The second most visually arresting thing in 1967’s ‘The Graduate’, the Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider is surely one of the most beautiful cars ever made.
Costing the same as a Jaguar E-Type, early Spiders were fantastically expensive for a 1.6 litre 108 bhp 4-cylinder, but none of that mattered when they looked this good.
Marco Q thinks so too, having constructed this glorious early Duetto Spider, with opening doors, hood and trunk, working steering, and a brick-built recreation of the stunning mid-’60s Pininfarina styling.
There’s much more of Marco’s beautifully presented Alfa Romeo Duetto to see at his photostream, where further top quality images are available, and you can click the link above to graduate.
The mind of Vince_Toulouse is a magical place. After his Walking Bus featured here last month – a creation that should be rather terrifying yet appears utterly delightful – he’s back with another steampunky insectoid.
No, not those Insectoids, but his latest creation does draw upon an even more pointless and short-lived theme, with a few Galidor parts proving that even the worst LEGO sets of all time can be put to good use.
Vince’s ‘Cricket Automobile’ looks a lot more spidery than crickety to us, even though it has the cricket-correct six legs, but whatever its animal equivalent it looks marvellous. See more at Vince’s ‘Cricket Automobile’ album on Flickr via the first link in this text.
We rather like house spiders. They eat flies and other pests and are a rather elegant design in their own way. Sadly we’re probably in the minority by safely capturing them and releasing them outside TLCB Towers, as most people tend to prefer smushing them. This one would be harder to smush though, and it’s even more useful than its arachnid counterpart. Over to the blurb from the brochure;
“The Yogamabara Mechanization M-400 Multi-Purpose Shell is a commonly used type of shell. It’s very fast and agile. It gives the host AI the ability to follow its client around any ground based environment and has a full range of standard tools, like laser cutter, hydro spanners and standard data sockets to name a few. Its animal-like form gives it personality and this has made Yogamabara one of the biggest manufacturers of Personal AI Shells.”
You can place your order for a new M-400 courtesy of Oscar Cederwall on Flickr. Or alternatively you get get a really big glass and a piece of paper, capture it and release it outside. You know it’s the right thing to do.
Is there a more disappointing automotive brand than Alfa Romeo? We’re going to say no, and the disappointment started with this car.
Launched in 1966, the pretty Pininfarina-designed Alfa Romeo Spider was at the cutting edge of sports car engineering. A twin-cam engine, 5-speed gearbox, and disc brakes all featured, and whilst the Alfa cost nearly as much as an E-Type Jaguar, it found plenty of buyers willing to spend a bit to drive something so gorgeous.
And then Alfa Romeo just kept making it. And making it. And making it. The final Series 4 version of the car (pictured here) was released in 1990, thirty-six years after the Series 1 debuted, wearing a stupid 1990s bodykit and featuring tail-lights robbed from the 164 sedan.
The striking GTV finally replaced the Spider in 1995, but it was a flash in the pan moment for a brand that had traded on the past glories of its badge for far too long. Years of automotive drivel followed, mostly re-badged Fiats in pretty dresses – which wasn’t a good starting point, and Alfa Romeo seemed on the verge of disappearing altogether.
But now something remarkable has happened. Alfa Romeo are back. And not just with a Fiat in a pretty dress. The new Guilia sedan and Stelvio (whisper it)… SUV are receiving properly good reviews, and could finally be the saviours of the brand that we’ve been awaiting for so long. So cross your fingers, and your toes, and try to forget about cars like the Series 4 Spider.
Oh, we nearly forgot! This excellent Model Team recreation of the Series 4 comes from previous bloggee Andre Pinto, and there’s more to see at his photostream by clicking here.
McLaren Automotive are on a roll right now. After two decades away from car building they’ve re-entered the market big time, first with the MP4-12C (easily the worst named supercar in history), and now with a range of super sports cars based around the same carbon fibre tub and twin turbo V8 engine.
This one is the most powerful in the range (excluding the limited run P1 hypercar), the 675 LT, and it’s been recreated in Technic form as a commission piece by previous bloggee Jeroen Ottens. With remote control drive and steering, an electrically deployed rear wing and a working electric convertible roof Jeroen’s build is more than just a static display piece.
There’s more to see at Eurobricks and Flickr, where you can also find a link to a video of the functions in action and where instructions are available so that you can build your own 675 LT Spider too.
Long time readers (and probably even short time readers) will have worked out that this is not a classy blog. However every so often we put on a shirt, leave the decaying ruin that is TLCB Towers, and sit in a real restaurant to eat something that actually came out of the ground. With metal cutlery and everything.*
Anyhoo, this is one of those moments, as this could well be the classiest creation that we’ve published all year. Built by marthart of Brickshelf it’s a 1932 Alfa Romeo Spider, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It also has a working engine, steering, leaf spring suspension, and opening doors and hood.
There’s more to see at marthart’s Brickshelf account via the link above. Put on a tie and join us there.
*As opposed to staying in the office eating Sugar Puffs straight from the bag again.
Usually a digital builder, Peter has recreated Porsche’s Martini-liveried 918 spider superbly in brick form, with cunning techniques used throughout to capture the iconic colour-scheme. See more via the link above.
One of the reasons that we originally created The Lego Car Blog and unleashed the Elves on an unsuspecting world, was our belief that quality vehicle builds were being neglected by Lego bloggers. It is therefore with some pride* that we can announce that one of the “proper Lego blogs” beat us to this beautiful Technic sports car by quite a few days.
Jeroen Ottens has skilfully used Technic panels and flex rods to produce a mid-engine machine with a smooth, curved body. He has based the car around the look of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider and included some built-in Italian stripes to emphasise this. The car also has full Power Functions features, including a working gear box. Click this link to Jeroen’s Photostream see more.
This glorious Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spider in Miami Vice specification was suggested to us by a reader. It’s the work of Flickr’s ER0L, and it’s one of the most perfectly executed Town-scale replicas we’ve seen. More photos are available at the link above.
MagicTubaPixie’s ‘Arachnid’. We’ll overlook the leg count because it’s so cool.
The ‘other’ Spyder. This one doesn’t have a folding roof, but it does have six spindly legs for off-roading/parallel parking/scaring pedestrians. Built by the possibly slightly unhinged MagicTubaPixie, you can see more on Brickshelf.
