Ah, the humble Honda Civic. Built in TLCB’s home nation, and once – even if not any more – the byword for advanced yet reliable hatchbackery.

The Civic has since been overtaken by the Korean brands here in Europe, but early examples are still a reasonably regular sight on the roads due to their legendary reliability. It’s an even more common sight on the banger track, as early Civics are worth about £5 and they can take a serious amount of punishment before heading to the great carpark in the sky.

America is where the Honda Civic was really successful though, where – despite it being basically the same car as the one we have in Europe – the little Japanese hatch has trodden a very different path in the annuls of automotive history.

Today early Stateside Civics seem to all have one thing in common; modifications. Bad modifications. Here at TLCB we’re not really sure why this is, seeing as gas, cars, and insurance are so cheap in the ‘States why not just buy a faster car in the first place?

The upshot of this is that finding an original unmodified early Civic is like trying to find an educated climate change denier – it’s virtually impossible. Which is a shame, as the late ’80s and early ’90s Civics were great little cars when left as Honda intended.

If you’re reading this in America and have a hankering for an unmolested slice of early ’90s Honda pie, get on Craigslist, find 78 year old Mavis who’s recently given up driving, and buy her Civic. It’ll be a classic one day. Probably.

Alternatively though, you could build your own, which is exactly what TLCB regular Nico71 has done. Based on the ’90s fifth generation (EG) Civic hatch, Nico’s creation is gloriously simple looking. It’s not simple inside though, as a full RC Power Functions drivetrain and rear suspension system have been squeezed in.

It’s quite a feat of packaging and handily Nico has taken photos that show how it’s all been done. You can see all of the images of Nico’s little Technic Honda, inside and out, via Brickshelf – click the link above to make the jump to ’91.

It’s a Technic double today, with two entries into the latest TC10 competition on Eurobricks. Both are pneumatically operated creations, as specified by the contest rules, and both show how brilliant LEGO’s little air cylinders can be.

First up (above) is this magnificent Technic snow groomer by Samuel Wharfe, with no less than six air-powered functions. The front blade raises, lowers, oscillates, and its edges can be adjusted to suit wider or narrower tracks, the rear blade can raise, lower and deploy smoothing rollers, and the whole vehicle can be raised above the snow via a pneumatic suspension system. There’s lots more to see at Eurobricks, and via Samuel’s Flickr photostream.

Today’s second pneumatic creation was suggested by a reader and comes from newcomer luukietechnic. Luukie’s heavy-lift telehandler, and it too features a wealth of functions. A Power Functions driven pneumatic pump provides air pressure for the boom elevation and self-levelling attachment, as well as a tilting cabin, whilst mechanics control the telehandler’s boom extension and four-wheel steering. You can see more of the build, including WIP photographs of the mechanics, at Eurobricks via the link above.

Ah, Rock Raiders, one of LEGO’s thankfully short-lived late ’90s themes where they’d run out of ideas and decided to re-hash the ‘searching for magical crystals’ story just one last time. And the logo looked like a sexual diagram. We weren’t fans.

Anyhoo, we are fans of whatever this is. Suggested by a reader and built by previous bloggee Desert752Kirill it’s apparently a Heavy Rock Loader, and it looks like something from one of Thunderbirds weirder storylines.

Weighing 5KG and measuring almost a meter long, Desert’s creation is a goliath of the Technic world. It has gargantuan features to match too, with (by our count) twenty six pneumatic cylinders. These control everything from the boom elevation and extension, bucket tilt, the superstructure rotation, the four immense outriggers, and the adjustable-height suspension. The bucket also has a mechanical self-levelling function, and the model can operate with both normal and crab steering.

There’s lots more to see at Dessert’s Flickr photostream, the Eurobricks discussion forum, and of course, via the excellent video below. Click the links and be amazed…

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This neat Scania dump truck was discovered on Eurobricks today, and at first we thought it was a simple, although good-looking, mechanical model. However the exterior is deceptively bland, as it’s hiding some proper engineering genius underneath.

Builder TomasHubik has managed to squeeze in a fully remote controlled 8-wheel-drive, 4-wheel-steering chassis, complete with a differential between each pair of wheels and different turning radiuses between the first and second steering axles. Not only that, a Power Functions Medium motor allows the load bed to raise and lower too.

We’re as baffled by how all that fits inside as we are by your Mom’s corset, so we’ve taken the unusual step of publishing a photo of the chassis in this post too. You can see more of Tomas’ build, including a larger version of the image below, at the Eurobricks discussion forum – click the link above to see if you can figure it out.

Well we’ve found our favourite creation of the week so far… This excellent-looking Technic tracked excavator comes from previous bloggee Horcik Designs, and it’s a thoroughly wonderful machine. Wonderful because it has no less than three pneumatic cylinders providing movement to its arm and grab. Wonderful because those cylinders are fed air by a Power Functions driven electric pump. And mostly wonderful because it can pick up a TLCB Elf by the ears and dunk it in a bowl of soapy water, all without us ever having to touch it. Thanks Horcik! You can see more of Horcik’s superb Elf-washing machine on Flickr – click the link above to take a look.

Long time readers (and probably even short time readers) will have worked out that this is not a classy blog. However every so often we put on a shirt, leave the decaying ruin that is TLCB Towers, and sit in a real restaurant to eat something that actually came out of the ground. With metal cutlery and everything.*

Anyhoo, this is one of those moments, as this could well be the classiest creation that we’ve published all year. Built by marthart of Brickshelf it’s a 1932 Alfa Romeo Spider, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It also has a working engine, steering, leaf spring suspension, and opening doors and hood.

There’s more to see at marthart’s Brickshelf account via the link above. Put on a tie and join us there.

*As opposed to staying in the office eating Sugar Puffs straight from the bag again.

Ah, 24. A brilliantly innovative TV show that started out superbly and then went on for much, much, too long. With the ‘exciting’ news that Fox are commissioning the show’s return as a spin-off (sigh… seriously, just make something new you lazy feckless uninspired f…), we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon and post something 24-related, because we’re cynical and it’ll generate extra hits.

This is a 24 wheel Mercedes-Benz Arocs SLT and Nooteboom trailer combination, and just like the TV show it looks ridiculously, unnecessarily, long.

Unlike the TV show though, it’s superb all the way along. The truck is the work of newcomer JLW Bricks, and it’s very loosely associated with LEGO’s official 42043 Technic Mercedes-Benz Arocs set. With no Power Functions motors in (or out of) sight, JLW’s truck relies on some good old-fashioned mechanics for its functionality, and we like that very much. There’s working suspension on all four axles, Hand-of-God steering on the first two, and a replica straight-6 engine under the cab.

Attached at the rear, and adding another sixteen sets of wheels, JLW has recreated Jaap Technic‘s brilliant eight-axle Nooteboom trailer, making this one of the longest models that we can remember featuring.

There’s more to see of both the truck and trailer at the Eurobricks discussion forum, where there’s some excellent outdoor photography in evidence too. Click the link above to make the jump. Beep… Beep…  Beep… Beep…

Looking at gonkius’s PhotoStream, we’re pretty sure that he already owns a 42055 Bucket Wheel Excavator.  Is one enough?  Obviously not, judging by this nice little bit of micro-scale building.  Once again proving that it’s not how many bricks you have but what you do with them, our Elves tiny minds were instantly attracted to this tiny machine.

This magnificent pneumatic Technic backhoe comes from TLCB favourite Máté Lipkovics aka Lipko, and it’s one of the best pieces of Lego engineering you’ll see this year.

A Power Functions motor operates duel pneumatic pumps, allowing Lipko’s model to run two sets of pneumatic functions simultaneously. These include the backhoe; which can rotate, elevate and tip the bucker, the front loader; which both elevates and tips, and the rear-mounted stabilisers.

If that wasn’t enough there are mechanical functions too, including all-wheel-steering, both by Hand-of-God and the steering wheel, pendular suspension, an opening hood and a rating driver’s seat.

There’s lots more to see on three of the major Lego-sharing platforms, click the links for all the details on MOCpages, Brickshelf, and Eurobricks.

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In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.

Or if you can’t, you could just build their van (which we always thought was a highly conspicuous vehicle for escaped convicts sought by the Government). Anyhoo, previous bloggee Chade has taken this latter approach, and a fine job he’s done too. His Technic recreation of the A-Team’s iconic GMC Vandura features working lights, remote control drive and steering, and – more unusually – powered opening doors; sliding on the side and twin-hinged at the back.

There’s more to see of Chade’s build via MOCpages, Eurobricks and Flickr. Click the links to make the jump.

Mitsubishi passenger cars haven’t appeared here at The Lego Car Blog all that often. In fact Mistubishi’s World War 2 fighter plane – the A6M Zero – has made more appearances. This is probably because the Japanese manufacturer’s current product range is a bit… shit, and thus it’s a bit of a bleak place from which to draw inspiration.

Mitsubishi’s woes are larger than a tiny market share cobbled together from a bland line-up of nothingness though. World news has been full of the Volkswagen ‘dieselgate’ scandal, where some crafty engineers (and morally bankrupt management) signed off a ‘cheat’ that means cars are producing up to forty times their stated pollution level, but what you may not know is that Mitsubishi Motors are currently the subject of a criminal investigation in Japan for undertaking similar practices.

In fact it’s been found that Mitsubishi have been falsifying the fuel economy figures of their domestic-market vehicles for twenty five years, with over 620,000 cars affected.

All of this has resulted in a company that’s now in a precarious position, but luckily for fans of the brand (and their thousands of employees), the Renault-Nissan Alliance has stepped in. No doubt helped Mitsubishi Motor’s falling share price, the French-Japanese partnership recently completed a $2.2Billion purchase of a controlling stake in the company, and simultaneously turned Renault-Nissan into the fourth largest automotive group in the world.

With both Nissan and Renault now on a roll after years in the automotive doldrums it can only be a good thing for Mitsubishi’s products, which will be able to share the platforms, engines and electrics of their parent brands. That’ll make things interesting for the bright spot in Mitsubishi’s current range, their highly successful L200 ‘Triton’ pick-up truck. With Nissan’s own Navara spawning a new pick-up for Renault (and one for Mercedes-Benz soon too), should the L200 end up platform-sharing as well there’ll be four pick-ups all spun from the same design.

Until then though, the current L200 remains a stand-alone* product (and quite a good one too), and TLCB favourite paave has recreated the popular pick-up superbly in Technic form. With remote control drive and steering, accurate independent front and leaf spring rear suspension, and opening (and locking) doors, hood and tailgate, paave’s double-cab Triton is packed with features too. Head over to MOCpages for all the images, plus a video of the model in action.

*Er… sort of. This is complicated. Nissan make the Navara, and are in partnership with Renault. Renault will re-badge the Navara themselves to create the Renault Alaskan next year. This platform has also been shared with Mercedes-Benz, who will make their first commercial pick-up truck, the X-Class, next year too.

Mitsubishi, now owned by Renault-Nissan, make their own truck, the L200 pictured here. This will likely also become a Navara clone when the current generation is replaced, but for now it’s a separate entity. Except the L200 platform has been sold to Fiat so that they can re-badge it to create their own pick-up, called the Fullback, which launched last month…

But none of these are a Toyota Hilux.

We were a bit underwhelmed by LEGO’s 42049 Technic Mine Loader set when we previewed it here towards the end of last year. It has pneumatics and a two cylinder engine, but…meh. However a recent upload by previous bloggee Tamas Juhasz (aka mbmc137) shows how it should have been done, and at about half the scale.

Tamas’ tiny Technic recreation of the official set might be small, but it packs in just as much functionality, and in doing so it might just be the neatest and most well engineered small-scale Technic model we’ve seen this year. It could even be a set, if there wasn’t one already…

With all the functionality of 42049, Tamas’ build squeezes in all-wheel-drive, articulated steering, pneumatic bucket elevation and tilt, and a two-cylinder piston engine (making it just as unrealistically underpowered as LEGO’s version).

There’s lots more to see of this incredibly tidy build at Tamas’ Brickshelf gallery and at the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus there’s a video of the loader’s features available below.

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Time to go old-school. This is Ferrari’s glorious 308 GTS, built between 1975 and 1985, and powered by a mid-mounted V8 producing around 250bhp (unless you were in America, where emission regulations dropped that a bit).

Made famous by the cult TV show Magnum P.I, the 308 is widely regarded as one of the most iconic Ferrari designs of all time. There were some anomalies, including a 2 litre version (which was still – incredibly – a V8) that made a whopping 150bhp, but these aside the 308 is probably the quintessential Ferrari.

Lightly updated to become the 328 in the late ’80s, the 308/328 platform is also one of Ferrari’s most successful models, with nearly 20,000 units produced over three decades. Somebody decided that one more was needed though, and commissioned Flickr’s Jeroen Ottens to recreate the classic Ferrari in Lego form.

It was a wise move too, as Jeroen has absolutely nailed it. Featuring a replica V8 engine mounted to a working 3+R gearbox, four wheel independent suspension, steering (Ackermann with caster), pop-up headlights controlled via the dashboard, adjustable seats and a removable roof, this 308 replica is every bit as good underneath as it looks on top. There’s loads more to see of this incredible Technic supercar at Jeroen’s photostream – click here to check it out.

*Read in a flashy Essex/South London ’80s banker accent. If you’re not from the UK and don’t know what that sounds like, lucky you.

This brilliant-looking buggy is in fact a Reform Metrac lawn mower, and it’s one of the most well-engineered Technic creations of the year.

Built by Anto of Eurobricks, the little Reform is packed with Technic functions, including all-wheel-steering (with front-only and crab options too), all-wheel-drive, twin lifting power take-offs for the mower attachments, pendular suspension, and a working four-cylinder engine.

You can see all of the details at the Eurobricks forum here, plus you can see the mower in action via the video below.

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We round off a busy day here at TLCB Towers with this, Crowkillers‘ stunning new supercar. Built from the pieces of the 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS Technic set, Crowkillers’ latest creation goes back to the roots of the Technic Supercar franchise, without Power Functions, pneumatics, or a limited edition book.

Instead Crowkillers has focussed on mechanical functionality, and in doing so he’s created a wonderfully functional model. Suspension is independent on all wheels with an in-board pushrod set-up, there’s a mid-mounted V8 engine connected to a sequential 4-speed gearbox driving all four wheels, plus working steering, opening doors, engine cover and luggage space.

There’s more to see of Crowkillers’ ‘Scorpion’ Supercar via his Brickshelf gallery and the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus you can read our interview with Crowkillers as part of the Master MOCers series by clicking here.

Due to the ongoing Dieselgate scandal the Volkswagen Group have a bit of reputation rebuilding to do. Cue motorsport; get your cars on the track, win some races, and everyone loves you.

Unfortunately for motorsport fans (and for Volkswagen), this method is very expensive, and criminal investigations, lawsuits, and fines do not come cheap. It also doesn’t look too good if you’re caught fiddling diesel emissions tests to then put said diesel engine on a racetrack to promote its sales…

Sadly the current situation has meant that Volkswagen have decided to pull the plug on both their WRC campaign and their Audi Diesel Le Mans team, both of which have won everything going in the last few years. We think they’ll probably enter Formula E at some point to show how they’ve turned over a new leaf and that they really do care about the environment after all, but until then it falls to Porsche to keep the Group active in motorsport.

Fortunately Porsche have picked up exactly where Audi left off, winning the Le Mans 24 Hour race back-to-back in 2015 and 2016 with this, their magnificent 919 hybrid LMP1 racer. This incredible replica of last year’s race-winning car is the work of Manuel Nascimento of Flickr, and it’s one of the finest Technic supercars of the year.

Manuel has built the 919’s LMP1 bodywork beautifully, including accurate recreations of the sponsorship and branding decals found on the real car. The beauty is more than skin deep too, as the model features Power Functions lights, remote control drive and steering, and electrically opening doors.

There’s a huge gallery of stunning images available to view; click the link above to see more at Manuel’s photostream.

If you’re a gym bro, juiced on protein shakes and creatine, and wondering where the headaches are coming from, this post is for you! This absolutely enormous Liebherr HS 895 tracked crane is the work of Eurobricks’ Shineyu, who is steadily becoming one of our favourite Technic builders here at TLCB Towers, and it can lift big.

Weighing over 5KGs Shineyu’s remotely controlled Liebherr can lift over a kilogram via its reel winches, and it can even drive too (sort of…). There’s more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum, where there’s also a video of the crane in action; click the link above for some mad gains.

We don’t particularly like the Hennessey Venom GT. There, we said it. Cue the wrath of the internet. OK, we’ll explain. The Venom GT is a Lotus Exige with a GM V8 shoved in it. There’s nothing wrong with a Lotus Exige with a GM V8 shoved in it, but it’s a long way from being the greatest car ever made ever, which is how much of the internet views the Venom.

In fact we get the feeling that the Venom was built purely to satisfy the aforementioned keyboard warriors who only look at the stats of a car to judge how good it is. If the Venom is the fastest ‘production’ car in the world it must, therefore, be the best. Which it isn’t. At all.

Anyhoo, this Technic recreation of a car we don’t particularly like is a model that we do like rather a lot. Built by Lachlan Cameron it’s packed with working features, and it looks spectacular too.

Underneath the wonderfully replicated Exige-on-steriods bodywork is a full Power Functions remote control drivetrain, electronically deployable rear wing, working V8 engine, all-wheel suspension, and opening doors, engine cover and roof.

There’s more to see of Lachlan’s Venom GT at both his Flickr photostream and the Eurobricks forum – click the links to join the discussion.

This incredible motorcycle is the work of TLCB debutant Kieran Chamberlain, and it’s an absolute masterclass in Technic engineering. Riding on brick-built wheels and constructed from over 3,100 pieces Kieran’s motorbike is probably the largest that we’ve ever featured. The engine is something spectacular too, featuring four working cylinders with overhead cams, working valves and a twin-screw supercharger. It’s hooked up to a functioning footshift-operated gearbox and the whole lot is powered by an L motor and battery box mounted inside the frame. You can see more of Kieran’s jaw-dropping 1/3 scale bike at his Flickr photostream – click here to go for a ride.

We like featuring the unsung heroes of the automotive world here at TLCB. Today’s post is one of them, the humble reach stacker, used to retrieve and pile containers in thousands of depots the world over. The chances are that something you’re using or looking at right now was moved by one of these, and that makes it a more important vehicle than the Bugatti Veyron.

This neat Technic version of the humble automotive sherpa comes from previous bloggee Anto of Eurobricks, and it features rear-wheel steering, a lifting and extending arm complete with functioning clamp, and a working piston engine. There’s more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum, and you can see LEGO’s own soon-to-be released reach stacker set as part of our 2017 Technic Preview by clicking here.