This gigantic vehicle from the Ice Planet theme by Chris Perron is ready to conquer the frozen terrain with its massive notched wheels and array of scientific equipment. All you have to do is look at the minifigs in the photo to appreciate the scale of the beast. When it comes to fan-built Ice Planet creations, this vehicle is the coolest I’ve seen.
Pēteris Sproģis generally builds excellent small vehicles, but lately he has been building larger ones and they do not disappoint either. His Shelby Mustang recently won the 75th LUGNuts challenge and he has now built a superb rendition of Toyota’s FJ Cruiser.
Toyota’s orginal FJ Land Cruiser set a new standard of reliability for off-road vehicles, practically replacing the traditional Land Rover in Africa, whilst in the US it gained a bit of a cult-following. The FJ Cruiser is a modern interpretation of this classic, with similar off-road performance and with retro styling. I don’t think it’s a particularly pretty car, but compared to other Toyotas, which are about as interesting as wet spaghetti, it is distinctive. When building a model of a car with distinctive looks, like the FJ Cruiser or a Hummer or VW Beetle, you can mess up the proportions pretty badly before it will no longer be recognizable. However, Pēteris’ model is just about perfect.
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights! Tonight, two tiny turbo titans will battle it out for our smallest round ever! Let’s go to the tale of the tape.
In the red corner we have Adam Janusick (SHARPSPEED) and his Firepower FCGT:
In the blue corner we have František Hajdekr and his Classic American Car:
Which builder packed more power into their tiny 4 wide chassis ?
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this bout by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the Rover Round, Kosmas won 4-2. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
In the fifties, the United States experimented with artillery that could launch nuclear weapons. Not to be outdone, the Soviet Union developed the 2A3 Kondensator 2P self-propelled howitzer. Andy Baumgart (D-Town Cracka) has built a highly detailed 1/30 scale model of this unusual piece of Cold War history.
Early nuclear weapons tended to be on the bulky side. Consequently, whilst many modern self-propelled artillery pieces have a caliber of 155 mm (6.10 inches), the caliber of the Kondensator was a whopping 406 mm (16 inches), which is more in line with a battleship main battery. It was one of the largest self-propelled artillery pieces ever built. It was unwieldy, had a low rate of fire and never entered service, but it makes for an impressive model.
Remember the Alfa Romeo racer I posted a while ago? In that post, I made a remark about the truly hideous nose of the Ferrari F14 T, which is their Formula one car for the 2014 season. To get more air under the car, where it is accelerated to create down force, race car designers want to raise the nose far from the ground. This led to the noses on Formula 1 cars steadily creeping upward over the years. In fact, they were getting so far off the ground that they were beginning to pose a danger to other drivers in case of a crash. Consequently, this year, new regulations were introduced that limited how high the nose is allowed to be and this has led to some ‘interesting’ engineering solutions.
Ferrari’s method resulted in a decidedly crooked shape. Nathanael L. has built a model of the F14 T, but at first I didn’t even really notice the small kink. It’s a beautiful car. Mind you, Ferrari’s solution is by no means the ugliest. I can’t imagine anybody building Torro Rosso F1 car any time soon…
What would it look like if you crossed a Citroen car with a Tron Light cycle? F@bz answered just that with this concept build:
I’m a total sucker for funky lit builds – and he has done a wonderful job using Lifelites inside the car to light up the wheels and the headlights. But it’s not just the lights that make this build super slick – check out some of the neat slope usage to round this baby out especially that 45 degree offset white windscreen in the back.
About four weeks ago, I announced the 75th build challenge organised by LUGNuts, the online group for LEGO car nuts. There normally are no prizes for the challenges, but because this was our 75th we decided to add a little extra incentive. Members could build a car, obviously, but with other members assigning the car in question. The builders of the winning cars get prizes, but also the members who suggested them. The judges had a hard time choosing, but after I tallied up all the votes, we reached a conclusion. Without further ado, here are the winners of the 75th LUGnuts challenge. The comments below the images, written in italic script, are by Lino Martins ( Lino M), who, for lack of a better word, serves as LUGNuts’ ringleader.
In first place:
Pēteris Sproģis shows us all how its done with his stunning1967 Ford GT500. He could have stopped at just building the car, but he sets the scene and tells a story with an entire diorama of a Mustang car pulling a Mustang horse.
In second place:
What happens when Lamborghini turns 50 and has a midlife crisis? The Egoista, as built by Curtis D. Collins (curtydc). Trophy brides half your age will forgive a guy’s pot belly and comb-over if he owned this baby. But you can’t take her with you as its only a one-seater. Awesome job, Curty!
In third place:
Lego Junkie. lives up to his name with his totally awesome Ford RS-200. (…) Good show, Junkie. May you never seek recovery for your addiction.
The winning cars were assigned by Raphael Granas (r a p h y ), Rolands Kirpis (Rolic) and Dylan Denton (/>ylan/>.), respectively.
We post contest announcements on TBB fairly regularly, but I realise that we don’t actually always show the outcome. If it is this good, however, that’s a big omission. Congratulations guys!
Yesterday, the Scuderia Ferrari racing team announced their new car for the 2014 Formula One season and it is hideous. It looks like a fat bloke sat on its nose. Of course, what looks right and what is right in terms of aerodynamics doesn’t necessarily match up. What also doesn’t help are stringent rules aimed at keeping the speed of the car down. There used to be a time when things were different though. Back in 1933, the shape of a racecar wasn’t yet determined using wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics. There were also far fewer restrictions. Ferrari didn’t yet produce their own cars, but raced cars such as the Alfa Romeo 8C 2600 Monza, recreated by bobalexander!. This car won the 1933 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, with drivers Tazio Nuvolari and Raymond Sommer.
Just look at the fenders and the boat tail. I’m all the more impressed with this model because it was built in dark red. The number of different parts available in this colour is on the increase, but it is still a lot harder to work with than, say, regular red. The end result is truly gorgeous.
We’re reaching for the skies tonight, with two models that on the one hand are very similar, but on the other could hardly be more different. Both represent a Liebherr LTM 11200 9.1, which is currently the world’s largest mobile crane.
In the red corner we find the heavyweight contestant: a 1/15.5-scale model by Huib van der Hart (liftingbricks). I blogged this last year, when it was still a work in progress. Its size imposed daunting technical challenges and, at the time, it couldn’t yet be erected. Now it can, however, and it is so big it’s intimidating.
In the blue corner, we find a minifig scale version by Maksymilian Majchrzak (MAKS). This is his largest model to date and at 2 kg and with a height of 70 cm, when fully extended, it’s not exactly tiny. In this competition, however, it’s the bantamweight. Despite its much smaller scale though, it looks very much like the real deal, is highly detailed and has many working functions.
In last week’s dragontastic installment, Stormbringer’s Skrill Showdown narrowly beat Jonas’ Smaug the Stupendous, with a final score of 8 to 7. It’s up to you this week, dear reader, to decide whether size matters.
Continuing with our tracked theme for today, I present the hilariousness that is Karf Oolhu’s Crawler Trawler. As Fedde explains, “Impractical, but once I thought of the name, I had to build it.”
I am glad you did Fedde, because this sort of absurd cuteness is just the ticket to kick us into the weekend.