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).

Build it like a rock star!

Do you feel that? That is your heart racing just a little bit at the sight of this LEGO Barracuda GT-3 built by Michael Ablinger. I get that feeling around nice cars in general and superbly build LEGO creations. Michael tells us this was constructed with nine-hundred parts. There is working steering, a fully modeled interior, and realistic aerodynamic devices. I’m a fan of an understated primary color with a flashy secondary color. Black and lime green fits the bill nicely. Custom stickers really set this GT-3 apart from your usual LEGO builds. You should settle in and check out all the other times my heart went a pitter-patter. Maybe I should cut down on the Rock Star energy drinks?

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Ice road dumper

When you’re an up-and-coming builder someone along the way makes it clear that you’re supposed to say and type it as “LEGO” and not “Legos”. It was a LEGO designer who initially made it clear to me. As a seasoned builder and writer for The Brothers Brick, I’m pretty much by now contractually obligated to use the word correctly. However, in a fit of rebellion, I’ll sometimes misuse it for humor’s sake. Legos! See, it’s funny, right? That’s why it’s so refreshing to discover an up-and-coming entity (debuting a few months ago) who goes by the name of LEGOZ ;). The winky face means that he (we think his name is Sean) gets the joke too and what an amazing builder he seems to be! To be clear, this WEGENER Mining Dump Truck is a render created with Bricklink Studio 2.0, and the image was enhanced and edited in Photoshop. However existing parts were used and, as far as I can tell, can be constructed legitimately. I am just enamored with this thing!

Click to see more and to unveil an even bigger surprise!

Surfs up with the Duflo!

Here’s the scene; you get a sweet haul of used LEGO from a garage sale at a great price. Their loss, your gain, right? You race home to inventory your new acquisition only to find there’s plenty of LEGO as advertised but also some busted Matchbox cars, a few hairs you’d rather not speculate on their origin, one stinky flip-flop, and a DUPLO van body. Aw, nuts, “baby Legos”! You can let it totally harsh your mellow or you can do what Edward Lawrence did and build a custom surf van out of it. Introducing “The Duflo”, it uses System LEGO parts to construct a kickin’ sound system a knuckle-dragging stance, and a re-colored surfboard from the 10252 VW Beetle set. The exhaust pipes fit just perfectly in that cutout area. It’s like it was meant to be!

Rollin’ royalty

These days, the lap of luxury presents itself in the form of Bugattis and Lamborghinis. But back in the day, what was the best vehicle gold and jewels could buy? A tricked out carriage of course! This royal ride, courtesy of LEGO builder Jonas Kramm, screams opulence. You couldn’t cram any more pearl gold elements in there if you tried. At least, without it looking too gaudy… Okay, maybe it is just a wee bit gaudy, but it’s also awesome! Pairing with the dark brown and pink is magical. There is superb, deliberate element usage and shaping all around. Using tassels on the horse’s heads is one of my favorite parts, as well as the use of the ring to make the lattice window look round. The funkier ideas are neat too, like the Cheshire Cat’s tail for a harness and his head topping the standard, as well as the large figure shin guard for a tree trunk (and excellent idea borrowed from 70620 Ninjago City).

You can find more of Jonas’s brilliant work in our archives.

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!

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.