Tag Archives: BMW

LEGO Speed Champions 76922 BMW M4 GT3 & BMW M Hybrid V8: A double-dose of winners? [Review]

What’s better than one LEGO Speed Champions car? Two LEGO Speed Champions cars! The latest dual-pack to be added to the theme is 76922 BMW M4 GT3 & BMW M Hybrid V8, with 676 pieces. Retailing for US $44.99 | CAN $59.99 | UK £44.99, and available from March 1st, this dual-pack depicts two racers from the same manufacturer, but very different racing backgrounds. Is this race going to be a one-sided affair, or will they both win our hearts? You’ll have to read our review to find out!

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Click here to read our review

Prototype by name, prototype by nature

If you know your motor racing, the 1999 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will probably have you picturing a Mercedes-Benz CLR somersaulting the Mulsanne straight. Spare a thought for BMW, though – they won the race, and almost no one remembers their car! The aptly-named LEGO builder PROTOTYP sure does, though. This model painstakingly recreates the BMW V12 LMR in the brick, with the help of a few custom decals and wheels.

BMW LMR '99

Make no mistake, though – the bricks are doing the heavy lifting here! The detail is evident underneath the bodywork and on top, and this is where my motorsport nerd heart starts fluttering. The engine is there, of course: all 12 cylinders of it. But so are the radiators, the wiring, the cooling hoses, the driveshafts, and – my personal favourite – the shock absorbers, with red 1×1 round studs standing in for springs. This is attention to detail truly worthy of a winner!

BMW LMR '99

“You wouldn’t steal a car...” (so just build one instead)

With car builds, I’m always most impressed when a builder can use their LEGO bricks to recreate the most immediately recognisable cars. For instance, take this BMW E36 Coupe by Fuku Saku. He has perfectly captured the iconic front grille that adorned such Bimmers in the 90s. The overall shape has been neatly captured as well, with subtly angled headlights to reflect the real thing’s curves. I’m not sure the front splitter and the massive rear wing were stock though, even on the M3. This has clearly been modified… But by whoM?

BMW E36 COUPE SPORT

It’s none other than a Jack Stone figure! In fact this one is a bank robber, and E36s aren’t cheap these days, so perhaps this motor is an ill-gotten gain. These figures were featured in Juniors and Jack Stone sets in the early noughties. These are some of the earliest LEGO figures I had, incidentally. It’s fairly unusual to see them used in fan creations, so it’s nice to see a whole car scaled (and, judging by the red paintwork, styled) around one!

BMW E36 COUPE SPORT

Italian craftsmanship, German engineering, and Danish bricks

When thinking of the early development of the supercar in the 1980s, most people will probably think of the Lamborghini Countach or the Ferrari Testarossa as the poster boys of that era. One that sometimes gets overlooked — unfairly, if you ask me — is the BMW M1. It mixes the craziness of the Italian-born wedge-shape with some classic German refinement and engineering. LEGO builder Leo 1 has perfectly captured the first German supercar (I count the original Porsche 911 as a grand tourer, before you ask!) in all its orange glory. A pair of headlight bricks are the perfect choice for the BMW snout nose, as are the circular tiles for the rims.

BMW M1

The exquisite shaping continues around the rear of the car. Slopes and tiles at subtle angles abound to capture the sharp shape of this Bimmer, which is not easy in bright orange as the parts palette is still fairly limited. The little details, like the interior or wing mirrors, are the cherry on the cake. And we can all agree that twin-pipe exhausts just make a car look cooler, can’t we…?

BMW M1

LEGO Technic BMW M 1000 RR K66 – A massive motorcycle for ultimate collectors! [Review]

LEGO has been making buildable motorcycles for ages. The first one, in fact, came in 1978 with 603 Motorbike, a 26-piece, minifigure-scale System model. Suffice to say, the company has come a long way since then. Sets are becoming decisively more giant and complex with each passing year. And the 44-year-old Technic theme has worked its way into a significant portion of all current sets. Flagship models in this theme have been fancy for a while, but now the theme is giving the “adult” VIP treatment to a collectors-style motorcycle. The company has teamed up with BMW Motorrad to bring their new superbike into homes everywhere with LEGO Technic 42130 BMW M 1000 RR. The 1920-piece set will be available January 1st and will retail for US $229.99 | CAN $299.00 | UK £174.99. Come along as we run it through its paces!

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Click to see the full, hands on review!

Buckle up, this car is a real winner

Okay, so the BMW M8 GTE didn’t actually perform well in the 2018 Le Mans endurance event, nonetheless this vehicle translated into LEGO by builder Lasse Deleuran is still a winner in my eyes.

BMW M8 GTE from LeMans 2018

The custom decals, the gold rims, and the racing colors on this brick-built racecar make me want to speed away, luckily for everyone on the roads in New York that actually won’t happen. Deleuran’s choice in rendering this sportscar’s windshield using black LEGO tiles instead of a trans-clear piece is an interesting, albeit effective one. I also thought his use of the clipped 1×2 plate along with the black bar was a clever way to build windshield wipers. While the actual BMW M8 GTE isn’t exactly a winner, its brick-built counterpart has surely won my heart.

Bavarian Motor Works gets the Danish Brick Works treatment

With the release of the excellent LEGO Creator Expert 10269 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy set, we appear to be experiencing a corresponding uptick in fantastic motorcycle creations. Here’s a belter of a bike from André Pinto — a brick-built version of a customised BMW R80 RT. The shaping and overall frame are spot-on, and the sticker-work is just perfect, adding little touches of detail without overwhelming the bricks. The splash of gold from the ribbed hoses adds a lovely burst of contrast against the black, as do the red forks, and the overall presentation of the model is enhanced by the wood-effect base.

LEGO Motorcycle BMW

LEGO Technic 42063 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure [Review]

Unlike many of my childhood friends, I’ve never been fond of motorcycles. Well, some of them look cool and I heard some of them are really fast but while all of my mates spent hours drooling over pictures of bikes in auto magazines I was pretty content with a huge yellow pneumatic tractor from LEGO Technic on a table in my room. And now, 15 years later, here I am, feasting my eyes on the new LEGO Technic 42063 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure on my table, thinking that I’ve been missing something in my life till this very moment. Although there have been plenty of LEGO Technic motorcycles before it, this 603-piece beauty is the first licensed motorcycle released, and the retail price of $59.99 / 49.99€ makes this BMW a solid bargain among all the licensed LEGO Technic sets.

42063 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure

Reviewing a BMW R 1200 GS set gives a lot of opportunity for reflection upon the licensed models in the Technic theme, as well as comparing them to the old Model Team sets, and this is what I’d planned to base my review on until I got my hands on the set. The problem is this BMW doesn’t need to be compared to other bikes, cars, or cranes. It stands out against every other 2017 Technic set. Its announcement was highlighted by several official press releases, emphasizing that this bike is a self-contained and stand alone model. It’s not a primarily meant as toy, nor is it merely a sophisticated mechanism or a dodgy Technic machine by Billund’s designers. Rather, it’s a decent, scaled copy of a BMW motorcycle made of Technic pieces — and this is what makes it genuinely beautiful.

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LEGO reveals BMW R 1200 GS motorcycle set, announces new partnership with BMW [News]

This morning LEGO announced a brand new partnership with BMW Motorrad (BMW’s motorcycle brand) and revealed the first product of that partnership: the LEGO Technic 42063 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure motorcycle. The Technic roadster will have 603 pieces, and stands 18 cm high, 33 cm long and 10 cm wide. The set will include a special commemorative Technic piece to celebrated LEGO Technic’s 40th anniversary in 2017, and will be available Jan. 01, 2017. We don’t have word on the price yet.

42063 LEGO Technic BMW R 1200 GS

While this is the first licensed motorcycle, the news closely follows LEGO picking up the Caterham Seven license, and LEGO has a long history of other licensed vehicles, such as the Volkswagen Beetle and Ferrari F40. Read the full press release below.

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Adorable 1959 BMW Isetta 300 bubble car goes *beep beep*

The recovering industries of post-war Europe produced a number of fascinating micro-cars to operate in the narrow streets of countries like Germany, Italy, and France. Chief among these was the Isetta, a gorgeous little bubble-car that ming1903 has faithfully recreated in LEGO.

Brick Models - 1959 BMW Isetta 300 front

I’d challenge builders out there to create a LEGO Isetta that fits a minifig and has a functional pop-open front, but this version beautifully replicates the shape of the real-life car.

1980 BMW E21…wonderfully chibi

Considering this car is built on a 4×7 stud footprint and is still instantly recognizable is quite the feat. I am not even a huge car guy and I immediately knew what it was. But should we expect much else from Raphy Granas?

1980 BMW E21

Gnarly BMW Rat Rod

It was hard to pick which photo I was going to post of Calin’s (_Tiler) sleek BMW rat rod, because as Vaughan James so accurately described, his “photography is like LEGO car porn”. So I will just post a small selection.

I am admittedly not a ‘car guy’, but I do enjoy a gnarly looking vehicle like the best of them. Also the fact that Calin was able to fit an entire minifig in at this scale earns big time bonus points.

Check out the rest of the ‘LEGO Car Porn’ in the full photoset.