video below.
