Tag Archives: vignette

100 Ans du Mans

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The world’s greatest motor race celebrates its century this weekend. Founded in 1923 on a public road loop around the village of Le Mans, a route that would later become today’s ‘Circuit de la Sarthe’, the 24 Heures du Mans remains the pinnacle of endurance racing.

Of course due to some German expansionist policies in the late 1930s, the 2023 event is not the one hundredth running of the race, rather the 91st, but nevertheless it’s going to be a special year, with both a notable increase in Hypercar competition and the final year of the GTE class before it’s replaced by the more widely adopted GT3 regulations.

Flickr’s SpaceMan Nathan is celebrating Le Mans’ centenary, and the final year of GTE, with this lovely recreation of the Circuit de la Sarthe pitlane, complete with five Speed Champions GTE AM cars. Accurate liveries and trackside sponsorship add to the ambience, and you can enter the pitlane at Le Mans’ centenary year via the link above to watch the GTE finale.

Prime Position

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We’re breaking a few of our own rules today…

This creation is virtual. It features a cartoonish caricature. Oh, and a big bald meathead, who may or may not have LEGO arms.

But seeing as the movies from which it’s inspired are also pretty much virtual (no, physics does not do the things it appears to in the ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise), feature cars that too are cartoonish caricatures, and that also include the aforementioned big, bald meathead, we’re going to let it pass. In the name of “Family…”, or something.

Built for the ‘Iron Builder’ contest, in which participants must use a usually-obscure LEGO piece (in this case a Spike Prime Colour Sensor), Ivan Martynov’s homage to the most profitable (and worst) movie franchise of all time includes several of the chosen part hidden throughout it, including the Dodge Charger’s supercharger, the floodlights, hidden within the cityscape, and most cunningly as a meathead torso.

There’s more to see at Ivan’s photostream, and you can ignore physics whilst muttering “Family…” for little-to-no-reason via the link in the text above!

Easter Cors-Hare

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Today’s title is about as tenuously linked to Easter as it’s possible to get, but seeing as egg-laying rabbits have about as much to do with Easter as a 1940s fighter aircraft, we’re going with it.

This is a US Navy Vought Corsair, made Eastery with only a minor spelling amendment, created and presented in this wonderful vignette by Nicholas Goodman of Flickr. Pictured in the Solomon Islands in 1944, Nicholas has deployed superb attention to detail, using fantastic building techniques, custom mini-figures, and hiding a few period-correct easter eggs in the vignette too.

See, it was Eastery all along!

There’s more to see at Nicholas’ photostream and you can head to the Solomon Islands in 1944 via the link in the text above, or alternatively click here for something actually Easter-related.

Down by the River

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You’d be forgiven for thinking we’d gone on holiday here at The Lego Car Blog, seeing as we’ve published nothing for the past few days. Sadly we hadn’t escaped the crumbling concrete carbuncle that is TLCB Towers, it’s just our Elves had found precisely nothing. Well, nothing worth posting at any rate.

If we had gone on holiday though, we’d be delighted if had a looked a little like this. Lego_nuts‘ beautiful autumnal riverside campsite looks a wonderful way to spend a long weekend, with a mini-figure family enjoying crystal clear water and towering trees, courtesy of the Jeep Wrangler 4×4 outfitted with a rooftop tent that’s brought them there.

Join us in wishing we were somewhere else at Lego_nuts’ photostream via the link above.

*Today’s (excellent) title song.

Build in Low-Res

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No your screen hasn’t suddenly gone low-res. The reason for the Minecraft-esque appearance of today’s creation is that it has been constructed (no doubt tediously) using solely 1×2 plates. Yup, everything from the windscreen to the wheels of Chris Doyle‘s Jeep is built only from LEGO’s second-smallest part, which assuredly makes this the least detailed (and yet one of the most ingenious) creations that this site has ever featured. Head over to Flickr to pretend you’re in a video game c1995!

Depositing a Floater

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Sorry, we mean ‘Depositing by Floater’. The first is something else. Anyway, this delightful scene depicting a De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver floatplane comes from Flickr’s Slick_Brick, and it looks beautiful! From the dog in the boat by the jetty to the forest and snow-capped mountains beyond to the wait… what’s that lurking in the water? Whatever it is the scene is still somewhere we’d love to be, and you can join us there at Slick’s photostream via the link in the text above.

Home is Where You Park(ed) It

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Some vehicles are more than the sum of their parts. They’ve transcended their original purpose to become, and stand for, something more. The Volkswagen Camper, the Toyota Prius, and the DeLorean DMC-12 to name a few, but each of those is still, at the end of the day, just a car. A car wrapped up in a million connotations, but a car nonetheless.

Occasionally though, a vehicle transcends its original purpose by actually, well… transcending it. These are rarely the cool cars. They’re the forgotten ones. The vehicles whose job as a vehicle has long been superseded in order to meet the more immediate needs of the owner.

Cue TLCB debutant pan noda, and their simply wonderful ‘RV House’, depicting a dead camper, extended, adapted and remodelled, to become a far better abode than when it was still rolling.

Gorgeous detailing and presentation abounds and you can click the link above to take a closer look. It’s not #vanlife. It’s something a whole lot more.

To the Joust!

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Decidedly not a car, but thoroughly charming nonetheless, is Clemens Schneider‘s wonderfully whimsical horse and cart, entitled ‘On the way to Summer Joust’. A brick-built horse and knights add to the magic (although we’d definitely rather be the one in the cart), and you join them on their medieval journey at Clemen’s photostream. Head to the joust via the link above!

Future Fuelling

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Uh oh – cyberpunk! A genre about which we know less than your Mom does about portion control.

Still, despite this incompetence, we absolutely love this scene by Flickr’s Slick_Brick, which is packed with so much brilliant detail even TLCB Staff have stopped to take a look. And usually that only happens for some obscure car from 1976.

See if you can spot; the jet bike, the tracked robot helper, the pot plant, and the ingenious dog water bowl with the rest of TLCB Team at Slick’s photostream.

Some Like it Hoth

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A fallen AT-AT, T-47 Airspeeders overhead, and somewhere Luke Skywalker is making a sleeping bag out of a Tauntaun carcass. It’s the Battle of Hoth, a Star Wars fight between the Dark Side and Jedis or something, of which we know nothing besides what Wookiepedia told us.

Still, TLCB’s usual sci-fi incompetence aside, this micro-scale scene by Flickr’s Pasq67 is fantastic, and sure to excite fans of George Lucus’ overlong space saga. If you’re one of them you can take a look at all the details via Pasq67’s ‘Micro AT-AT’ album via think above. You nerd.

Military Monday

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War is once again raging in Europe. However despite the shock of one country invading another in 2022, Europe has been involved in conflict almost constantly. From fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War (which this TLCB Writer fears may be about to return) to involvement in far-away combat, war is sadly never distant.

Today’s models remind us of this past, with the first (above) the undoubtedly beautiful but rather sinister Handley-Page Victor nuclear bomber.

Built as part of the UK’s nuclear defence in the late 1950s, the Victor was part of a long line of V-Bombers (that also included the incredible Avro Vulcan), before it was repurposed for high altitude reconnaissance and later air-to-air refuelling.

This wonderful recreation of the Victor comes from previous bloggee Henrik Jensen, who has recreated its amazing shape beautifully in brick form. A full description of the build and further imagery can be found at Henrik’s photostream, and you can bomb on over via the link above.

Today’s second military creation (below) recreates a scene from countless Vietnam War movies, with a Bell ‘Huey’ helicopter in front of a (superbly built) shell-damaged building. The Bell and background come from Nicholas Goodman, who – like Henrik above – has deployed a few custom pieces to enhance authenticity.

There’s more to see of Nicholas’ ‘Battle of Hue, February 1968’ on Flickr. Click the link above to fight a pointless war that ends in failure and retreat. In that respect we hope that history is about to repeat itself.

Tiny Tracks

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We’re often guilting of favouring enormous million-part creations here at TLCB. This is because we’re eight, and also because ‘subtlety’ isn’t really in the TLCB Elves’ vocabulary. To be fair to them though, very little is in their vocabulary. Anyway, today we are going small, because Thomas Gion has produced this lovely micro-scale railway vignette, complete with the tiniest trees, teeniest tracks, and littlest locomotive. All look wonderful despite their miniature size and there’s more to see (although not that much more) at Thomas’ photostream. Click the link above to go on a teeny tiny train ride.

Maximum Mundanity

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We’re half-way through the Festival of Mundanity, in which we’re looking for the most boring vehicles built from brick!

There are some awesome prizes on offer including the ace BuWizz 3.0 Pro, a package of iDisplayit stands for LEGO sets, and any Game of Bricks lighting kit!

Hoping to score said loot, two entrants previously featured here have recently maximised the mundanity of their creations to increase their scores, after we said “this could only be more boring if…”.

That ‘if’ for 1saac W., who had built the default for motoring mundanity (and his own car), involved recreating the tedium of interpreting parking restrictions. In a white Toyota Corolla. Now that really is mundane.

Another builder on the hunt for more mundane points is iBrickedItUp, whose Cozy Coupe manages to span both our Vehicular category and our partner BrickNerd‘s Object category. It was pictured in a rather delightful garden scene, but outside, in the rain, next to the bins… that’s a whole heap more mundane.

IBrickedItUp has also recreated the sea of dull that is a rental car lot, with a choice of ‘white, off-white, pale-beige‘, BHBricks has built a Scion xB – a car that tried so hard not to be mundane it’s the very thing it became – and the tedium of loading a box truck, whilst Sergio Batista has built the Fiat Multipla, which is a quandary for us, as it wasn’t mundane at all, but its purpose absolutely was.

There’s still half the competition to go, and we’d love to see your boring vehicles, built in any scale, whether Town, Creator, Technic or anything in-between. BrickNerd are after your mundane objects; a few of the fantastic entries received so far are pictured above!

You can see many of the entries to date in the contest Flickr group, and we’ll end this competition update with an extra link to surely the most mundane object in the history of mankind… Bravo Tim Inman, bravo.

Check out the full Festival of Mundanity Competition details here.

Ho-Ho-Ho

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Don’t worry kids, that’s not the real Santa. But the title still applies, and we expect his ‘elf’ is definitely going to do some stuff on the Naughty List.

Lasse Deleuran owns the mind behind this, er… Christmassy scene, and there’s more to see of ‘Santa’, his ‘elf’, and the mobility scooter upon which he’s riding on Flickr. Ho-ho-ho!

Lunar Landing

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It’s fifty years since the coolest vehicle ever made (apart from the Citroen DS obviously) first landed on the moon.

The Lunar Roving Vehicle (better known as the ‘Moon Buggy’) was a foldable all-wheel-drive EV designed to enable the Apollo astronauts cover a greater area of the lunar surface.

The LRV was used three times between 1971 and ’72, and Flickr’s VALARIE ROCHE has recreated the momentous event five decades later, with a brick-based tribute to the lunar landings suggested to us by a reader.

Valarie’s build includes a fully-foldable LRV, a pair of astronauts (with the names of all twelve to walk on the moon inscribed on the vignette’s base), and a recreation of the LLRE (Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment), which can still be used today to disprove those who think that the above occurred in a studio in L.A.

Valarie is hoping the build will become an official LEGO set, and you can check it out in more detail (and help to make that a reality) by visiting Valarie’s photostream. Click the link above to rove the lunar surface fifty years ago.