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).

If Tatooine was in 30’s era Detroit

I used to think I was the only one who did this; you look at a Star Wars vehicle and imagine its Earthly counterpart. For example, the Millenium Falcon could be a Ford Falcon, Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter could be a Jedi Starliner and Darth Vader’s TIE-Fighter could be a bitchin’ 70’s era Econoline with shag carpeting, beef jerky dispenser, lava lamps and a Boris Valejo space-wizard airbrushed on the side. Right? Well, it worked better before I put it to writing. Anyway, LEGO car guru and real-life car guru Peter Blackert clearly thinks of this stuff too as evidenced by this terrestrial 1939 Buick Y-Job concept made into Luke’s Landspeeder. There aren’t a lot of these lying around so I had to Google the vehicle but once I did, I can see how Peter saw the retro-futuristic shape of the Landspeeder. This computer render, in my opinion, perfectly melds the swooping curves of both designs.

Doing this sort of thing is a fun and imaginative exercise but if you prefer to keep your Landspeeder designs true to the movie, then try your hand at building the official UCS Luke’s Landspeeder LEGO set that has come out recently. Installing a beef jerky dispenser in the dash would only sweeten the deal.

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.

Did your Land Rover break down? Call the AA

Of course, I don’t mean to imply that Land Rovers are unreliable vehicles. However, if you were in the UK, were to own a classic Land Rover and, God forbid, it would break down on you, what would you do? One of your options could be to call the AA. That is the organisation formerly known as The Automobile Association. Not the other famous organisation with the same initials that helps people overcome another expensive and destructive habit.

The AA operates a roadside assistance service, with mechanics crisscrossing the country in vans. However, if one of their mechanics can’t fix the problem, because it is actually pretty major, they also operate a fleet of recovery vehicles. A lot of those are German-built MAN TGL flatbed trucks, one of which I have now built in LEGO. Like the AA vans, these are a common sight on British roads, also quite commonly seen carrying Land Rovers. I’m still not saying those are unreliable, mind you. I actually like Land Rovers. My LEGO Land Rover model is something of a classic in its own right; I originally built it more than ten years ago and it has never broken down, except for when one of the wheels fell off as I was taking pictures of the truck. Since I’m a stickler for scale and I have not changed the style of my building for this, these two vehicles fit together really nicely.
Continue reading →

Not ‘alf bad for an Alfa

It can be a challenge to recreate the curvaceous, flowing lines of modern cars in LEGO’s angular format. The G Brix clearly enjoys a challenge, and if that wasn’t enough he’s chosen one of the prettiest cars to come out in recent years. No pressure, then! Luckily for us, they are a very talented builder, as evidenced by this Alfa Romeo Giulia GTAm. The car is built to the same 8-wide standard as current Speed Champions sets, although with slightly more detail than might be expected from the official LEGO kits. Before we get to that, though… Let’s appreciate just how gorgeous this car is:

Lovely, isn’t it? Let’s take a look under the bonnet…

The origin story of Czech motoring

LEGO’s Speed Champions line has done a pretty good job of covering cars from a diverse range of eras, but they’re yet to represent the really early days of the automobile. In truth it’s unlikely they ever will, but thankfully we have builders like Pixeljunkie to scratch that particular itch! Pixeljunkie is no stranger to vintage automotive builds, and his latest creation is a doozy all the way from 1905. The car in question is the Laurin & Klement (L&K) company’s first motor car, the Voiturette A, which is where the firm now known as Skoda can trace its origins to. The company originally made bicycles, which makes the use of bicycle wheels for the car’s spindly wheels rather appropriate! Nougat and .dark red pieces are good approximations of the wooden body. The lamp on the right hand side of the car is worthy of further inspection, as well. It’s very simple: two gold chrome pieces, including the One Ring, on a headlight brick. The fact this headlight brick is transparent, though, makes the gold pieces stand out, and makes the lamp seem smaller and daintier than if a solid colour had been used. Finally, take note of the umbrella used as detailing on the footplate… There’s no roof on this puppy, so if it rains, you may need it!

Italian craftsmanship, German engineering, and Danish bricks

When thinking of the early development of the supercar in the 1980s, most people will probably think of the Lamborghini Countach or the Ferrari Testarossa as the poster boys of that era. One that sometimes gets overlooked — unfairly, if you ask me — is the BMW M1. It mixes the craziness of the Italian-born wedge-shape with some classic German refinement and engineering. LEGO builder Leo 1 has perfectly captured the first German supercar (I count the original Porsche 911 as a grand tourer, before you ask!) in all its orange glory. A pair of headlight bricks are the perfect choice for the BMW snout nose, as are the circular tiles for the rims.

The exquisite shaping continues around the rear of the car. Slopes and tiles at subtle angles abound to capture the sharp shape of this Bimmer, which is not easy in bright orange as the parts palette is still fairly limited. The little details, like the interior or wing mirrors, are the cherry on the cake. And we can all agree that twin-pipe exhausts just make a car look cooler, can’t we…?

A sick slammed cambered Beetle

In my neighborhood, you can measure douchiness by the angle of the cambered tires. You tilt those puppies more than fifteen degrees and you know that driver has a flat-brimmed ball cap, smells of Axe bodyspray, and never uses their blinkers. But as a car enthusiast, I think I can cool my judgemental jets for this amazing slammed cambered LEGO Beetle built by Hagen Oscarson. With its black and red color scheme, flashy rims and classic air-cooled Beetle shape, this slammed bug has all the makings of something that makes my heart go pitter-patter. It seems that this may be the first time we’ve featured Hagen’s work but with LEGO automotive styling this good, I think we’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever else he might do. And Hagen, this juuuust might inspire me to camber my own snazzy Bug. But then again, maybe I won’t. My blinkers get a lot of use.

Nice Winnebago but will it keep you safe from The Walking Dead?

Who could forget season one of The Walking Dead? Come to think of it, I forgot most of it. 2010 was a long time ago! Was that before or after Carl got to wear his dad’s hat? Anyway, one detail that still knocks around the ol’ reptile brain is Dale’s Winnebago and Jonas Kramm has done a great job recreating it in LEGO. Here we see Dale keeping an eye out for Walkers in (relative) safety from the roof. I’m loving the cooler, radio, beach chair, umbrella, and aerial antenna. It has all the makings to keep the whole gang safe through one season of the apocalypse only to have something horrific happen to it and all occupants not named Rick a short time later. Good times! While we’re wracking our delicious braaaaaains trying to remember what happened to Dale, take a slow shambling walk down memory lane and check out some other Walking Dead LEGO scenes that also didn’t go well for anyone.

Han Solo himself would be proud of this gorgeous landspeeder

While Solo: A Star Wars Story may not have been a roaring success as far as Star Wars movies go, it did give us some interesting new ship designs and, by extension, some pretty decent LEGO sets. Han Solo’s M-68 Landspeeder was one of them, and Sebastian Arts (Aliencat!) has seen fit to upscale it and give the smuggler’s ride the Ultimate Collector Series treatment, with exquisite levels of detail!

Continue reading →

Artillery for the not-so-Grand Army of the Republic

The problem with having a Grand Army of the Republic is that you need somewhere equally grand to store it. Even a TX-130 Sabre Tank would probably not fit in your average Joe or Josephine’s garage. Tim Goddard has the solution: make them tiny! Tim is a pro when it comes to small-scale Star Wars building, and those skills are evident here. Efficient parts choice is everything when it comes to microscale to ensure the builds remain recognisable. The minifigure socket wrenches are inspired choices for the side cannons, and the subtle angle of the pontoons is also accurate to the source material. The angular cockpit is represented by a single sloped brick with a jumper plate. These might be simple parts, but they are the perfect solution in this scenario!

Ninjago’s Lloyd trades his dragon for an awesome looking speeder

Presented in a glorious turquoise colour scheme, this racer primarily uses parts from the Jungle Dragon Ninjago set. Marco De Bon has provided the build with an insect-like appearance which is conveyed by the front wings looking similar to mandibles and the spear guns on the back being comparable to antennae. Pentagonal tiles are used to great effect in forming the splayed-out protrusions at the back and there are also orange flippers underneath representing engine grill details. It appears to be a tight squeeze to get into the cockpit which makes sense as the vehicle is designed to be compact, allowing for nifty maneuvers around a race circuit.

This bridge will suspend your belief of what’s possible!

At first glance, this beautiful scene of steel, earth, and water looks like a photograph! It owes this to Lysander Chau‘s keen eye and clever LEGO building techniques. Truly, this bridge and the surrounding scenes are made up of nearly 53,000 LEGO pieces! The scenes come from Lysander’s imaginative mind, but the bridge itself is modeled after the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong. While the build lives in a digital landscape, it still considers the constraints of reality. For example, the weakest part of the bridge, the middle, is supported by the cruise ship’s tallest point. No doubt there’s room inside the cruise ship to add light bricks, or a lighting kit, to make the New Year’s message shine! And that water! It’s rendered with such detail I can almost hear the waves lapping around the boats and land.

Take a closer look at the details

The fastest pizza delivery driver in the West

Don’t you hate it when you order a delicious takeaway pizza, but it takes way longer to arrive than it said it would? I doubt you’d have this problem with Versteinert‘s pizza delivery hot rod! This is his latest entry into the Rogue Olympics, where builders are limited to creations with 101 LEGO bricks. As you’d expect, with such a limitation on part numbers, you have to get creative with your part choice. The main body of this breadvan-style vehicle is a DOTS bag tag, the engine features (among other things) ingot and lipstick elements, and a saxophone doubles as a side exhaust. Talk about tuning your engine!

(I’ll get my coat…)