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).

Reaching higher with Beat Felber

Since mid-October I have had a pretty crazy time at work, very much at the expense of my blogging and pretty much everything else. I have built a few things, but I told my fellow contributors that I would only write something if it knocked my socks off. Well, consider me barefoot. The culprit is Swiss builder Beat Felber and his AR-1200M Mobile Crane. Tadano is a Japanese manufacturer of cranes and the model carries a Japanese livery, of the Showa Co., Ltd. of Kobe. This already makes it a bit more interesting than your average Liebherr. Furthermore, as you would expect from a builder who goes by the name Engineering with ABS, his model is full of working features.

It uses Power functions for the drive, for steering on all five axles and to extend the stabilisers on both sides, with pneumatics used to raise and lower the struts. The crane boom can be raised, slewed and extended using Power Functions and, of course, the winches are remote-controlled. It also has working lights. The boom reaches a height of 2.15 m (more than 7 ft.) and can be extended even further by adding a separate jib. This is not the tallest crane we’ve ever blogged, but size is not everything. It is gorgeous.

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The year is 2000

Some people might accuse me of posting too many selfishly nostalgic LEGO creations. Like that time last month, remember that? Ah man, those were some good times. Good times. Anyway, time to repeat the sin with this rather splendid mining scale recreation of a favorite toy from my childhood, the Raider Command from Matchbox’s 1978 line of futuristic Adventure 2000 vehicles.

Due to a limited selection of parts in olive green, French builder Eric Druon actually had to recreate this in tan (and then apply a little harmless Photoshop magic). I was lucky enough to own a few of these beauties back in the day. And I am embarrassed to say that – thanks to the power of eBay – I have been able to enjoy them all over again, albeit “mint in box”!

Move over Tumbler, Arkham Knight is here

When you have to get around town to beat up costumed criminals, it’s important to do so with style. And technique. And size. All of these can be found in the latest creation by Hansan Kabalak, who has painstakingly recreated in epic scale the unique vehicle from the latest Batman game, Batman: Arkham Knight.

Larger than Lego’s own USC Tumbler, this Batmobile features functionality and loads of complex angles. Hansan went all out: adding his own custom decals, colored parts, and even a few custom pieces to his creation to make it as faithful to the game as possible. Best of all, Hansan even took the time to design his Batmobile with its signature feature: attack mode.

Speeder, speeder, SPEEDER!

Our Pimp Rey’s Speeder contest now has over 100 entries! Thank you to everyone who has entered so far, we’re getting a real kick out of seeing all your crazy designs. Movies and TV still seem to be popular themes for speeder pimping. But as you can see below, we’ve also seen a lot of entries based on famous LEGO set themes. Get your entries in soon – you only have a 2 more weeks!

Benny’s Speeder by John Kupitz

Galaxy Force Buggoid Speeder by tankm

Octan Speeder by Timmy’s Bricks

Cinderella’s Speeder by Paddy Bricksplitter

Cruising through the snow

The weather in the northern hemisphere is getting decidedly colder right about now, making this a fitting creation indeed. TBB favorite Markus Aspacher recently built this fantastic Ice Planet battle tank.

Ice Planet 2002 was one of the coolest lines of LEGO sets in its day. I think it’s great when a classic LEGO theme is honored and reinvigorated with a neat fan-built creation. Check out how the minifigures’ skis are cutting paths through the frozen precipitation!

Smashing work, Q

It’s James Bond time once again, both in theaters with the new film Spectre, and in LEGO with a recreation of the famous Lotus Esprit S1 (first seen in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me) that could turn into a submarine. ER0L brings us the submerisble in this faithful build. I have to say that the Lotus is my favorite of all the Bond cars, partly because I love Lotus in general, and partly because it’s a flippin’ submarine.

3 years to create huge LEGO version of Halo’s Infinity

I’ve been playing a LOT of Halo 5 recently – it’s a welcome return to form for the series after the slight let-down of Halo 4. As a result, I’m embarrassed I missed this stunning build until now. Cody Fowler took 3 years to put together this excellent recreation of UNSC Infinity, the spaceship star of the Halo franchise…

Cody has managed to perfectly capture the ship’s lines — no small feat when it’s such a collection of angles. I’m sure he was pleased, but also slightly nervous, when the latest game featured the Infinity so prominently on its loading screen. If you’re building a model from a source with such a rabid fan-base, you’re going to have to get the details right!

Beyond the shaping and the impressive scale (134 studs long), the blue LED lights within the vessel really add to the feel of a working starship. But for me, the little touch that sets this model apart is the attention Cody paid to the base. Often big spaceship builds like this are supported on ugly stacks – a functional afterthought detracting from the appearance of the model as a whole. Here, Cody has gone the extra mile, lavishing the same attention to detail on this element as the main ship itself. Great stuff.

Microscale spacecraft explores white space

The latest creation from Tim Goddard (aka roguebantha) is a beautiful microscale space exploration vehicle. It’s a great model with a real sense of heft – you can just imagine it pushing its bulk out into the cosmos, the crew peering out from the stubby bridge.

The build features a load of Tim’s signature greebles, the fiddly grey machinery details which do so much to suggest the model is much bigger than it is. Alongside those, the azure striping is an obvious treat against the relatively blank canvas of the white hull. The way the stripe continues back around the domes and the little disc at the rear is just clean and classy building. Tim says this model was an exploration in broadening his use of color. It’s a success as far as I’m concerned.

But away from the colors, what I’m enjoying most is the little gaps in the main body, offering glimpses of machinery within. All too often spaceship models can look as if they’re just tombstones of bricks strapped sideways onto a hollow shell. The gaps here suggest there’s actual stuff going on inside that pretty hull – a really nice little touch.

Screw hoverboards, we want these hoverbikes

In October it was “Back to the Future Day”, the day irresponsible time travelers Marty McFly and Doc Brown caught up with the future. Now that we’ve reached and passed that time, we’re all a bit disappointed that we’re not scooting around on floating skateboards. What would be even better though, are these nifty little scooters from nobu_tary. The green one reminds us of the hovercars from Dragonball Z.

1:10 Scale Lamborghini Aventador

Nick Barrett proves it is possible to capture the lines of a Lamborghini Aventador beautifully with LEGO parts. His 1:10 scale replica includes working suspension and steering, a detailed interior and V12 engine covered by cleverly built glass panels.

Tiny tanks advance to victory!

I’ve been following the recent builds of Thomas of Tortuga with interest and expressing little yelps of delight whenever a new creation pops up. He’s embroiled in a Flickr-based LEGO wargame called Divide And Conquer which I’m not even going to pretend to understand. However, the creations he’s putting together to represent his fictional nation’s military are fantastic. I particularly liked these armored tractor tank things…

I must admit to a certain ambivalence about rendered LEGO creations – I generally like to see builders put bits of plastic together in the real world. And I’m a firm believer that restrictions on quantity and color drive creativity, pushing builders to develop new techniques. However, these vehicles are absolute class, and I figured I’d let the handful of “impossibly colored” parts slide this time. (Those are pieces which LEGO has never produced in that particular color. But digital parts, of course, can be any color.)

The rest of Thomas’ photostream is stuffed with similarly cool and slightly steampunk military creations – well worth checking out. I’m loving his series of naval vessels (especially this dreadnought), although again some of the “impossible part” use does make me twitchy.

I know some people say rendering isn’t “LEGO building” at all. I’m not sure I’d go that far, and builders like Thomas are making me pay more attention to rendered works. I reckon LEGO creativity shines through, regardless of medium. What do you think?

Delicious Designs from the Speeder Custom Body Shop

The Speeder Custom ~~Body Shop~~ Kitchen is getting busy as our Pimp Rey’s Speeder Contest picks up speed. We welcome all interpretations, but these two delicious builds got our taste buds watering.

First, straight from the freezer, is Koen’s ‘Ice Pop Speeder’. Koen was clearly concerned about Rey coping with the hot deserts of Jakku and pimped her a chilled ice pop complete with Ice Cream vendor… not sure how she will feel about him taking a quick bite first!

Next comes the ‘Hot Dog Speeder’ dished up by Jabberwokka. Hot dogs are always a tasty fast food, and this Hot Dog Speeder is served in a neat napkin with some condiments. Let’s see if he can mustard up the speed to ketchup with the other pimped Speeders!