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).

This is what you get when you stop sorting and start mixing

Couple weeks ago, we got the first look at this summer’s LEGO Technic sets including 42112 Concrete Mixer Truck set. One of the reasons we don’t see concrete mixers among official LEGO sets that often is that the vehicle like this one requires a special drum element — a very bulky single-purpose piece. But Kirill Mazurov proves that you don’t need big solid elements for awesome LEGO builds. Using a bunch of common and affordable panels, he managed to recreate the shape of the drum very precisely. With almost no holes, the structure looks as smooth as the one in the official set, and I love the mix of white and red colors. In case you’ve been following Kirill’s works, I believe you have already guessed that this mixer has a lot of functions. Make sure to check out the video under the cut.

Click here to see the video…

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Build your own plucky little forklift [Instructions]

The next time you are building a warehouse scene, home improvement store, or automobile repair shop, and you want a neat looking forklift, consider taking inspiration from de-marco, who has shared video instructions for this three-wheeled lifter of heavy things. The black protective cage and a transparent orange cone provide great details.

The Trans-Am wins the drag race standing still

I’ve been a rather prolific LEGO car builder in my day and the Pontiac Trans-Am has been on my to-do list for quite some time. I’ve never scratched it of this said to-do list as I’ve been rather intimidated at the prospect of building this icon of American muscle. Well, leave it to my friend and master car builder Firas Abu-Jaber to really knock this one out of the park! He tells us it took about a month-and-a-half to complete and it came with some difficulty, even for his considerable skill.

This alternate view shows off the opening doors, hood, and trunk as well as the seats and dashboard. The seats move forward, the armrest opens; it has all the niceties you could expect from a Firas original creation. The chrome tailpipes reflect nicely on that slick surface. And while we’re at it, let’s admire that gold steering wheel! I have just three words for this iconic classic American muscle car; alright, alright, alright!

This is not the first time we’ve been enthralled with Firas’ style. Not by a long shot.

She carries a spare tire with her

A LEGO builder who goes by the name of -Disty- has built a totally rad lady on a futuristic bike. Her hair and outfit give her a cyberpunk feel that is so popular in post-apocalyptic movies. Both the bike and rider are fantastic builds on their own but together it’s a dose of perfection. But what happens if she were to blow a tire? Well, the builder cleverly used an inside-out rubber LEGO tire as her halter top, which presumably she could use in case of a blowout. According to my limited research just now she would thus completely break the law in Utah, Tennessee, Indiana, and parts of Mexico. Some states have ambiguous rules on the matter, some select US cities are OK but in free-thinking Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia she can totally rock out with the girls out! Way to go, Canada!

New York’s Best and Bravest are life savers

My hair may be turning grey, and I have a job, a professional reputation and responsibilities, but hidden just under the surface is the same six-year-old boy who marveled at his first LEGO fire truck, back in the eighties. With the pandemic, for many of us, the last few months probably haven’t been easy. For me, personally, things could be a lot worse. I am healthy and so are my loved ones, I have job security and can work from the comfort of my home. Nonetheless, I am stressed by the uncertainty and by a never-ending amount of work, in combination with not being able to do many of the things I usually do to relax, such as traveling, meeting friends and attending LEGO events.

One thing that does help is being able to channel that six-year-old. I pop up to my loft and put some LEGO bricks together almost every day. And what does my inner six-year-old lifesavers? Well, fire trucks, of course. With a few decades of building experience under my belt and an adult’s disposable income, they’re obviously going to be elaborate. This pair of vehicles represents a Seagrave ladder truck and an ambulance, as operated by the New York Fire Department (FDNY). They are life savers in a real-world sense, but building them also kept me from going nuts.
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SPIKE on a bike [Video]

Several months ago, we reviewed LEGO Education’s new product, SPIKE Prime. And just a couple weeks ago, we featured news about the latest addition to the Mindstorms theme, the SPIKE-esque 51515 Robot Inventor. This new generation of programmable robotics brings bright colors and fresh ideas to the table. We’re already seeing some awesome builds coming from the education community, like this bike by the folks at Creator Academy Australia and Project Bucephalus. What’s so awesome about it? It’s self-balancing. This little guy can ride along on its own without tipping over (as long as there isn’t a wall). Click the link below to see it in action!

Click to watch!

LEGO Technic Summer 2020 sets fully revealed [News]

Last week we had a first look at the June-December German consumer catalogue images of the upcoming Summer 2020 LEGO Technic sets. Today we get to have a look at the actual box art as revealed by the retailer Meinspielzeug. While we still do not have the regional pricing, part counts are now available for all three sets. These will be available August 1st 2020. We will update the US, UK and Canadian retail prices as we get more information.

Click to see the box art of the new Summer LEGO Technic 2020 releases

New wheels for my LEGO Ambulance service

Some LEGO fans primarily collect sets; others focus on building their own creations. I’m very much in the latter camp. That doesn’t mean I don’t collect anything LEGO-related, though. I don’t just build for the sake of building and sharing pictures on-line. Most of my models fit into collections, like my Japanese cars, that I display at shows. Because they are part of a collection, I tend to keep them around for a long time. However, as a result, by now some of my vehicle models are so old that their real-world counterparts were retired years ago.

Case in point: the Dutch Chevrolet Express Ambulance that I built in 2009, as part of a collection of Dutch emergency vehicles. If I were to display this at a show, some of the children there might not even recognise that an ambulance used to look like that. So, even though there aren’t any shows in the foreseeable future, due to the pandemic, I felt my Dutch LEGO paramedics could do with a new set of wheels. The current type in North Holland, where I live, is the Mercedes Sprinter. All its doors, including the sliding doors in the sides, can open, to give access to a detailed interior. The lights on the roof have a snazzy aerodynamic shape, which was fun. I particularly enjoyed building the colour scheme. Ambulances in the Netherlands are yellow, with a complicated pattern of diagonal red and blue stripes. As I did with the old Chevy, I recreated this using stacked plates. Stickers would have given me a cleaner look, but to me this looks more authentic as a LEGO model. It is good to go for a few more years.

The last American muscle car

It’s funny, show me a Lamborghini or a Ferrari and I barely notice. But show me some classic American muscle and my heart goes pitter-patter. Luckily Thomas Gion knows just the thing to get on my radar (and I suspect others as well) with this LEGO 1973 Buick Gran Sport.The sloped rear, the pointed grille and bumper and especially the tilted pillar encompasses the look and feel of the car nicely. The classic five-spoke rims and the minifigg driver are just icing on this souped-up cake.

LEGO 40409 Hot Rod Gift With Purchase [Review]

The LEGO Store Gift With Purchase (GwP) offer for the month of June revives an old classic from the archives, reissued in a smaller form factor. The Hot Rod was originally released back in 1995 as the 5541 Blue Fury under the Model Team theme and reissued again in 2004 as the 10151 Hot Rod. This unique set of wheels comes free with purchases over US $85 | CAN $85 | GBP £85 and the offer is valid from 1st to 21st June 2020 (or while stocks last). We’re taking a quick look at this miniaturised version of the classic for you to decide if this is one to add to your collection.

Click to read the full review of the Hot Rod

Alfa Romeo romeo, wherefore art thou?

First introduced in Europe in 2013, the Alfa Romeo 4C was rolled out in North America the following year — the Italian manufacturer’s first foray into the US production car market in the 21st century. As you’d expect for an Alfa, the car is a stylish beast, with smooth curves and that distinctive plunging V-bonnet which always make me think of an eagle’s beak. And as you’d expect from a LEGO car from Noah L, his brick-built version is a smart recreation of the original’s lines, put together in a remarkably tight 15-stud wide footprint.

I’m always thoroughly impressed with the level of detail Noah manages to cram into his cars, whilst still keeping the exterior lines smooth and clean. Even better, his models usually boast opening doors and bonnets or boots, and this vehicle is no exception. Check out the detailed interior…

Who you calling’ Shorty?

Sometimes bigger projects get furloughed by a lack of parts and waiting on orders. In the meantime, Isaac W. has whipped up this LEGO Volkswagen T1 Shorty with the parts he had on hand. It reminds me a bit of the zinger custom car phenomenon of the 70’s. What’s neat is the 15-stud long kayak is just slightly longer than this Shorty T1. Cool, right?