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).

The typical Tokyo taxi is a Toyota

New Dehli had the Hindustan Ambassador, London the FX4 and New York the Checker Marathon and the Ford Crown Victoria. All of these taxis became instantly recognizable icons for their respective cities. What about Tokyo, you may wonder? On a visit Japan, you will occasionally see modern MPV-like vehicles, but the typical Tokyo taxi is a boxy contraption called the Toyota Comfort. They seem to be everywhere. I must have taken about ten taxi rides during my own trips to Japan and I’m pretty sure all of those were in a Toyota Comfort.

Toyota started building them specifically for use as taxis for a whopping 22 years, starting in 1995. You may expect them to be high tech, but these cars are actually fairly basic. A particularly Japanese exception is that the driver can open and shut the rear doors at the push of a button, from behind the wheel. The doors are an important part of the build, of course. On most of my LEGO cars, the rear doors cannot open without the front doors being opened first. However, I wanted this particular model to look good with the rear doors opened. They are attached to a little arm that slides in and out and I have added appropriate window frames. I also added a “Kawaii” passenger. The Comfort may not be as iconic as London black cab, but my collection of Japanese cars would be incomplete without one.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Some cars are just super, but some are totally hyper!

When getting from point A to point B in a regular car just doesn’t cut it, then you need a supercar. But when a supercar doesn’t make your discerning heart go pitter-patter anymore then a LEGO builder who goes by the name of 3D supercarBricks has the solution for you. It’s a pretty super Bugatti Chiron GT in striking yellow and black. Categorized as a Hypercar, this Chiron is what happens when a supercar rises to the top 1%. With 1500 horsepower, and topping out at 261mph, the real-life Bugatti Chiron GT is a technological marvel. While much slower, this LEGO version also isn’t without its charms. A brief perusal through this builder’s Flick photostream proves 3D supercarBricks lives up to their name, which is a good thing because photos of LEGO cats or houses would have been totally weird.

Got a Mustang but want a Charger? Just mod it

LEGO car master Firas Abu-Jaber offers us two-for-one with his latest creation: first-up, delivering a 1968 Dodge Charger using only the pieces from the 10265 LEGO Ford Mustang set, and then putting together a sleek black and chrome version of the same design. Both cars are excellent, with the sleek lines given more than a hint of brutish power with the prominent engine blocks poking from the bonnet. Personally I prefer the mean and moody look of the black and chrome, although I’d happily have either sitting in my driveway. But seriously Firas, restricting yourself to a parts selection designed to create a particular make and model, but building a different make and model?!? If the results weren’t so good, I’d suggest that’s borderline masochism!

A-roving a-roving a-roving I’ll go with a set of balloon tires

Across the moons of the outer systems, thin dusty soil causes problems for surface vehicles. Without big chunky tires, your fancy new rover isn’t going anywhere. LEGO builder Frost has put together a flashy moon rover with the requisite balloon tires but also bedecked in an eye-popping color scheme. The tires are a beefy joy, tiles attached to caterpillar tracks wound around standard wheels. This design allows for a multi-layered multi-colored look, perfectly matching the bold styling of the rest of the vehicle. The curved stripes over the bonnet are nicely done, as is the front grille and the integration of the angled windscreen and roll-cage parts around the rear. The fin sticking from the rear is easy to miss amidst all the color, but is a great use of a parts separator — lovely stuff.

Go into the wild on the magic bus

In honour of Chris McCandless’ 52nd birthday earlier this week, 2019 TBB LEGO Builder of the Year Andrea Lattanzio build a stunning recreation of the “Magic Bus” from the end of McCandless’ life, as documented in the book and film Into the Wild. This creation is a fitting tribute. The landscape looks like the clearing on the rugged Stampede Trail, featuring various elements representing rocks, plants, and mushrooms. My favourites are the tree built out of brown stud shooters and the grey homemaker hairpiece as a large rock. Framed inside its wild Alaskan surroundings, is the bus itself. The design is spot on and includes clever use of a dish with a spider web pattern as old and aged headlights and a stack of 3×3 dishes as the bus’s grill.

Transformation of the Ford Mustang to the Tesla Cybertruck

What I love about LEGO is the ability to build anything you can dream of. What sets apart talented builders such as Gerald Cacas to mortal set builders like me is the skills to just use pieces from a particular set, in this case, the official LEGO 10265 Ford Mustang set, and turn it into the Tesla Cybertruck!

And if that wasn’t enough, this alternate build has doors that open and a (modified) trunk that seems a bit more practical than the original. Elon Musk may want to consider a blue paint job as an offering as it doesn’t look too bad from the unpainted metal skin showcased at the unveiling. Is that enough to tempt you into giving it a go? Grab yours at LEGO Online stores if you don’t already own the Mustang.

Workhorses fit for a minifigure army

LEGO Minifigures are oddly-proportioned little fellows. Because I am fussy about the scale of my models I rarely use them with my builds. However, thanks to a number of collaborative builds I’ve been involved with, which all involved minifigures, I’ve grown to appreciate them a bit more. Recently I have been steadily building a collection of minifig-scaled military models. These are the latest two: a US Army M936 wrecker truck towing an M1025 “HumVee” armament carrier. There are countless quotes about how logistics are at least as important to fighting a war as tactics. Equipment used in combat may capture people’s imaginations, but modern armies include vast numbers of support vehicles that are true workhorses. To me those are at least as interesting as tanks or artillery.

What constitutes minifig scale can be difficult and LEGO themselves have muddied the waters. When I was growing up, LEGO cars were just four studs wide. About ten years ago, most LEGO city cars were five studs wide and trucks seven studs wide, including their mudguards. With the recent Speed Champions sets the width of a supposedly minifig scaled car has been bumped up to nine studs, again including the mudguards. The cars look cool and seat two figures side-by-side. However, if you pose a figure next to the vehicle, it’s clear we’ve moved firmly into silly territory. I based my scale on the figure’s height. The wrecker truck ended up being seven studs wide. The HumVee is only six studs wide, which is much smaller than most minifig scale HumVees that are out there. Despite this small scale, both vehicles still have enough space inside for a driver.

A Duesenberg adds some much needed class to this joint

My stars, have you seen the lowbrow tomfoolery these Brothers Brick writers get away with? Some days I just want to clutch my pearls and retreat to the fainting couch. That is why I was delighted to see this classic Duesenberg by LEGO builder Łukasz Libuszewski. The tires are painted, but that is probably the only good way to replicate whitewalls in this scale. Speaking of scale, being only six studs wide, this classic car proves you don’t need to be a Rockefeller with mountains of LEGO in order to grace our pages. It doesn’t hurt that the photography of this creation is top-notch. Keep it classy, Brothers Brick!

Keep your LEGO city clean with 60249 Street Sweeper [Review]

Year after year, the LEGO city keeps expanding with plenty of houses, modular buildings, vehicles and, of course, fire & police stations. All that development is bound to attract legions of minifigures — it’s only a matter of days before the plastic trash begins to pile up. To keep up with this issue, LEGO has released several garbage trucks over the years, but what happens when baseplate streets become filthy? You need a good street sweeper, but the last street sweeper to appear in LEGO City was carted around by a minifig 12 years ago. That’s a long time for discarded 1×1 plates to accumulate alongside the curb. The wait is over because LEGO is back to keep the brick-built highways clean with set 60249 Street Sweeper. The set consists of 89 pieces and is available now via the online LEGO shop for $9.99 USD | $13.99 CAD | £8.99 GBP

Does the LEGO Street Sweeper clean up well? Find out in our in-depth review!

Red looks good on more than just Ferraris

When I was a kid, I collected lots of Hot Wheels and Matchbox diecast cars. Somehow or other, among them all, I ended up with three red Lamborghini Countaches, all identical. I just had them out the other day, looking at them with my son, in fact, driving at insane speeds around the coffee table and eventually plunging over the edge in a fiery wreck. I also recently purchased the new Ferrari F8 Tributo, and noticed that the new windscreen looked a lot like the Hot Wheels Countach’s shape. It seems I am not the only one, as super car LEGO builder Jonathan Elliott used that very piece to create his own 7-stud wide take on the Countach LP400, and did it immeasurably better than I could have.

The signature triangular scoops in the sides are done perfectly, and the angular hood and body, which ushered in a new era of sharply angled supercars, replicate the original’s nearly spot on. I wish this version had the huge V-shaped wing on the back that later models (including my Hot Wheels) had to add control to the car at high speeds. Sure, the wing decreased the top speed a bit, but the car handled better with it when pushing its upper limits. But that’s minor. The 7-stud body is a nice compromise between the too-small 6-wide and the too-large 8-wide, too. I’m not sure if it fits a minifig, but does it have to when it looks this nice?

This fire CAT is red hot!

When firefighters pull out the big equipment…I mean really big equipment, chances are there is going to be a traffic jam for miles. But chances are, they are also doing some big, important work; this scene by Steven Asbury is not your standard saving-a-cat-from-a-tree fare. The fire department excavator can perform a variety of tasks including pulling down severely damaged structures, clearing mudslides, and assist with debris removal in wildfires. It often responds with the Urban Search and Rescue team. Like so much of Steven’s work, this scene demonstrates rather cinematic photography and a keen sense of foreground, middle and background. Clearly he cares deeply about firefighting as this isn’t his first rodeo on the subject. Here’s a previous time we featured his work. You can see the inspiration for this particular excavator in action via this video.

This awesome 1:13-scale LEGO model of a Maz airfield firetruck uses more than 9,000 pieces

Usually, when you accumulate a whole lot of red LEGO pieces in your collection, there are two things you would consider for your next building project: a Ferrari or a firetruck. Since Ilya Luashkin had also got huge off-road Technic tires, it was a no-brainer. This 1:13 scale copy of the MAZ-7313-AA60 airfield firetruck is the result of more than 400 hours of meticulous planning and building. Consisting of more than 9,000 pieces, the model is nearly 47 in (120 cm) long and weighs almost 20 lbs (9 kg).

The exterior of the truck might seem a little bit boring, but Ilya made sure to precisely copy all 22 doors and compartments that the real truck has. And it would not be a proper LEGO Technic build without a custom-designed chassis featuring fully independent suspension. Because of the sheer weight of the model, the body rests on 13 pairs of the hardest LEGO Technic shock absorbers. Continue reading →