Classy automobile

It's not often that the LEGO building community sees a larger scale highly detailed car, but when one "rolls" around, people definitely take notice.  LEGO artist Bricksonwheels' beautiful rendition of this 1935 Duesenberg SJ Dual Cowl Phaeton certainly begs a double take, not only for the supreme detailing throughout, but also of the flashy chrome decorations.  I really applaud the work here; the scaling is just perfect.

Cars and trucks and things that go*

*Just trucks this time

We're constantly praising microscale builders here because of the difficulty of creating an appealing, recognizable model from just a handful of pieces. The latest micro masterpieces I've found are these trucks by Robert Heim (Robiwan_Kenobi). Check out some of the part uses and, more interestingly, the ways these builds fit together. There are some great techniques used to achieve the necessary angles:

All of these MOCs are sort of related...

- They're all futuristic 
- All of them use fantastic angle techniques and wedge plates
- I found all of them in my co-blogger Frog's Flickr faves
- What more could you ask for, really?
- Ok, just enjoy the builds...

"Box Truck" by [Carter]:

"Erik's APC" by Dryvvall:

"Robodog" by Gamabomb:

Big truck

I don't know much about trucks. The LEGO Car Blog does, so if you want more LEGO things-on-wheels, head over to their site (they're big fans of ours... just returning the favor!). And Dennis Bosman (legotrucks) apparently knows a lot about them too, because from what I can tell from the source photo, his Scania T143E model is pretty damn accurate. 

Oh, sweet nostalgia

As a little kid I always liked the Adventurers series. Now Joeri Ridder brings us this sweet revamp of the 5918 Scorpion Tracker. He replaced all of the old big pieces with brick-built pieces ad adds more functionality and detail that way. All in all a total success in revamping the old set.

Anger management

This month's LUGNuts challenge is called "Anger Management," and the task is to build mean-looking or aggressively named vehicles, or vehicles from aggressive movies. The Mitsubishi Eclipse may not be a particularly "angry" car, but it did star in The Fast and the Furious, which builder Ralph Savelsberg (Mad physicist) points out is about the most aggressive movie ever. The lime green paint job helps too. 

Sporty concept

I was initially drawn to Wave Noiz's Flickr photostream by his compact monster truck MOC, but while there I discovered an equally fantastic small vehicle build: this concept sports car. 

I'd never seen this builder's work before, but now I'm glad I did. His vehicle builds are typically no larger than those from official City sets, but they're built in a very unorthodox style that eschews typical chassis design. Check out his photostream to see lots more great vehicles - I'm sure plenty more of them will find their way onto this blog in due time. 

Black as night

Rancorbait didn't give this vehicle a name, so I was forced to come up with a post title on my own. :) This truck and its occupants look prepared to infiltrate deep into enemy territory in the dead of night, so I went for something along those lines. But enough about me... check out the angles on this thing. The upper headlights and front grille look awesome. I also love the ladder element used as a protective screen, in the absence of a glass panel. 

Garage life, part deux

We return to the venerable Brick Bucket garage (formerly the Brickology garage) to take a look at Norton74's shiny new '23 Ford T-Bucket. The car is of course very well built but the MOC wouldn't be the same without the detailed and carefully designed backdrop and accessories. The overall look is very similar to that of a real garage - nice work. 

More photos on Flickr here. 

Audi supercar

Not too long ago, Audi wasn't really known for supercars. That all changed when the company took the Lamborghini Gallardo platform and turned it into the Audi R8 V10. Being "a fan of the R8 and orange LEGO pieces," well-known Technic builder Sariel decided to combine the two. The result is this masterpiece of a LEGO supercar: 

Many more images can be found on MOCpages or on Sariel's website. I love that the builder challenged himself by building the vehicle in orange, which is a very rare color in LEGO and consequently quite difficult to build with, especially something of this scale. Some of Sariel's build notes I found fascinating: 

To make things harder, the orange pieces are fairly rare and I spent entire year with Bricklink’s Color Guide in front of my face just to make sure I’m using pieces that exist and can be bought (one doesn’t automatically mean the other). And then Lego is unable to maintain one consistent hue of orange.

Probably the most challenging part of the model was its front end. There was little space elsewhere, so I installed the model’s battery exactly in its nose, right between the front grille and front axle. This meant putting several meters of wires there, including 5 pairs of Lego LEDs in the headlights. If you want a simple recipe to start hating yourself, try to make an axle that is suspended, steered and driven at the same time, then put a ton of wires around it, and then try to make it all fit under a very low hood. I believe I spent no less than month to cram everything in there without making the hood taller. In the end, the entire front end was like a combination of about eight separate modules that would stay together only if connected in a very specific order.

Mastodon and Arm Suit

I was going to post .Tromas's Arm Suit MOC a few days ago, but I'm glad I waited until now, because the builder also made this sweet truck to go along with the mech:

The description from Flickr reads: 
Mastodons formed the backbone of mine protected vehicles in both the Canadian and Japanese armed forces for the last two decades. With the formation of Canada-Japan and the merging of the armed forces there was a surplus of Mastodons. With the primary goal of the forces now being national self defence and peacekeeping many surplus Mastodons have been retrofitted to carriers for the newly developed Arm Suits. The high mobility chassis is ideal for operations throughout Neo-Canada and although it is somewhat overkill in urban environs, it is perfectly at home patrolling the tundras of the far north.

More images here

Silly Sunday

I'm back after a few days' absence and it's time for some fun. This will be gladly provided by .Tromas and his gang, "Yesterday's Tomorrow": 

The gang will be riding in their Volkswagen Cube-Vanagon, from which they run their illegal black market operation:

It's not often that I post figbarfs but these are particularly well done and I quite like the truck as well. 

Backstory

Motte Mudrock

I don't think anything I can write here can explain the awesomeness of this compact off-road vehicle MOC from Peteris Sprogis, so... just keep looking at the picture I guess...

It's only dark on the outside...

LEGO cars are hard to build accurately. Many of them end up looking "off'. This Audi A6 by Rolands Kirpis (Rolic) does not. Enough said- this is fantastic work. The contrast between the dark red exterior and bright white interior is particularly nice. 

More images of the MOC

Images of the real car

EDIT (1/8/14)- sorry for not posting the link to Rolic's photostream. I've fixed it above. 

Gone bananas

_Tiler's not monkeying around with this MOC. This hot rod looks like it's about to peel out at around 150 mph. It'll be gone in a split, so don't blink or you might miss it. 

While writing this post I learned something about myself: I am surprisingly good at coming up with bad banana puns. (Feel free to contribute some more in the comments!)

You can see more photos of this potassium-infused speedster, as well as some other great vintage hot rods, here. 

L'il Hotrod

Sometimes smaller is better, and no one knows this better than Karf Oohlu. Check out this miniature masterpiece:

Nice car

This 1911 Graf and Stift Double Phaeton by Raphael Granas (r a p h y) is awesome. Sleek lines, a dash of olive green, and a genius hood ornament adds up to one sweet car.

Super 7

I've been looking forward to the final version of this MOC for a while. Carl Greatrix (bricktrix) has been posting a ton of WIP photos of his Caterham Super 7 car project, and now it's done. And it's every bit as awesome as the trains Carl usually builds. Have a look: 

 Both cars have full interior detailing, like the dashboard and engine, as well:

Truckin'

Good LEGO trucks can be hard to make, especially military ones: They need to look clean and regulated, but also have that dirty, battered look. This Messenger APV vehicle by Andrew Somers is a pretty good example. In particular I like the roof-mounted gun and the "tires-in-tires" wheel technique. 

Luxury

Wow. This Ferrari 458 Italia is one of the slickest cars I've ever seen made out of LEGO. Nathanael L. is the builder, and the model features beautifully sleek curves and a fully designed interior. 

Here's the link to the builder's Flickr photostream, where many more photos of this can be found.

Also, Nathanael has a LEGO Ideas project for this car... meaning that if it reaches 10,000 votes it could become an actual LEGO set! Click here to help give this thing some votes. I for one would totally buy this if it appeared on a shelf.