Tag Archives: Ferrari

Back in the thirties, racecars were beautiful

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.

Alfa Romeo 8C 2600 Monza (1933 spec)-Scuderia Ferrari

Alfa Romeo 8C 2600 Monza (1933 spec)-Scuderia Ferrari

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.

Italian beauties in Denmark

Once every two years, the Danish Ferrari owners club have a meeting in LEGOLAND Billund. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the former LEGO CEO and current owner of the LEGO Group, may have something to do with this, as he is known to have a soft spot for these Italian beauties. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his own cars were present. However, this blog is about LEGO rather than about cars. Fortunately, Stephan Sander, whose movie cars were a major inspiration for my own, combines a passion for the famous cars with the prancing horse with a passion for LEGO.

He was there displaying his impressive collection of LEGO Ferraris, photographed here in front of the LEGOLAND model of the Amalienborg Palace. The collection is built to the 1/20 scale used for LEGOLAND cars and includes models of classic Ferraris such as the ultra-rare 1962 GTO and 1970 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 LeMans. My favourite, however, is his model of the much newer 2009 Ferrari 458 Italia.

I love how he has painstakingly sculpted the vehicle’s extremely curvy shape by using clever combinations of half-stud offsets, curved bricks and slopes (and am more than a little jealous of his collection of rare trans clear elements).

Ferrari 250 GT

Wait a sec., that isn’t a Matchbox car…

Angka Utama creates quite possibly the cleanest little LEGO car of all time. With highly efficient piece usage, he achieves the lines of the 250 GT in near perfection!

Ferrari 250 GT

Ferrari 250 GT