This TLCB Writer likes to think he’s impervious to product placement, advertisements, and online marketing.
But ALL he wants right now is tacos. Dwelve’s Chevy Step-Van food truck is the cause, and you can join this writer in the queue via the link.
When America’s government need highly trained police officers to go into the most dangerous situations, they call for S.W.A.T, or ‘Special Weapons And Tactics’.
And when they need ill-trained thugs to shoot an unarmed nurse outnumbered 8:1 ten times, they call for ICE.
We’ll stick with the former today, firstly because we have this awesome Chevy P30 S.W.A.T van straight outta Gotham City, and secondly because if S.W.A.T are here we’re less likely to get shot by Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
This splendid brick-built version of the police units trained to do things properly comes from previous bloggee Sam Andreas, and you can join them on the streets of Gotham via the link above. Which has got to be safer than being on the actual streets of America when ICE are around…
We maintain that the scariest vehicle – other than a government-registered SUV in Minneapolis of course – is the Volkswagen Transporter camper, what with them being almost exclusively driven by top-knot wearing, ethnic peace crisp eating, alternative lifestyle evangelists. And now that we’ve successfully antagonised both the hard-right and hard-left in one sentence (there’s no bias here!), on to the model!
This neat Volkswagen ‘T3’ camper comes from Flickr’s HCKP13, who’s captured the ’80s bus brilliantly in brick form. There’s more of the model to see at HCKP13’s photostream, and you can head to a parking lot outside Starbucks to steal the free WiFi whilst bemoaning capitalism via the link above!
The vehicular oddity continues here at The Lego Car Blog. Unless you’re Polish, in which case today’s creation probably isn’t odd it all. It’s a 1960s Nysa N61, powered by a 2.1 litre 50bhp engine, a three-speed gearbox, and with a 0-60mph time of never. This lovely mini-figure scale recreation of the Nysa comes from previous bloggee K P, with a train front window, a ‘roller shutter’ cargo door, and best of all it appears to be carrying our favourite Danish bricks. Take a look at K P’s album via the link above.
The eagerly awaited final season of ‘Stranger Things’ is just a few days away, when we – along with millions of others – will return to 1980s Hawkins Indiana for one last time.
Hawkins’ news outlets are likely to be very busy, with ‘94.5 The Squawk’s news van ready to cover the mysterious disasters courtesy of Alex Jones (aka Orion Pax), who has recreated it and its ‘Upside-down’ counterpart brilliantly in brick.
Opening doors, a fully-fitted interior, a removable roof, and an accurate ‘94.5 WSQK’ livery all feature, and you can join us in Hawkins at Alex’s photostream via the link above.
Is there anything better than a burger from a van? OK, a burger not from a van probably, but a burger from a van is still a burger. And just look how burgery this van is! It’s a Chevy P20 box van and it comes from previous bloggee Sseven Bricks, with more to see at his photostream. Click here for a roadside burger of unnamed meat, gherkins, tomato, relish, and questionable food hygiene.
The Elves is Disney movies do not look like those here at TLCB Towers. Probably because Disney don’t want their young audience members to scream/cry/vomit. Cue 2020’s ‘Onward’, in which two ‘Elf’ brothers undertake an epic adventure in an old van, which recent bloggee Tim Inman has recreated beautifully in brick form.
Complete with rusty sills, a detailed interior behind a sliding door, and a fabulous brick-built pegasus mural, Tim’s Model Team ‘Guinevere’ is one of our favourite creations of the year so far. There’s much more to see at Tim’s photostream and you can join two Elves on the road trip of a lifetime via the link above, whilst we look at ours and ponder our choices.
It’s 1969, career criminal Charlie Croker is out of prison, and he’s just learned that his friend has been murdered by the mafia whilst planning a $4 million gold heist. Charlie decides to continue the job left by his departed fellow thief, breaking back into prison to enlist the help of crime lord Mr. Bridger before heading to Italy with a convoy of fast cars, a converted coach, a minibus, a Land Rover, and three Mini Coopers.
What follows is the greatest movie car chase of them all, with the definitive cliff-hanger ending, and the vehicles from which Flickr’s FifthPixel has recreated brilliantly in brick!
His adapted Bedford VAL Harrington Legionnaire coach, Land Rover Series 2A Safari, and – the target of the whole operation – OM Furganato Sicurezza Bullion van beautifully encapsulate the period motors from the movie, plus he’s constructed the Ford Thames 400E minibus, Alfa Romeo Guilia police cars, and construction machinery used by the mafia to dispatch their foes too.
You can find FifthPixel’s entire ‘The Italian Job’ vehicular cast at their photostream; take a look via the link above plus you can click here for a few snippets from the film’s wonderful chase sequence.
Yoga-practicing, vegan-dieting, top-knot-wearing bus / camper life douchebags are everywhere. Well, as long as everywhere has good WiFi, so they can upload their latest ‘adventure’ to their followers. Urgh.
We try to avoid such content of course, but so too would we steer clear of the owner of this battered ’70s Dodge B100 van and Shasta trailer. Decidedly un-Instagram friendly, we suspect its inhabitant’s diet would be more road-kill than ethnic-peace-crisps, and healing crystals would be swapped for actual, um… actual crystal.
Which leads neatly on to today’s second dodgy camper, a Dodge-based ’77 Winnebago that’s almost guaranteed to be a meth lab. An update to his previously blogged ‘Minnie Winnie’, 1saac W. is the builder of both recreational vehicles, and you can head to the abandoned parking lot on the edge of town to check them out via the link above.
It’s normally the inside of an old van that has all the illegal stuff…
This is ‘Guinevere’, the pegasus-painted van of the elven protagonists in Pixar’s ‘Onward’, and it’s got more illegal moves than Max Verstappen.
Held together by a combination of immense skill and hope (we suspect there’s a reason this model is only photographed from one side!), 1saac W.‘s remarkable creation pushes the limits of brick-based building.
Take a closer look at 1ssac’s photostream, just don’t try to pick it up.
The Lego Car Blog Elves have the vehicular tastes of Russian millionaires, favouring vehicles that are fast, loud, and obnoxious. Preferably with rocket launchers attached.
We however are… ok, somehow simultaneously weird and boring, so we like creations like this, a humble Iveco Daily 35S16 box van. In white.
Still, even if you’re of a more Elven persuasion, you can see this Iveco Daily 35S16 is beautifully constructed, with some ingenious techniques used to replicate the seemly simple but actually subtly tricky design. Keko007 is the builder behind it and there’s more to see of his humdrum white box on Flickr via the link above.
The Dutch get erroneously associated with quite a lot in our home nation. English slang includes ‘going dutch’ (everyone pays), ‘double dutch’ (unintelligible gibberish), dutch oven (farting under the bedcovers before sealing your partner inside), and ‘dutch rudder’ (which we can’t write here)).
Whilst we can’t take responsibility for decades of English verbal tomfoolery, we can ensure the Dutch are adequately represented here at The Lego Car Blog, which we’re doing today via the medium of SFH_Bricks‘ excellent Mercedes-Benz Sprinter ambulance in funky Dutch emergency services livery.
With a complete interior accessed via the twin rear and side sliding doors, SFH’s Sprinter is as detailed inside as out, and you can go Dutch via the link to Flickr above.
It a Transit van double here at The Lego Car Blog today, with two rather different examples of Ford’s ubiquitous workhorse.
First up (above) is Versteinert‘s wonderful 7-wide 1970s face-lifted Mk1 Transit camper, wearing some slightly mismatched wheel-arch and sill repairs, a roof-rack loaded with adventure equipment, and being a thousand times cooler than the default Volkswagen Transporter. It joins several other Mk1 Transits in Versteinert’s photostream, and you can finn them all via the link above.
Four decades later, the Mk1’s great-grandson is here in the form of this 5-wide 2010s face-lifted Mk4 Transit crew-van (below) in ‘Abnormal Load Escort’ configuration. Make your own ‘Your Mom’ joke. Regular bloggee Ralph Savelsberg is its creator and there’s more to see of his excellent Transit, and the abnormal load it’s escorting, via the link above.
The holiday season is near its end, and thus we’re already thinking about the next time we can escape this crumbling ruin of an office filled and the mythical creatures within it (the Elves, not TLCB staff).
Cue recent bloggee Nick Kleinfelder‘s recreation of his own 1980s Volkswagen T3 Westfalia, complete with a boot-rack, a pop-top, and a delightful beige hue that could have been marketed as ‘Infant’s Nappy’.
There’s more of the model to see at Nick’s photostream, and you can holiday in an ’80s VW via the link above.
Ford’s Transit was an emphatic success when it launched in the 1960s. By the late ’70s almost every van on British and European roads was a Transit, with vans called ‘Transits’ regardless of their actual make and model.
But the Transit was also disposable. Built as a tool, rarely looked after, and thrown away afterwards, the attrition of the Transit was almost total. Almost.
In 1960s-70s Germany, the Transit Mk.1 was a popular fire response vehicle, carrying ladders on the roof, pumping equipment inside, and with a siren and an upturned plant-pot blue light mounted above the cab.
Unlike their invariably white workhorse brethren, Transits in the fire service were well looked after, meticulously maintained, and travelled relatively low mileage. They were also kept for decades, and thus by the time they retired they were the only surviving examples of the Mk1 left. Which means that today if you see a Ford Transit Mk1 in Germany, it’ll probably be red, and once have carried ladders on the roof.
Cue Versteinert‘s lovely 7-wide German fire service Ford Transit Mk1, constructed following his more humdrum version that appeared here last month. Beautiful attention to detail matches the presentation, and there’s more to see of his fantastic fire service Ford at his photostream.
Click the first link in the text above for one of the few Transit Mk1 survivors, or the second for one that almost certainly didn’t.