Unless that price is $3.4 Million…

Barely a week goes by without a millionaire somewhere deciding that they’re going to start up their own supercar company and it’s going to make the fastest car in the world, with a four thousand horsepower and a top speed of a billion.

Unsurprisingly almost every single one of these start-ups comes to absolutely nothing, because like a guy who sounds hard in his YouTube comments but is actually 33 and still living with his Mom, there’s no substance behind the wild claims.

However Lykan – the Middle East’s first supercar manufacturer – are an exception, because despite the extravagant press releases before a car had turned a wheel, they’ve actually gone and built the car they claimed to.

Funded by the UAE and engineered in Lebanon by a team of French and Italian engineers, just seven Lykan Hypersports will be built, at a cost of an insane $3.4million each.

This being the Middle East, the Abu Dhabi Police Department have already snapped one up, which alongside two other buyers leaves four still to sell. So what does $3.4million get you?

Exclusivity, that’s for sure. With only six Hypersports available to public any buyer is going to be in a very small club. They’ll also get an RUF-developed 780bhp 3.7litre twin-turbo flat-6 engine, which sounds a lot like it’s come from a Porsche 911, and the first headlights to be embedded with jewels (420 of them).

If we’re honest, if we had $3.4million we’d probably take a Koenigsegg Agera R and still have change for a McLaren P1, a Ford GT, and eight Toyota GT86s, but unfortunately TLCB’s policy on advertising revenue means we’ll unlikely to ever make it onto the world’s rich list.

However if you do hanker after a Lykan, but are a bit short in the cash department, Flickr’s Lachlan Cameron may have the answer. Whilst we don’t think the Hypersport is a particularly good supercar, Lachlan’s remote control Technic version sure is.

With Power Functions controlled steering and drive, all-wheel independent suspension, a flat-6 engine, opening doors, and some of the best Technic bodywork we’ve ever seen, Lachlan’s Lykan is a seriously impressive build.

There’s more to see of this incredible replica of an incredible car on Flickr – click here to make the jump to the complete gallery.

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the letter ‘T’. Plus the Elves are learning about alliteration, which means that we have not one but two Technic tractors to show you.

They’re both remote control too, which also meant that we had something of an Elven showdown in the corridor this morning. Unable to squash any of their colleagues due to their finds herculean slowness, each Elf decided that the next best route to carnage was to turn their respective machines on one another. Cue the slowest vehicular joust in history, at the end of which the tractors calmly bumped into one another and the Elves at the controls left in disgust.

Well they may not be impressed, but we are, as each build is a masterclass in Technic engineering. Above is newcomer Brick_Sticker’s enormous Case 620 HD, driven by an XL motor and featuring an unusual (but very clever) pneumatic articulated steering mechanism, with an on-board compressor powered by a Medium motor providing the air pressure. Another Medium motor drives a power-take-off, and there are four pneumatic lines where tools could be attached.

It’s a spectacular machine and well worth your click – you can check out all the images and details via both Eurobricks and Brickshelf.

The Case’s gladiatorial opponent in the corridor joust comes from previous bloggee Damian Plesniak, and if anything it’s even slower. Driven by twin Medium motors, Damian’s tracked mini loader features skid-steering, plus a tilting and raising bucket powered by a third Medium motor and an XL.

It works a treat too, and you can see all of the (brilliantly taken) images on Flickr here, plus you can watch a video of the loader in action by visiting the Eurobricks discussion forum.

This Eastern European oddity is an air-cooled Jawa 350 motorcycle, a bike that was launched back in the ’50s, yet is still in production today. This neat Technic recreation of the Czechoslovakian motorbike comes from František Hajdekr and there’s more to see at his photostream via the link.

After a series of small creations we’re back with something big. Really big. Measuring almost a meter long, weighing over 8KGs, and constructed from around 8,000 LEGO pieces, Lucio Switch’s astonishing remote control and pneumatically-powered crane truck is one of the most complex creations that this site has published.

With seventeen Power Functions motors, eighteen pneumatic pumps / cylinders, and six switches, Lucio’s truck takes Technic construction to the limit of what is possible with Danish plastic. Four XL motors drive the rear wheels which are suspended on live axles, whilst the two front axles are steered by twin Servo motors and are suspended independently (which makes for no less than twenty-four shock absorbers in all!).

Underneath the fully suspended and tilting cab (with a working steering wheel, suspended seats and an opening engine cover) is a working V8 piston engine, with twin LiPo batteries that power the motors and six sets of LED lights hidden within the chassis.

Nine M and two L motors then drive everything from the front and rear stabilisers, crane rotation, winch, and the pneumatic pumps which provide air pressure for the three-stage crane elevation and extension mechanism, all of which are controlled via four IR receivers through an SBrick bluetooth device.

Fortunately for us here in TLCB office that lot is much too complicated for our Elves to figure out, so Lucio’s incredible truck was unable to cause carnage and mayhem. It is however absolutely worth checking out, either at Lucio’s Flickr photostream or via the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus you can watch the truck in action via the video below. Prepare to be amazed!…

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Without doubt Aston Martin make some of the most beautiful cars in the world. The problem for the company’s revenue stream is that because they’ve made beautiful cars for a while, you don’t actually need to buy a new one to feel like you’re owning a bit of the Aston Martin experience. This, clearly, doesn’t help them to sell new cars.

Cue the new DB11 (we have no idea where the DB10 went), which updates their design philosophy and, more importantly, utilises a new partnership with Mercedes-Benz AMG to sort out reliability, ergonomics, emissions, and other such finicky issues that Aston Martin really don’t care for.

Cue also Flickr’s Jeroen Ottens, who has constructed this wonderful Technic Supercar replica of Aston Martin’s latest model. Jeroen has captured the tricky new shape beautifully, and he’s also packed his DB11 recreation with accurate technical details too, including independent suspension, a V12 engine linked to an 8-speed sequential paddle-shift gearbox, a working airbrake, LED lights (the front of which swivel with the working steering), and opening doors, hood and trunk.

There’s more to see and a link to instructions at Jeroen’s Flickr photostream – click the link to make the jump and check it out.

With the news that LEGO have designed a new version of their classic 8860 Car Chassis (available via the purchase of three of this year’s new Technic sets), it’s got us wondering what other vintage Technic sets could be re-borne in miniature thanks to the latest studless pieces.

Appie of Eurobricks has been wondering the same thing too, and he’s taken up the challenge by building a small-scale recreation of LEGO’s first full-bodied Technic Supercar, the 8865 Test Car from 1988.

With independent suspension on all four wheels, working pop-up headlights, steering, a miniature V4 piston engine, adjustable seats and a two-speed gearbox, Appie’s little 8865 packs in all the working features of the full size original.

To check out how he’s done it and to view the full gallery of images – including a few showing the model alongside the official LEGO original – make a visit to the Eurobricks discussion forum here.

Except this really isn’t any old Jeep. This is Jeep’s little-known ‘Mighty FC Concept’, which we assume stands for ‘Forward Control’, and it’s been superbly recreated in remote control Technic form by vehicle-building legend Madoca 1977.

Packed inside Madoca’s brilliant creation are six LEGO Power Functions motors, three sets of LEDs, and two third-party SBrick bluetooth receivers. The first two motors are XLs, which take care of the Jeep’s all-wheel-drive via portal axles, whilst a Servo motor controls the steering. Three Medium motors drive the winch, activate the locking rear differential, and control a two-speed gearbox, all of which is powered by an on-board rechargeable battery.

The Elves, who seem to have infiltrated Jeep’s vehicle-naming department, love the Mighty FC, even though it’s much too slow to cause any carnage in TLCB office. It can carry quite a few of them at once though, which appears to be what is currently happening, so whilst we let them get on with that you can discover the build’s full details by visiting the Eurobricks forum, and you can watch Madoca’s Jeep in action via the excellent video below.

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It’s been a slow (read ‘hungry’) week for The Lego Car Blog Elves. However, with their empty stomachs ‘motivating’ them it was only a matter of time before we’d have a creation to share with you.

The hungry Elf responsible for today’s find was duly awarded a meal token and Smartie, upon which something remarkable happened… the Elf ate about half of its Smartie, and it then proceeded to break the rest into pieces. Were we about to witness the first ever moment of Elven compassion and sharing? Were we balls.

The aforementioned Elf scattered the Smartie pieces opposite a curtain in the office and then scurried off. Soon several of its colleagues had sniffed out the unguarded confectionary and landed on the abandoned loot like seagulls on an open bin.

But unguarded the confectionary wasn’t, and the curtains suddenly parted as a huge white truck powered through them. The nearest Elf had just enough time to point and scream before being squashed forcefully into the office carpet, before its scavenging colleagues met the same fate.

A jubilant Elf then re-emerged, scooped up the Smartie remnants, and ran off cackling madly. Sigh. We thought they were getting bored of this.

Still, kudos the Elf in question, which had deployed some remarkable inventiveness to overcome its find’s lack of speed – which normally would have left it unable meet out any smushings.

The vehicular weapon, whilst slow, is a mighty impressive bit of kit though. Based on a Volvo FMX truck, the build features five Power Functions motors that power the four-wheel-drive system, generate air pressure for pneumatically locking differentials, and drive the centrally-pivoted steering, whilst pendular suspension with simply ludicrous articulation and oversize tyres from the 42054 Claas Xerion tractor set take care of truck’s impressive rock-crawling ability.

The build is the work of TLCB debutant dgustafsson1317 and there’s an enormous gallery of high quality images available to view on Flickr. Click the link above to see all of the Volvo FMX Crawler photos, whilst we scrape some very flat Elves out of the office carpet.

LEGO’s new partnership with BMW Motorrad has already produced a brilliant looking Technic set in the form of the 42063 R 1200 GS Adventure motorbike. Joining it in a matching scale is this superb F700 GS Rallye built by Flickr’s ianying616, who has recreated BMW’s mid-spec tourer wonderfully in the latest Technic style, adding some neat Model Team detail touches whilst retaining Technic functionality. Steering, shaft drive, and a two-cylinder boxer engine all feature, and there’s more to see at ianying’s photostream.

Another day, another find, another Elven catastrophe to tidy up. Following this week’s earlier Elf squashing our workforce has been in a cautious but nevertheless vengeful mood.

And so one of the week’s earlier victims found itself at the controls of a vehicle capable of exacting a hit-and-run based revenge. With the Elves it doesn’t really matter if the perpetrator of a previous act is actually present when the revenge is served, just as long as someone gets squished. And squished they were.

The vehicle in question is this absolutely wonderful ZiL 130 MMZ 555 tipper truck, in perfectly-suited Porsche 911 GT3 orange, as built by previous bloggee Samolot. In a convenient metaphor for the communist economy that spawned it, the Zil was the ideal tool for crushing the people, or in this case, Elves.

Remote control drive with a remotely controlled four speed gearbox, and a novel linear actuator based steering system give this ZiL 130 a surprising turn of speed, certainly enough to catch out a few slower Elves, whilst all-wheel suspension allowed the truck to roll over them with ease. Unrelated to the smushing, but a cool feature nonetheless, Samolot’s Zil 130 also includes a remotely controlled dumping mechanism powered by a Medium Motor, taking the total motor-count to four.

Opening doors, a working steering wheel, and an opening hood all feature too, and Samolot has included a level of detail that’s now becoming typical with many Technic builds that moves the theme ever closer to Model Team in terms of aesthetics.

There’s a whole lot more to see of Samolot’s superb ZiL 130 dump truck via Brickshelf, MOCpages and the Eurobricks forum, plus you watch all the working features in action courtesy of the excellent video below.

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We don’t think we can ever recall seeing a cherry picker actually picking cherries. Fixing light bulbs, telephone wires and cutting trees, yes. Picking cherries, not so much.

Still, whatever the inaccuracies of the name, this remote control Technic cherry picker from Anto of Eurobricks is a very accomplished build. Remotely operable functions include the drive, motorised outriggers, a rotating turntable and an elevating crane boom, whilst mechanics take care of the steering and boom extension.

There’s lots more to see of Anto’s creation at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, plus you watch the cherry picker in action via the video below.

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What’s better off-road than a four-wheel-drive vehicle? A six-wheel-drive vehicle of course. In fact by TLCB arithmetic it’s a whole two better.

Eurobricks’ KevinMoo also clearly favours the ‘more is more’ approach and has built his latest creation – loosely based on Mercedes-Benz’s nuts 6×6 G-Wagon – accordingly. With twin L motor drive going to all six wheels and all-round multi-link live axle suspension Kevin has constructed quite a capable machine, and – as a by-product of trying to reduce the stress on LEGO’s famously weak U-Joint pieces – a reasonably quick one too, as there’s little gearing-down at work in the drivetrain.

Remote control coupled with reasonable speed does of course mean a few of our Elves have been squished in the making of this blog post, but hey – blogging’s not without the odd sacrifice. It also meant that, once the Elf at the controls was found, fed, and then ejected from the building, we could take a good look at the internal workings of Kevin’s build.

As you can see from the image above, the 6×6 fully suspended drivetrain is a remarkably compact piece of engineering, and unlike the real 6×6 G-Wagon it’s made possible by the unusual step of not constructing a separate chassis, but rather a monocoque or ‘unibody’ whereby the body and chassis are designed as one unit.

In addition to the clever drivetrain Kevin’s build also features LED lights front and rear, Servo steering, and opening doors, hood and tailgate. There’s lots more to see at the Eurobricks forum, plus you watch the 6×6 in action via the video below.

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We don’t see this type of vehicle in TLCB’s home nation, and we’re not really sure why. A hybrid of truck and excavator it seems like quite a useful design, being fast enough to drive on roads without annoying everyone and diggery enough to do some digging when it reaches its destination.

This pneumatically-powered Technic version is based on a Tatra 815 with a UDS excavator mounted to the rear. It’s been built by newcomer Ivan MOC and it features working steering, a V4 piston engine, suspension on all axles, pneumatic stabilisers and boom elevation, manual boom extension and 360° excavator rotation.

There’s more of Ivan’s build to see at Eurobricks and Flickr – click the links if you dig it.

The Lego Car Blog Elves are, thankfully, not very big. This unfortunately does make them quite susceptible to being run over, trodden on, and getting eaten by dogs and larger birds, but we never seem to run out of them so there must be procreation going on somehow (we don’t really want think about that though).

It’s therefore unusual to see an Elf anywhere above waist height, but today this TLCB staff writer was met by the forlorn gaze of an Elf sitting on mid-level book shelf when he entered the office. Sigh.

It became apparent that several other Elves were dotted around the building in similar situations, marooned by one of their number’s latest find.

This superb Mecredes-Benz Actros 8×4 crane truck is the work of TLCB regular Shineyu, and it is, as you may have guessed, fully remote controlled. That includes the drive, steering, outriggers, and a huge crane arm, which unusually folds in the middle via a rotating joint, much like your elbow does.

Unfolding this joint via the corresponding Medium Motor and then operating the boom extension makes Shineyu’s appendage surprising long*, and thus the perfect tool for some vertical Elven tomfoolery. See just how big it gets via the link to the Eurobricks forum in the text above.

*Hah.

We often feature Technic trucks here at The Lego Car Blog, but what they’re designed to pull less so. Even if a trailer is built, it’s often just a rolling slab of Danish plastic without any functionality whatsoever. Not so with Trawson21‘s latest creation, which packs realistic working features into both ends of the build.

Up front the truck includes remote control drive and steering, pendular suspension, and a working piston engine, whilst the huge trailer in tow includes pneumatically operated support legs and access ramps operated via a manual pump and pneumatic switch.

There’s more to see at Trawson’s Brickshelf gallery, where you can also find a link to a video of the model in action – click the link above to check it out.

The news is full of nuclear war hysteria at the moment, thanks to the orange leader of the free world and overweight North Korean despot Kim Jong-un. As a classy blog not interested in clickbait we’re seamlessly jumping on the bandwagon with this, Nico71‘s glorious Fallout 4 inspired retro-futuristic nuclear concept car.

Back in the ’50 and ’60s wild concept cars were all the rage, and were often powered by a variety of unusual fuels, including gas turbines, electricity and yes, even nuclear reaction.

Nico’s brilliant Technic concept car perfectly captures the ambitions of the age, and it’s clever too, featuring remote control drive and steering, electronically opening doors and a sliding roof canopy, plus working suspension and lights.

Control of the electrically-powered functions is taken care of thanks to a third-party BuWizz bluetooth unit, which allows graduated control via a bluetooth device and delivers up to 8x more power to the motors than LEGO’s own system.

You can see all of the build details and the full image gallery courtesy of Nico71’s excellent website by clicking here, and you watch the nuclear concept car in action (which is worth doing for the roof mechanism alone!) via the excellent video below.

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Mechanics. They seem to appear less and less frequently here at TLCB. Such is the prevalence of LEGO’s (excellent) Power Functions electronics that mechanically operable functions have become a bit old-hat. However when done well, mechanical features can result in a model that’s more than a match for anything with a motor shoved in it.

Today we have one such example suggested to us by a reader, and it doesn’t have a battery box in sight. Built by Didumos69 of Eurobricks what it does have is a wealth of mechanical engineering, including all-wheel suspension, working steering, hand-adjustable seats, and a functioning sequential gearbox hooked up to a V8 piston engine.

You can see full details of the model at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, which includes detailed steps showing how each functional element was engineered. Click the link in the text above to make the jump.

The Lego Car Blog Team own some interesting cars, as you’d probably expect from a website as nerdily automotive as this one, but no motorbikes. This is because if we owned motorcycles this blog would never have made it to five years old, and our organs would now belong to other people.

However despite our aversion to owning motorbikes, we do still rather like them, and fortunately newcomer Nesme Laurent (aka NEMOOZ) allows us to indulge in this passion from the safety of a comfy chair.

Laurent has built almost fifty Technic replica motorcycles, from manufacturers including BMW, Ducati, MV Agusta, Moto Guzzi, Honda, KTM, Yamaha, and Kawasaki, each features a variety of working functions, and instructions are available for many of the designs too.

You can see a selection of Laurent’s builds at his newly created MOCpage, and you can see the full back-catalogue of fifty or so bikes via Brickshelf.

The Lego Car Blog is not a money-focussed organisation. We only allow limited advertising, the proceeds of which you can read about here, and the staff all work for nowt (human), or Smarties (elf). However, we are still amongst the richest people on earth, thanks entirely to the place of our birth. And if you’re reading this, you probably are too.

But there’s rich, and then there’s rich! Today’s car certainly belongs to the latter. Costing $2,700,000 in base specification, the Chiron is the world’s fastest (when tested) and most powerful production car, expected to hit around 285mph when de-limited.

We’ll have to wait to see what top speed the Chiron achieves once testing is complete, as the car (and more importantly, the tyres) are in the realms of experimental physics, but even with the car’s main purpose – top speed – being an unknown statistic, it hasn’t stopped 200 Chiron orders being placed before anyone has driven it.

Like we said, there’s rich, then there’s rich! In fact the average Chiron customer already owns over fifty other cars. And a helicopter.

We’ll stick with this one then, built by previous bloggee Lachlan Cameron it’s the first Technic Supercar sized Bugatti Chiron we’ve seen, and it is absolutely spectacular. With Bugatti’s trademark W16 engine hooked up to an all-wheel-drive system, independent suspension, full remote control drive, steering and electronically deployable rear wing, LED lighting, and SBrick bluetooth control, Lachlan’s Chiron is one of the finest Technic Supercars of the year.

There’s a whole lot more to see of Lachlan’s Bugatti at his Flickr photostream or via Eurobricks, including WIP shots and images of the rolling-chassis mechanics. Click the links above to make the jump, and you can see the Chiron in action via the video below.

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The money theme continues today with this, newcomer Dugald Cameron’s incredible Aston Martin Vantage GT3 racer. Constructed from many of the parts in LEGO’s 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 set (and putting them to considerably better use), Dugald’s GT3 is a seriously beautiful build. Plus it’s orange, and we like orange.

Underneath that retina-searing bodywork is a full remote control drivetrain, with two XL Motors powering the wheels, a Servo controlling the steering (and linked the steering wheel), plus a Medium Motor driving the sequential transmission. A V12 piston engine sits up front, whilst a mechanically adjustable rear wing is mounted at the back, and the cockpit in-between features a fully adjustable driving position with a tilting steering wheel, pedals with feedback, and a sliding racing seat.

The suspension on all four corners is fully independent, with torsion and sway bars, plus a trick air-jack system powered by an on-board compressors is fitted to allow for quick pit stops.

The complete model is one of the most impressive we’ve seen this year, and the entire build process has been catalogued on both Eurobricks and Flickr, showing both the steps taken to create the Vantage GT3 and the brilliant engineering within it.

You can see the full gallery of images at the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Flickr album, and you can read about the build process by flicking through the Eurobricks discussion that charted it by clicking here.