This is a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series. Although it’s blue. But confusing name aside, it is excellent, and been built (with the aid of a few 3D-printed pieces) to replicate a car owned by a YouTube influencer*. Previous bloggee 3D supercarBricks is the builder behind it, and there’s lots more to see at his ‘SLS AMG’ album via the link above.

*#talentelessdaddy’smoneycharismavacuum

The parallelogram; a shape that confuses physicists, NASA, MIT, and the entire TLCB Office. But not David Roberts, who has somehow formed this rather Philip K. Dick-ish hovercar from the unfeasible shape, even infusing the sides with number ‘4’s for added impossibility.

Such mind-bending brick-work is well beyond our comprehension here at TLCB, so it’s best you jump straight to David’s photostream before we think any harder and hurt ourselves. Prepare your brain and click here to join in the confusion.

‘Sports’ cars today have about a thousand horsepower and weigh sixteen tons. Except when they’re EVs, and then it’s double that. Which is why we love the Honda Beat.

Built to Japan’s kei-car regulations in the early ’90s, the Beat had only 660cc, 63bhp, and weighed in at just 760kgs. Which means your Mom could double the kerb-weight just by getting in. Not that she’d fit.

This neat Speed Champions Beat was found by one of our Elves on Flickr, coming from Ilya Muratov who has captured the ’90s kei icon wonderfully. Jump in via the link to Ilya’s Flickr album above. If you fit.

*Today’s title song. Of course.

After yesterday’s MAN 8×8 expedition truck, today we have a bonus build. Casually added into the Eurobricks topic alongside the MAN, collaborative builders MTC also published this brilliant-looking Mercedes-Benz Unimog outfitted for off-road adventuring. A complete Technic chassis is topped with an excellent Model Team body, consisting of a four-door cab and an integrated RV unit, and there’s more to see alongside the previous-blogged MAN 8×8 on Eurobricks. Click the link above for more off-road adventures.

If ever there was in image that went ‘Bwushhhhh!’, this is it. Constructed by keiichi kamei, this fantastic ‘Spinner’ police hovercar take-off captures life on the streets of Blade Runner’s dystopian Los Angeles brilliantly. Thirty-eight LED lights add to the ambiance and there’s more of this superb scene to see at keiichi’s photostream. Click the link above to take off.

If this TLCB Writer received paid holiday (no chance! Ed.), he’d like to go adventuring in something like this.

Built by collaborative building channel MTC, this MAN 8×8 off-road expedition truck includes everything you could need to escape to a place far away.

Two XL Motors power all eight fully suspended wheels, a Servo powers the steering, a Medium Motor drives a lift for a motorcycle/ATV platform mounted under the rear of the fully-equipped camper section, whilst another drives a compressor that can elevate the camper roof on four pneumatic cylinders.

All of the functions can be controlled via bluetooth courtesy to two SBricks, which you can watch in action via the excellent and appropriately sound-tracked video below, plus there’s more to see of this amazing rig at both Eurobricks and Flickr, where this TLCB Writer will be dreaming of places far far away.

YouTube Video

…is always a terrible idea. Every few years a new ‘F1 car for the road’ is announced, and it is inevitably an unreliable, undrivable, top-trumps card.

But then Mercedes-Benz AMG decided to have a go, and the result is… an unreliable, undrivable top-trumps card.

However perhaps that’s not as daft as it sounds. All 275 units of the AMG Project One – each costing $2.72 million and powered by a 1,050bhp 1.6 litre hybrid Formula 1 engine – were sold out years before the first car was finished, to customers who will park it in a garage alongside seventeen other unused hypercars.

Which means the fact that the AMG Project One doesn’t work is as relevant to the ownership experience as calorie information is to a KFC bucket meal customer.

Cue 3D supercarBricks‘ excellent recreation of Mercedes-AMG’s ‘F1 car for the road’, complete with opening butterfly doors, 3D-printed wheels, and as much likelihood of actually being driven as its full-size counterpart.

Top drawer building techniques and high quality presentation abound, and there’s lots more of the model to see at 3D’s photostream. Grab a KFC bucket meal, ignore the calorie information, and take a look via the link above.

It’s not often that The Lego Car Blog Elves are enthusiastic about a Lego model, beyond it resulting in a meal token. Today however, they’re beyond excited, as – in their minds – their ancestors sponsored the 1985 Lotus 97/T that gave Ayrton Senna his debut win.

What with it being the ’80s, John Player Special cigarettes did too – and it’s debatable which is worse for your health – but nevertheless that JPS gold-on-black livery sure does look cool.

This spectacular replica of the race-winning Lotus is the work of recent bloggee Robson M, whose other cigarette-sponsored Formula 1 car, also driven by Ayron Senna, appeared here earlier in the month.

A stunning recreation of the Elf/JPS livery, perfect presentation, and some rather clever building techniques make Robson’s Lotus 97/T well worth a closer look, and you can jump to 1985 via the link above, along with a bunch of excited TLCB Elves.

It’s the early-’80s, and if you’re in the back of a Ford LTD Crown Victoria it means one of two things; you’re either paying a fare to cross a city, or you’ve been busted.

Cue Jakub Marcisz‘s wonderful 1983 Ford LTD Crown Victoria police car, resplendent in a black-on-white highway patrol livery with a red/blue light-bar, rear-facing red lights in the rear window, a detailed V8 engine, and the optional ‘push bar’, so law-enforcement officers can ram you before shooting.

There’s lots more to see at Jakub’s superb ‘Ford LTD 1983’ album on Flickr; click the link above to bust on over, or here to see another LTD Crown Victoria with a few modifications that even the cops don’t get…

Ah, a mobile crane, which means you’ll be expecting TLCB to make erection jokes. But no! We’ve grown up, and are rising above it. Yup, we’re stiffly sticking to sensibility today, as Ralph Savelsberg‘s Town-scale Mammoet-liveried Liebherr LTM-1350 is a properly well-constructed piece of equipment, with an impressive rotating superstructure, extending stabilisers, and a meaty hook well-hung from the two-piece boom. There’s more to see at Ralph’s ‘Mammoet Mobile Crane’ album, and you can take a look at the full package via the link above!

Questi giorni quando vieni, il bel sole
On days like these when skies are blue and fields are green
I look around and think about what might have been
And then I hear sweet music float around my head
As I recall the many things we left unsaid
And it’s on days like these that I remember
Singing songs and drinking wine
While your eyes play games with mine

SCREECH, CRASH!

Oh yes, we’re a Lego blog. This fabulous Speed Champions scale Lamborghini Miura SV comes from Flickr’s barneius, and there’s more to see at his photostream. *And if you have no idea what the rest of this post is about, click here.

The annual day of ‘discounts’ (in actuality only mass marketing) is once again here to inflict greed, violence and wasteful consumerism on the soulless masses.

As is customary, here at The Lego Car Blog we will not be taking part in the day of materialist misery (which now stretches to a week or more) that leaves one in four Americans in debt, whilst surpassing the annual GDP of around half the world’s countries (and that’s just the spend within the U.S and our home nation).

Therefore you won’t find a round-up of the best Black Friday brick-based ‘discounts’ here, but we do have some alternatives that will help you to preserve your soul, and perhaps add something back to counter a day that is built around taking.

Creations for Charity – Buy an amazing one-of-a-kind Lego creation, with all proceeds used to buy LEGO sets for children in need. If you’ve ever commented “Is this for Sale?” on a post here at The Lego Car Blog, maybe it is!

Unicef Market – The United Nations Childrens Fund, providing developmental and humanitarian aid to children worldwide. Buying your Christmas gifts here will help to save and transform some of the youngest lives in the world’s poorest nations.

Red Cross, Tearfund, Christian Aid – Fantastic charities working every day to alleviate poverty, suffering, and injustice.

Finally, the revenue generated via the advertisements that appear on this site (even the Black Friday ones) is also used to help those who need it more than we do. If you like the look of an ad, give it a click, and if you like what we do here at TLCB, then please consider sharing us. The more eyeballs the ads get, the more we can give : )

Thank you

This is without doubt the loveliest Lego Land Rover we’ve seen this year. Because the loveliest Land Rover is of course a green Series 1 80″.

Built by recent bloggee FanisLego, this utterly beautiful recreation of the definitive Land Rover captures every aesthetic detail of the wonderful 1950s original, with brick-built leaf-spring suspension, a replica of the simple 50bhp 1.6 litre engine, holes for the power-take-offs (can you imagine a modern Defender including the ability to run farm equipment from the engine!), flipping seats, a folding windscreen, plus opening doors, hood, and tailgate.

Photographed and presented superbly, FanisLego’s Land Rover Series 1 80″ is available to view on Bricksafe, where fifteen stunning images are within in the model’s album. Better yet, a link to building instructions can also be found, so if – like us – you think the Series 1 Land Rover is probably the best vehicle ever built, you can create your very own in brick form.

Head to Bricksafe via the link in the text above, where you can find full build details, the complete image gallery, and a link to building instructions.

Social media is bursting with #van/truck/buslife content. Attractive couples bedecked in hot pants and topknots regale their audience with tales of adventure, ethically-sourced all-natural vegan cuisine, and a life lived off the beaten track, only returning to civilisation to connect to Starbucks’ wifi to upload their latest vlog.

Back in 1995 though, a team of Italian overlanding experts did things properly. Using four amazing Iveco 330.30 6×6 trucks, each outfitted for a different overlanding purpose by specialists Mussa & Graziano, the team travelled over 170,000kms through 91 countries during the five year expedition.

Better yet, there wasn’t a ‘Like & Subscribe!’ in sight, with the expedition supporting Unicef (one of TLCB’s own chosen charities) and staffed by doctors, an Italian parachute regiment, Iveco mechanics, and other people that – whilst they might not have a topknot – do know what they’re doing.

This phenomenal Technic creation captures one of the four incredible Iveco vehicles from the epic expedition, and comes from previous bloggee Lucio Switch of Flickr.

With remote control 6×6 drive, steering, locking differentials, all-wheel suspension, and a fully-accessible cab and living quarter, Lucio’s model replicates the Mussa & Graziano modified Iveco 330.30 6×6 overland truck spectacularly, and there’s a whole lot more to see at both his Flickr album and via the video below.

Click the links to start your expedition. Topknot not required.

YouTube Video

It’s 1997, the year the Kyoto Protocol ensured that CO2 emissions were reduced to avert climate change, a small ethical start-up called Google registered their domain name, and Will Smith cemented his legacy as a forever wholesome family rapper.

It was also the year that said wholesome family rapper starred in one of the biggest movies of the decade; ‘Men in Black’, wherein an organisation ‘more secretive than the C.I.A. and more powerful than the F.B.I.’ went on a recruitment drive to help protect Earth from the scum of the universe.

Will Smith’s character of course got the gig, entering him into a top secret world of memory-erasing pen thingies and carboniser fission guns, plus the rather unique vehicles that the ‘Men in Black’ had at their disposal, including a fleet of 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victorias.

In standard form the ’87 Crown Vic could have been an entry into TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity competition, so deep was its nondescriptness. However, the Men in Black version came equipped with a few… optional extras, most notably a little red button that initiated a sequence of the finest CGI that 1997 could muster.

Previous bloggee Peter Zieske has captured the effects of pushing the aforementioned button beautifully in brick form, with the result perhaps even more visually believable than its movie counterpart.

Further images of Peter’s brilliant transforming ‘Men in Black’ Ford LTD Crown Vic can be found at his Flickr album, and you can click here to take a look, whilst we ponder the fact that the entire world seems to have been on the receiving end of the ‘Men in Black’s memory-erasing pen thingy since 1997…

If you’re a rad So-Cal surfer dude, there is literally nothing cooler than a slammed Volkswagen Beetle with a roof-rack. This TLCB Writer is definitely not a rad So-Cal surfer dude, but despite his doughy Northern European composition, he still thinks this slammed Volkswagen Beetle with a roof-rack is pretty cool. Flickr’s RGB900 is the rad So-Cal surfer dude* behind it and there’s more to see via the link.

*Radical surfness not guaranteed.

Formula 1 was different in 1991. Cigarettes, a variety of engine configurations, and only one Unites States Grand Prix. Oh, and a titanic battle between McLaren’s Ayrton Senna and Williams’ Nigel Mansell, that culminated in a third Driver’s World Championship for Senna and the only Constructor’s World Championship ever won by a V12 powered car.

This is that car, the awesome McLaren-Honda MP4/6, as designed, liveried, rendered and presented beautifully by Robson M aka BrickDesigners, and there’s more to see of Robson’s stunning recreation on Flickr. Click the link above to race in ’91.

LEGO’s 10298 Vespa 125 set is wonderful in every way. Thus we love this miniaturised version by Flickr’s 1saac W., who has captured the iconic Italian scooter beautifully in brick-form. The set’s lovely blue colour is switched for cream, but if LEGO can do it themselves with their other Italian icon, cream is good enough for us! See more at 1saac’s photostream via the link!

‘Restomods’ are big business these days, where classic cars, pick-ups and 4x4s, are brought up to date with the addition of modern engines, suspension, electrics, and brakes, whilst mostly keeping the looks that make classic vehicles so appealing.

This is Tony Bovkoon’s brick-built restomod, a 1956 Ford F-100 pick-up featuring a subtly modified exterior that includes opening doors, hood and tailgate, with a beautifully detailed interior and engine bay inside the first two.

Very un-’56 wheels hint at the powertrain upgrades that would lurk within, and there are over a dozen superbly presented images are available to view at Tony’s ‘Ford F-100’ album on Flickr.

Click the link above to upgrade a ’56 Ford.

LEGO’s vintage space theme M-Tron is still going strong. Not with LEGO themselves of course, but within the Lego Community, who are taking the theme to scales never imagined back in the early 1990s.

This is Havoc’s ‘M-Tron Crawler’, a frankly ridiculously-sized twelve wheel mobile command centre complete with over a dozen magnetised cargo pieces, including several vehicles that back in 1993 could have been LEGO M-Tron sets in their own right.

Three magnetised cranes can hoist the various spacey accompaniments onto the Crawler’s roof, whilst a cargo bay at the rear can transport the assortment of smaller vehicles within.

The complete Crawler looks like every LEGO space fan from 1993’s dream – if only they had the pieces – and there’s a whole heap more to see at Havoc’s ‘Crawler’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to make the jump!