Some cars are just cool. And this is one of them, the tremendous 1969 Chevrolet Nova SS, equipped with a near 400bhp V8 and – in the case of PleaseYesPlease’s brick-built example – dropped to the floor under bulging arches. Never has the office Rover 200 looked more upright. Or slower. Join us imagining we’re cool at Please’s ‘Nova SS 1969’ album via the link.
No really! Because this fabulous recreation of the wild Hoonigan Big-Block Chevrolet Camaro is constructed only from the parts of the official LEGO Technic 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3. Which has lead to some inspired parts usage – just look at those tail-lights! Finally a positive to LEGO’s baffling decision to use multi-coloured pins.
Eurobricks’ paave is the builder behind it, and with working suspension, steering, V8 engine, and 4+R gearbox, his 42143 B-Model is as features-packed as its donor set.
Building instructions are available and you can find out more – and maybe swap your own Ferrari for a rather unique Camaro – at the Eurobricks forum via the link above.
It might sound like an abbreviation of Tony the Tiger’s catchphrase, but we’re so excited about the ‘Toyota’ GR GT. A front-mid-engined, twin-turbo-charged V8 built to go GT3 racing, it’s the antidote to whatever 1,500bhp three-ton Chinese electric monstrosity has been launched this week.
It’s also no longer a Toyota, with the GR (Gazoo Racing) brand now its own entity alongside Toyota, Lexus, and Daihatsu. Which also explains why Toyota’s Le Mans Hypercars curiously didn’t wear ‘GR’ liveries when they took victory at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, because soon both Toyota and GR will be at Le Mans.
GR GT sales are planned from next year, but until then we have this spectacular brick-built replica to keep us happy. It’s the work of previous bloggee Mihail Rakovskiy who has captured the real car brilliantly. There are opening doors, hood and trunk, a highly detailed twin-turbo V8 engine, a beautifully recreated interior, and even a lifelike chassis and running gear underneath.
It’s a superb homage to probably the most exciting car of 2027, and you can take a closer look via Mihail’s ‘Toyota GT GR’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to go ‘Grrr!’.
Here in TLCB’s home nation we know the ‘Nova’ as an early-‘80s to early-‘90s supermini that was everywhere, and then nowhere, as rust and neglect killed – like all ‘80s economy cars – almost every last one.
In 1960s America however, an ‘economy car’ meant something rather different, and General Motors used the same nameplate for the Chevrolet Nova, the base engine for which was more than twice as big as the largest engine ever fitted to its later Vauxhall namesake.
But we’re not interested in the base Nova, not when there was a V8 engine of over five litres available in the Super Sport variant. Imagine that in a Vauxhall shopping car…
This beautiful ‘67 Chevrolet Nova SS is the work of Flickr’s PleaseYesPlease, and it’s about a billion times cooler than the Novas we got. Superbly built and presented, there’s more to see at Please’s photostream and you can take a look via the link.
If the Ford Mustang is the car of crashing immediately upon leaving an otherwise respectable car meet, the Dodge Challenger is the car of crashing in the middle of an illegal one.
Usually seen doing poorly executed donuts in the centre of an intersection with a perma-vaping aspiring ‘rapper’ behind the wheel whose IQ is lower than their credit score, you’d have to be a complete moron to think the Challenger is cool.
Cue this spectacular Technic Dodge Challenger by Flickr’s Lachlan Cameron (aka loxlego), and it’s so cool!
Working steering, adjustable suspension, a V8 engine, six-speed gearbox, plus custom decals, wheels, and chrome all feature, and you can join the crowd standing around an intersection at night filming the inevitable crash on their phones whilst shouting ‘Oooooohhh!!’ via the link above!
We’re still in classic car territory here at The Lego Car Blog, which is fine by us; anything from years past is preferable to whatever Chinese electric crossover has been revealed in the last ten minutes.
This is definitely not a Chinese electric crossover. It’s a 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport, a car that was available with five different V8 engines and a maximum of four gears. Because gas was cheap and nothing was going to happen to jeopardise that.
Anyway, this marvellous Model Team recreation of the ‘72 Ford Gran Torino Sport comes from previous bloggee Jakub Marcisz, and features working steering, opening everything, and a superbly detailed interior and V8 engine.
Building instructions are available and there’s more of the model to see at Jakub’s ‘Gran Torino 1972’ album on Flickr.
From one end General Motors’ cool spectrum (well, almost. There was the Chevrolet Matiz) to the other. This is the glorious 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, with racing stripes and a 7.4 litre V8 that could be optioned up to 450bhp.
This spectacular brick-built version of the top dog Chevelle comes from Jakub Marcisz who has updated his previous iteration of his model, and features working steering, a two-speed gearbox, and V8 engine, plus opening doors, hood and trunk.
Building instructions are available and you can see all of the images and find full details of Jakub’s incredible creation at both Flickr and Eurobricks. Click the links to take a look.
There’s a certain segment of the off-roading community who like to intentionally get stuck, just so they can winch themselves out again. Which to us feels like deliberately getting fat so that you can join Weight Watchers. But it nevertheless explains why ‘Matt’s Off Road Recovery‘ has over two million YouTube subscribers. Because when someone is really stuck, intentionally or otherwise, they’ll need this…
‘This’ is Matt’s all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steered hot rod wrecker, as faithfully recreated here by Technic engineering genius Anto. Staying true to the unique real-world off-road tow-truck, Anto’s model features all-wheel-drive and all-wheel-steering (with three selectable steering modes, as per one of our favourite ever LEGO Technic sets), a working V8 piston engine, immense multi-link live-axle suspension, opening doors, toolboxes and hood, plus no less than five working winches.
It’s a hugely impressive replica of a fantastic one-off real-world vehicle, with loads more to see – including engineering diagrams and over forty superbly presented images – at both the Eurobricks forum and Anto’s ‘Matt’s Off Road Recovery Heavy Wrecker’ album on Flickr. Get stuck in via the links above, plus you can watch this amazing model in action via the video below.
YouTube Video
It’s time for a truck here at The Lego Car Blog, and today’s is something rather special. Created by previous bloggee Michael Kulakov / Michael217, this gorgeous ZIL 130 captures one of the workhorses of the Soviet Union spectacularly in LEGO bricks. Plus a few items that aren’t strictly LEGO…
Powered by a mix of genuine LEGO motors and third-party electronics, Michael’s model can drive, steer, and change between high and low gear ratios remotely, and also features a working V8 engine under the raising hood, opening cab doors, a mechanically locking trailer hitch, plus all wheel suspension.
Those wheels are non-LEGO parts, beautifully replicating real truck rims from the period via 3D printing, and are shod in RC tyres. The steering arms too are 3D-printed, and include metal inserts, which – along with some metal driveshaft components – toughen the drivetrain to handle the remote control system.
The rest of the build, including that wonderful bodywork, engine bay and interior, is all LEGO, and demonstrates superb attention to detail. Over a dozen perfectly presented images are available to view at Michael’s ‘ZIl 130’ Flickr album, plus you can find full build details, further links, and a video of the model in action at the Eurobricks discussion forum.
Arriving in the mid-’00s, the sixth generation Dodge Charger was a boring four-door sedan with an anaemic 2.7 V6, a four-speed automatic, and Chrysler-corporation interior plastics. Yay.
However, the Charger was also available with a much more interesting 5.7 litre ‘Hemi’ V8, and could be optioned up to 6.1 litres in SRT8 trim, with a further Road/Track package adding ten more horsepower, a sunroof, satellite navigation, a 322-watt stereo, a rear-seat DVD entertainment system, and a heavy-duty cage for pulling a bank vault. That last one may not have been on the official options list.
This incredible replica of the Dodge Charger SRT8 is the work of Michael217 / Michael Kulakov, who has equipped his remarkably detailed model with working steering and suspension, a V8 engine, plus four opening doors, hood, and trunk.
Better still, Michael has also fitted his creation with a suite of third-party remote control electronics including RCBric management, Geekservo steering and Buggy Motor drive, which we’re currently using to pretend we’re a giant bald-headed baby horrifically murdering Rio police officers with a bank vault on a cable. Well, we’re whacking TLCB Elves with a shoe-box on a string, but we’re still having fun.
Anyway, whilst we reenact the chase scene from ‘Fast Five’ in the corridors of TLCB office you can check out more of Michael’s fantastic build at both Eurobricks and Flickr. Click the links to take a closer look!
Toyota’s legendary 70-Series Land Cruiser has traversed the world’s most inhospitable places since the mid-’80s (as well as a lot of Australian supermarket carparks), and is still on sale today.
Over that incredible forty year production run, the 70-Series has been fitted with a bewildering array of engines and body styles, courtesy the hugely diverse markets in which it is sold.
All of which makes it rather hard to choose one particular variant if you’re intent on recreating the 70-Series out of our favourite plastic bricks. So Eurobricks’ 2GodBDGlory hasn’t. He’s made all of them.
Yup, 2God’s fantastic modular Land Cruiser 70-Series can be built with five different engines (or Power Functions remote remote control), 1980s, 2000s, or 2020s styling, short, medium, or long wheelbase, SUV (with hard or soft top) or Pick-Up (with various tray/bed configurations), and a roof basket or rack.
Best of all, he’s made building instructions available for free, so you can recreate your perfect Lego Land Cruiser 70-Series at home! Find out more at the Eurobricks forum, and you can see various configurations on-location in his Bricksafe album here.
Chevrolet’s third-generation Camaro was not just a huge visual departure from its ’70s predecessor, it had fuel injection, a hatchback, and was over 200kgs lighter than the second generation. All of which added up to a car that was faster, more agile, and more economical.
Except that first bit. Because even the 5.0 V8-engined Camaros made…. 145bhp. Chevrolet upped that with a new V8 engine a few years after the third-generation Camaro launched, but it still didn’t trouble 200bhp. 
Which is rather different from what Chevrolet offers today, as in 2025 you can buy, brand new, a 1,000bhp crate engine. And put it in anything.
The guys at Hoonigan have done just that, dropping said 1,000bhp Chevrolet crate engine straight into a third-generation Camaro. And the resultant car is rather more lively than it was back in the early-’80s.
Cue previous bloggee and TLCB Master MOCer Firas Abu-Jaber, who has recreated Hoonigan’s wild third-generation Camaro in brick form, complete with that outrageous engine, working steering, opening doors and rear hatch, a detailed interior, and authentically replicated decals.
There’s much more of the model to see at Firas’ ‘Hoonigan Camaro’ album on Flickr, you can find instructions for Firas’ builds at his excellent ‘Bricks Garage’ website, and you can read his interview here at The Lego Car Blog via the first link in this post.
Take a look via the links above, whilst we try to figure out if a 1,000bhp Chevrolet crate motor will fit in the engine bay of the office Rover 200…
This astonishing Technic Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 was discovered on Eurobricks today, and – even more astonishingly – it’s built only from the parts of the 42172 Technic McLaren P1 set.
Shown here in render form (but also built for real, however with inadequate images), this 1:8 replica of the latest 1,000bhp Corvette comes from Timorzelorzworz, and is as packed with working functionality as its donor set.
A mid-mounted V8 engine is hooked up to a 7-speed gearbox, the steering is controlled from the steering wheel, suspension is independent front and rear, the front trunk, engine cover and doors open, whilst the entire bodywork aft of the b-pillar is removable too.
Building instructions are available and there’s much more to see including further renders, images of the brick-built model, and full build details at the Eurobricks forum. Take a look via the link above and convert your P1 into a ZR1.
American cars in the late-’70s through mid-’80s were rubbish. They were rubbish long after the mid-’80s too of course, but even the iconic Ford Mustang was a throughly mediocre specimen in its early-’80s guise.
Base on Ford’s then-new ‘Fox’ platform, the third-generation ‘Foxbody’ Mustang could be had as a prosaic coupe, a dreary hatch-back or a lacklustre convertible, and was powered by an array of engines ranging from an inline-4 that produced no horsepower whatsoever to a 5.0 V8 that produced no horsepower whatsoever.
Getting with the times however, and Ford did add a 4-cylinder turbo, which did produce some horsepower – briefly – before it broke.
You may have guessed we’re not fans of Ford’s third-generation ‘stang, and we’re not. Until that, is comes to its 1986 facelift.
Adopting Ford’s ‘aero’ design, the Foxbody instantly went from dreary to desirable, and even the engines got a glow-up, with the 4-cylinder breaking the 100bhp mark (up from a miserly 88) by the early-’90s, and the 5.0 V8 surpassing 200bhp.
This excellent Model Team recreation of the Foxbody Mustang captures the facelift’s sleek exterior brilliantly, and comes from previous bloggee Szunyogh Balázs (aka. gnat.bricks). There’s an opening hood (under which can be slotted both a V8 or 4-cylinder engine as Szunyogh has created both), opening doors and trunk, and a superbly life-like interior.
There’s more of the model to see at Szunyogh’s ‘Lego Mustang – Foxbody’ album on Flickr, and you can take a look at the moment when America’s automotive malaise era finally ended via the link above.
Cruiseliners. Giant floating shopping malls filled with the terrifically fat, the terminally elderly, or the terrifically fat and terminally elderly. And if you’re reading this thinking ‘But I went on a cruise ship…’, then yes, you are one of the above.
Today’s creation is a truck that takes its name from that dreadful excuse for tourism, and comes from newcomer Lecz, making their TLCB debut.
Skilfully blending Technic and Model Team styles, Lecz’s classic Mack Cruiseliner features a working V8 engine under a tilting cab, ‘HOG’ steering, and a functioning fifth wheel lock, with lots more to see – including high quality digital renders and a link to building instructions – at the Eurobricks forum and Bricksafe.
Click the links above to fight off a fat lady at the buffet before docking in a quaint fishing village and ruining it.