Tag Archives: Vehicles

LEGO planes, trains, and automobiles! Well, maybe not trains, since they don’t like to play with the other LEGO themes, but here you’ll find all our favorite cars, buses, boats, ships, helicopters, and anything else with an engine (and some without).

Groundbreaking hovertank seems to defy gravity

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, this hovertank is indeed hovering! Space enthusiast Ben Smith has created a floating hovertank inspired by the fan-favourite Galaxy Patrol from the LEGO Collectible Minifigure Series 7, that not only looks awesome with a rugged colour scheme, but breaks the laws of physics. The boarding ramp is the only point of contact with the sand blue terrain, which raises the question: How is a ramp on the front of the vehicle able to actually hold it up and not collapse?

Find out more about how it floats!

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Black and Yellow

Black and Yellow, you know what it is – the 1980s LEGO Space theme “Blacktron” featuring a color scheme with heavy usage of black and yellow. In Nagisa’s build aficionados can get the best of two worlds – Star Wars and Blacktron as this design is a mashup of the two themes. Fusions of LEGO space themes with pop cultural icons are pretty common among fan-builders, but they are always refreshing to see nonetheless. Here we have the landspeeder from Solo: A Star Wars Story film which was already translated well into LEGO in set 75209, revamped in the style of Blacktron. Nagisa uses vintage control panel printed tiles and a newer curved yellow trans-clear 3x6x1 windshield to accomplish the signature aesthetic of the Blacktron faction. Of course, two fully decked out Blacktron minifigures accompany the speeder as pilots.

Nagisa offers a few configurations of the speeder which utilize different elements as thrusters – each offering a slightly varied look all of which are pretty sleek. Overall Nagisa does a great job of displaying creativity and ingenuity while still retaining the original concept of the vehicle from the Star Wars film.

What the crazy European kids were into

When I think of my childhood the Ford Pinto comes to mind. That’s because we had one when I was growing up and apparently Dad thought nothing of our safety. But across the pond, LEGO builder Jonathan Elliott tells us that during his childhood, the Mk1 Ford Transit was the ubiquitous thing in the United Kingdom as well as Germany, Belgium, and Holland. It’s still a Ford but apparently far less explosive. In fact, the Ford Transit is so revered out there that the platform is still used today in everything from school buses to police and ambulance applications. Jonathan replicated the shape nicely with this little build proving you don’t need a vanload of pieces to create an accurate LEGO model.

The Palm Beach concept that took 1956 by storm

Palm Beach, Florida is known for idyllic beaches, palatial mansions, and Jeffrey Epstein. Wow, that escalated fast! But optimism abounded in the 50s and legendary Italian designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina created the Rambler-Nash Palm Beach concept car in 1956. This ended up being one of his most eye-catching concepts and Tim Inman has replicated the design nicely in LEGO. It has all the niceties you can expect from a piece this size; the doors open as well as the hood and the interior is well detailed. Whether it be the thin flex-tube strip along the side, the rounded air intake up front, or the sloping tailfins around back, there is plenty to love about Tim’s creation. Tim has really been on a roll lately as we’ve also featured his Mercedes G550 recently.

He’s definitely compensating for something

What’s the point of a limousine? It has none, except to make the person riding in it seem important, whether that be a bride and groom on the way to the reception or a diplomat going to a complex negotiation. It’s the same with motorcades and bodyguards; their real purpose is to lend clout to the image of the one with them. So, what if the limo has armor and hidden weapons? It’s the same, just with more bang. And if a Humvee can become a luxury vehicle, why not a HEMTT? That was my (Benjamin Stenlund) thought, at least, for my latest LEGO creation. Add in a sporty car and a motorcycle, as well as a triumphal arch and statue, and you have the scene set for inflating someone’s ego.

Tasked with building an armored limo, I was inspired by the heavy military truck with 8 wheels. I added some gull-wing doors, because nothing says luxury like gull wing doors. And some retractable steps to descend from the passenger compartment, too, ready to step right onto the red carpet. The angles at the front of the cab were the hardest part of the build to get right, and honestly, that’s why I went with gull wings, since it did not require hinges on the front and the doors had to open. There are lots of complicated angles on the sides, too, but they weren’t as difficult to figure out as the front. The only problem is that despite it being armored, it is too fragile for my kids to play with.

One Osprey that won’t get cancelled anytime soon

Are you bummed about the recent cancellation of LEGO’s Technic Osprey V-22 set? Yeah, me too. It’s like LEGO suddenly remembered that they don’t like being associated with military stuff and then it’s no soup for you! The decision has me scratching my head over what to do with the official Red Baron and both Sopwith Camel sets now. Anyway, Simon Liu is not one to let a cancelled set bring him down. I know it’s not the same, but here’s his very sleek futuristic V-42-Osprey in neat olive green with orange highlights. The point of showing you this is, while LEGO occasionally makes doofus decisions, they provide the pieces so that you can build anything you want. Who needs directions and an official set? With LEGO bricks and a bit of imagination, the world is your oyster. Or Osprey.

When greed was good and spoilers were big

The eighties: hair and shoulder pads were big, smoking was cool and greed was good. If you wanted to show off your financial success, the car to buy was the Porsche 911 Turbo. Because of the weight of its rear-mounted engine and the massive turbo lag, flooring the throttle pedal whilst driving through a slippery curve resulted in a fair few investment bankers wrapping their Porsches around a tree. However, in the hands of a good driver, these things were rally monsters. Dennis Glaasker brings us 1/14 scale LEGO models of two of these classic racers.

This pair competed in the 1984 Ypres Rally in Belgium. Henri Toivonen, with Ian Grindrod as his navigator, won the rally in the white and dark blue car in ‘Rothmans’ livery (a tobacco company). The red and white car failed to finish, though. Belgian racers Robert Droogmans and Ronny Joosten didn’t wrap it around a tree, fortunately. They retired from the race because their gearbox failed. There is much to love about the models. For instance, note how the B-pillars (the struts under the roof at the back of the doors) are sloped slightly aft, just like on the real car. Everything opens and the cars have realistic interiors, with racing seats and roll cages. Dennis recreated their colour schemes using a mix of different coloured parts and perfectly matching custom stickers. Best bit: those iconic whale tail spoilers.

School’s out for summer. School’s out forever!

Did you ever have that dream where you’re back in high school and all the kids are riding to school in a chopped rusto-mod school bus and everyone is thrashing out to Alice Cooper’s School’s Out? You haven’t? That’s like my second-most recurring dream beside the one where we’re in high school and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is teaching gym class. High school for me was in the late eighties so you can forgive me if all my dreams involve hair metal. Red2 may or may not have the same dreams but they at least have the chopped rusto-mod school bus down pat. This LEGO creation features a chromed-out Cummins Deisel motor and an opening folding school bus door.

You need a tetanus shot just to look at this thing! I remember tetanus shots. Our school nurse administered them to us while smoking Virginia Slims. As I said, school for me was a long time ago and it was a different time back then. No one smokes in school anymore and Alice Cooper is now a conservative old man who enjoys golf.

Diving to the unknown depths in style

It’s been ingrained in my mind that when I see a LEGO build with a yellow body and a blue transparent cockpit, it’s going to be an aquatic vehicle. This is all thanks to the classic colour pallette from LEGO ‘s Aquazone theme. This stylistic submersible is quite compact and sleek and allows travelling to the depths of the wide ocean in style. I see a similarity to the silhouette and curves of a dolphin jumping out of the water and it makes me wonder if that was builder Thomas W.’s inspiration.

Read on to see this little submarine in its natural habitat

Car broken down in the middle of nowhere? Call Lonely Joe for a tow.

Some LEGO builders find a niche in the community and spend most of their time building there, churning out beautiful creations that all fit a similar genre. For some that’s castle, for others that’s space, for others it’s Bionicle, and for others it’s some licensed theme or other. For TBB 2019 Builder of the Year Andrea Lattanzio, that niche would be shacks and automobiles. Few builders out there can equal the clean lines and perfect textures of his buildings; just look at the uneven tiles for the siding, and the perfection of sideways masonry bricks for the adjacent shed. The build is nearly studless, which helps those clean lines, and the photography is pristine, which helps too.

But don’t let that expert photography fool you; this is not a simple build. You don’t get a studless look by accident, not without plenty of SNOT (studs not on top) techniques. Plus there are myriad clever parts usages. For example, there’s a hockey stick and a harpoon holding lamps; there are pirate hooks on the truck’s bumper; and those sideview mirrors are mighty cleaver, I mean, clever. And speaking of the truck, Andrea’s vehicle designs are as clean and elegant as his shacks; no studs, crisp color blocking, and perfect shaping and scaling.

Taking the gasser to a car show

Earlier this year, before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was looking forward to spending three weeks away from home this summer. At the end of July, I was going to attend BrickFair Virginia. After that I’d fly to Denver, to make a road trip with a friend. I’d subsequently return to Virginia for a work meeting before finally jetting home. Now, of course, none of that is happening. Instead, I’m currently having a short “staycation” at home and will actually be working most of August. In the hope of putting myself into a relaxed vacation mood nonetheless, I built a Chevrolet Express conversion van a couple of weeks ago.

It is a very American concept: convert a regular passenger van into a luxury cruiser with captain’s seats, rear seats that can be folded into a bed, tinted windows, a raised roof, cool rims, and some snazzy graphics on the outside. SUVs have cornered much of their market in the last decade or so, but this is the kind of vehicle I imagine would work well for long road trips and family vacations. I particularly enjoyed building the pattern into the sides, with dark tan and old dark grey plates. However, as much as I enjoyed building it, the end result was a bit underwhelming. So, to fit my vacation theme, I considered building a trailer for it, with a jet ski or an all-terrain-vehicle. However, I wasn’t looking forward to building either.

I finally got a little bit excited thinking about putting a custom car on the trailer instead. Custom cars generally don’t float my boat, but since I liked building the pattern on the van so much, I relished building a car with a paint scheme with flames. To fit the van it had to be American, of course. So, I picked a “Gasser”. This is a particular type of classic drag racer. It uses a body shell of a stock car, with really fat rear tires, a stripped-out interior, an oversized engine, and a jacked-up front end. The flames are optional, but I built mine using yellow, bright light orange and orange plates. The car is a ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air, which is just about the most American car I can imagine. It isn’t quite the holiday vehicle I had in mind, but at least it’s fun.

Junk speeders are what we need in a galaxy far far away

I’m a fan of the realm of possibilities in the Star Wars galaxy and especially for vehicles that could have been taken a page out of the storylines. This Junk Speeder by Thomas Jenkins gives that vibes of a single-engine mashup of what a scavenger or thrifty junkyard dealer would have up for sale or trade. For a moment, I would think this would be a perfect transport for Ewoks if they decided to venture outside of their forest dwellings. What makes this a sturdy build are likely the technic parts and pins integrated across its wingspan.

Check out Thomas’s other features that we’ve covered from a galaxy far far away.