With every new generation of car, the manufacturer will – without fail – claim it’s lower and wider than before, in order to “project an assertive dynamic stance” or some other bollocks. They can’t keep getting lower and wider indefinitely of course, otherwise at some point everything will be a Can-Am racer.
However despite this vehicular marketing nonsense, there is probably some truth in it, as back in the early days of the motor car designs were rather more… upright.
A narrow track, a chassis on top of the wheels, and space in the cabin for elaborate hats meant cars from the 1920s were wobbly, tottery affairs. Although with a top speed of about 30mph and tyres as wide as those on a bicycle, this probably mattered not. Plus you could keep on your elaborate hat.
Flickr’s _Tyler (aka Calin) reimagines a time of more vertical motoring (and headwear) with this beautifully presented creation, and there’s more to see of his vintage ‘Oldtimer’ at his photostream; click the link above take a look.
Formula 1 today seems to largely be an advert for crypto currency. Which is dodgy. But not as dodgy as it was in the 1930s, when Grand Prix racing was propaganda for naziism.
Yes, much like the Football World Cup, Olympics, and LIV Golf are used by various human-rights trampling regimes today, Hitler distracted the world – with huge success – through the display of Germany’s sporting and technological might. A triumphant 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were followed by various state-sponsored Grand Prix winners – nicknamed the ‘Silver Arrows’ – from Mercedes-Benz and the company that would eventually become Audi; Auto Union.
Powered by a monstrous and innovatively mid-mounted supercharged V16 engine, the Auto Union Type C won basically everything in 1936, and the Nazis used this success to continue convincing the German people (and the rest of the world) that they were alright really.
Previous bloggee [Maks] has captured Hitler’s ‘sports-washing’ beautifully, with this wonderful scene depicting the Auto Union Type C taking a starring role in one of many expertly-produced Nazi propaganda films.
By the late-’30s of course, the Nazis’ engineering prowess was being used rather differently, and world realised that Hitler may not have been completely honest about his intentions in films such as the one being shot here. Still, at least the world learned, and hasn’t made that mistake since*…
There’s more to see of [Maks] brick-built homage to one of the Nazis finest achievements via his photostream; click the link above above to jump back to Germany in 1936. Just don’t believe everything you see..
Not the Mazda Demio… Not the Mazda Demio… ‘2015 Mazda Demio’. Damnit!!
A cycle of disappointment familiar to anyone who’s played ‘Gran Turismo Sport’. However today’s ‘gift car’ is not a 2015 Mazda Demio, and is in fact rather good.
Cunningly created by previous bloggee K P and suggested to us by a reader, this neat vintage Dodge Coupe comes packaged inside its own brick-built case, aping the format commonplace with metal scale models.
A clever two-colour ‘ribbon’ wraps around the box encasing the Dodge and there’s more to see of K P’s uniquely presented creation at their photostream via the link above, plus you can click on the following links to check out our reviews of IDisplayIt and BOXXCO‘s cases for rather larger LEGO models…
From one of the most extravagant vintage cars to one of the least. This is the Austin 7, so called because it had seven horsepower, and it was one of the most popular inter-war cars on the British market.
Produced from the early 1920s until 1939, the 7 was less than half the weight of the Ford Model T and proved incredibly popular, being sold under license in France, Germany, and even in Japan (although rather less-licensed) as the first Nissan.
This lovely Town scale recreation of the 7 comes from serial bloggee _Tiler, who’s captured it beautifully. Bicycle wheels, a rubber-band grille, and some cunningly constructed cycle-wings accurately portray the tiny vintage car, and there’s more to see at _Tiler’s photostream via the link above.
“It was a rich cream colour, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns”.
It was also – in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ – a Rolls Royce. However Baz Luhrmann, never one to let reality interrupt the stylised nature of his films, cast a 1929 Duesenberg Model J in his 2013 move adaptation, set in 1922.
Despite deviating from both the book and, er… time, the Duesenberg Model J was the perfect vehicle with which to represent the extraordinary opulence of the story’s titular character. The fastest and most expensive automobile of the time, the Duesenberg Model J was the car of choice for America’s ultra-wealthy, with bodywork created by any number of American or European coach-builders, a weight of up to three tons, and a straight-eight engine that could, if optionally supercharged in ‘SJ form’, make 400bhp.
This astounding model of the Duesenberg SJ used in 2013’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is the work of the fantastically talented Adrian Drake and is – like its real-world counterpart – quite unfathomably long.
Measuring 144 studs from front to rear bumper, with a complete interior behind four opening doors, LED lighting, and the most intricate and incredible brick-built wheels we’ve ever seen, Adrian’s creation is fit for the most mysterious of 1920s millionaires.
It also wears a truly jaw-dropping body, created from a myriad of overlapping bricks, plates and tiles, that can only be accomplished when building at a scale as large as this.
A stunning collection of imagery reveals Adrian’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ Duesenberg SJ in phenomenal detail, and you can find it – along with the builder’s other works – on Flickr. Click the link above to take a ride across 1920s New York, and here to see the real movie car doing just that in Baz Lurhmann’s gloriously over-the-top film interpretation.
We’re pretty sure not every vintage car went ‘Poop poop!’*, but we can’t help but feel all Toad-of-Toad-Hall when we see one.
This lovely Speed Champions scale example comes from previous bloggee K P of Flickr, using only simple pieces and neat presentation to wonderful effect.
Poop poop your way to K P’s photostream for this and other old-timey creations via the link above.
Despite TLCB’s home nation being the only the eightieth largest country by land area, it’s sixth for the number of sheep. Which means the scene above happens a lot.
Well, not with a vintage winga-dingary car so much, more likely with a perplexed urban-dwelling couple in a modern SUV, now questioning their choice of a weekend getaway in the countryside.
This charming scene depicting a more old-timey ruminant-based roadblock comes from Flickr’s k_pusz, and you can join the queue behind him and a heard of LEGO sheep that are resolutely refusing to move via the link above.
Built from 1923 to until the Second World War, the Austin Seven was Britain’s answer to the Ford Model-T, except it may have been even more influential.
Powered by a 10hp 750cc straight-4, weighing just 360kg (less than half a Model-T!), and with a 75 inch wheelbase, the Seven proved ridiculously popular, replacing almost every other British cyclecar and economy car of the 1920s.
The design became the first BMW car (being built in Germany under licence), the first Nissan car (being built in Japan, er… not under license), was produced in France and America, and formed the basis of both the first McLaren racing car and the first Lotus.
It was also, being British, given a silly nickname, becoming known as the “Chummy”. Nope, we don’t know why either.
This rather wonderful Town-scale recreation of the Seven “Chummy’ comes from previous bloggee _Tiler, who has both built and presented it beautifully. There’s more to see of this pedigree build at his Flickr photostream, and you can head to 1920s Britain via the link in the text above.
This is a Russo-Balt C24/40, one the Russian Empire’s earliest cars, originally founded in Riga (now in Latvia) before production moved to St Petersburg. Funded by Germany, designed by a Swiss engineer, and built in Russia (or its empire), the Russia-Balt was an early example of excellent cross-border collaboration.
Of course that didn’t last long, and the Russo-Balt company switched to making military aircraft (of Sikorsky design, who would later create many famous U.S helicopters), before Lenin’s Bolshevik October Revolution closed the factory, Sikorsky fled to France, and the company director was murdered whilst attempting to flee to Finland. Which means that if not for the Bolshevik’s brutality, Sikorsky may never have left Russia and gone on to design the aircraft that opposed it during the Cold War. It’s a funny old world.
Today the remnants of the Russo-Balt company in Latvia builds trailers and, er… this, but we’re staying with the company’s origins and its early C24/40, built here in both ‘Torpedo’ luxury car and work-van form by Flickr’s Kirill Simerzin.
There’s more of each version (plus a third) to see at Kirill’s photostream, and you can head to the pre-revolutionary years of the Russian Empire’s automotive industry via the link in the text above.
Here at The Lego Car Blog we are definitely petrol-heads. And electric-heads perhaps too. We like cars is what we’re trying to say.
Because of this, we prefer our cars with rear-wheel-drive and manual gearboxes, for reasons of steering feel, the ability to go sideways a bit, and other nerdy car things that normal people couldn’t care less about. Which is why front-wheel-drive matters.
Creating safer, more predictable (understeery) handling, greater interior room, and better refinement, front-wheel-drive has been the absolute norm for anything that isn’t sporty for the past four decades.
Even brands famed for their rear-wheel-drive chassis like BMW have switched to front-wheel-drive for their smaller models, after learning their customers had no idea that their 1-Series was rear-wheel-drive, or even what being rear-wheel-drive means. Sigh.
Front-wheel-drive was dabbled with in the early years of motoring, but this is the car that proved the layout, decades before it became mainstream. It is the fabulous Citroen Traction Avant.
Possessing not just front-wheel-drive, but also the first mass-produced monocoque body and early rack-and-pinion steering, the Traction Avant was so advanced it was produced for two decades, something that was needed as its development bankrupted the Citroen company in the mid 1930s.
Today the Traction Avant is seen as the father of front-wheel-drive, and therefore most new cars on sale today (even if your car is all-wheel-drive, it’s still almost always only front-driven).
It’s surprising then that the Traction Avant has only featured here twice in a decade of publishing Lego vehicles. Cue this wonderful and much overdue Technic recreation of one of the world’s most innovative cars, as built by the very talented Nico71.
Beautifully replicating the Traction Avant’s ’30s styling, Nico’s model includes a working four-cylinder engine under the split-folding hood, four opening doors and an opening trunk, working steering, and – of course – front-wheel-drive.
The complexities of front-wheel-drive mean that – much like cars before about 1980 – very few Lego models adopt it, favouring the simplicity of a rear-driven axle. Nico’s model successfully incorporates it however, and he’s released building instructions so you can see how to create front-driven Lego models for yourself.
There’s much more to see at Nico’s Brickshelf gallery, you can watch the model in action via the video below, plus you can find out how Nico creates beautifully engineered models like this one via his Master MOCers interview. Understeer your way to all the additional content via the links above.
This time the phrase is more than metaphorical! Built by previous bloggee Andrea Lattanzio, this is the ‘Outhouse’, a Ford V8-powered toilet-in-a-shed based on a 1924 Ford truck, as constructed by hot rodder Bob Reisner during the bizarre novelty hot rod scene. Wooden handling and the aerodynamics of, well… an outhouse aside, this TLCB Writer is rather enamoured by the practicalities of Bob’s creation – you’d never need to use a highway services restroom again! Take a dump on the interstate via the link above!
This is where it all began. Supercars, muscle cars, minivans, Tesla, drive-thus, The Fast and the Furious franchise, Magic Tree air fresheners, and the Pontiac Aztek. All trace their existence back to this, the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the world’s first commercially-available motorcar.
Designed by German engineer Carl Benz, and financed by his wealthy wife, around twenty-five Patent-Motorwagens were produced, each powered by a 950cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine making between 2⁄3hp and 1.5hp. The car transported Carl’s wife Bertha and their two sons on the first ever long-distance car journey (66 miles) to raise publicity for the machine, a feat that she undertook without Carl’s knowledge or approval from the authorities. Which makes her excellent.
It worked of course, and began Benz’s journey to becoming one of the most well known companies on earth, ushering in the complete dominance of the internal-combustion-engined motorcar too, with all the planetary consequences that followed.
This lovely recreation of the motorcar’s genesis comes from Simon Pickard, who has built and presented the Benz Patent-Motorwagen beautifully in brick form. Click the link above to take a look at where it all began.
We love vintage cars here at The Lego Car Blog. Particularly ones that go ‘aaoogha!‘ Because we’re idiots.
This marvellous Ford Model T would certainly go ‘aaoogha!’ if it were real, and there’s more to see of this beautifully presented vintage motoring icon courtesy of _Tiler. Check it out at his photostream via the link.
Yes, the title phrase ‘That’s a Doozy’ – used to describe something opulent, enormous or unusual – really did come from society’s reaction to the Duesenberg cars that were built from the 1920s until 1940. Which must make it the world’s first automotive meme. Take that ‘VTEC just kicked in yo’.
The largest, most powerful, and most expensive cars on the market, Duesenberg’s can today sell for over $22 million, which rather prices TLCB out of ownership. Fortunately this delightful brick-built Duesenberg SJ is rather more attainable, having been suggested to us a by a reader.
Flickr’s 1saac W. is the builder and there’s more to see of his Doozy of a build at his photostream via the link.
The British and French don’t often collaborate. In fact over much of their history it’s been quite the opposite, with the two countries regularly trying to blow one another up.
These days (and post-Brexit) there’s just a simmering dislike that only manifests itself in sport and stealing one another’s scallops, but despite this there have been some notable (and remarkable) collaborations between the two nations.
The longest under-sea tunnel in the world, the world’s first supersonic airliner, and Kristin Scott-Thomas are all worthy partnerships, and back in the 1930s Britain and France worked together on cars too.
This is the Bugatti Type 41 Park Ward, a luxurious grand limousine from the golden era of coach-building.
Park Ward, better known for re-bodying Rolls Royces, created this beautifully opulent vehicle upon Bugatti’s fourth Type 41 (Royale) chassis for Captain Cuthbert W. Foster, a department store heir, in 1933.
Still to this day one of the largest cars ever built, the car now resides in a museum in France, where it’s worth more than all the scallops in the English channel.
Fortunately Flickr’s 1corn has created one that – at 1:25 scale – is rather more attainable, and there’s more to see of his wonderful brick-built Bugatti Type 41 at his photostream; Click the link above to take the Channel Tunnel and fight over some marine molluscs.