16 replies to this topic

[Ralph_S]

When I built my Dutch fire engine a few weeks ago to accompany my Ambulance, I felt a Police car would make a nice addition. One bricklink order and about 10 hours of building later and it's done. I was also very lucky that my share of a LUGBulk order (with The Brickish Association) landed in the mail, because it had  fairly rare parts such as orange 1x1 plates and tiles.  

Dutch police use many different kinds of vehicles. The VW Touran, a small MPV, is popular as ar larger Volvos (for traffic patrol) and hatchbacks such as the Opel Astra, Ford Focus and VW Golf. Because I rarely build hatchbacks and like VWs anyway, I chose to build the latter.  The pattern of blue, white and orange stripes is typical of marker police cars in The Netherlands. The markings are pretty much the same all through the country. Even though this is a considerably smaller model than most of the other 1/22 scale cars I've built lately, I wanted everything to open. The doors are a bit thick because of the half-stud offset I used at the top, but they do work. The hatch was fairly straightforward.





I couldn't resist taking a picture of my Dutch police VW Golf with a typical American counterpart.


As usual, more pictures are on flickr.

During much of last week I was writing and having discussions about building MOCs more than actually building some. It was good to put some bricks together again  

Cheers,
Ralph

[Dennimator]

Nice! Simple, yet straightforward. It looks really good yet fairly basic, but I bet you just hid away the complicated connections which tend to be in most (if not all) of your MOCs. For example the "inverted" cheese slopes (which TLG really need to do inverted, with a stud up) at the wheels, or the front grille.
Hiding the complicated solutions are often tricky, but as I said, you managed very well. Great work!
Where did you get that 1 x 2 "112" tile? I´ve never seen it before...

[L-space]

Dennimator, on Jan 16 2010, 09:15 PM, said:

Where did you get that 1 x 2 "112" tile? I´ve never seen it before...

That's custom for sure.

Great work again Ralph.

Now it looks better then in my rearview mirror.  

Keep it up.  

[MetroiD]

What a great MOC, Ralph! Make sure you check out Classic-Town.net tomorrow morning :)

[Ralph_S]

Dennimator, on Jan 16 2010, 10:15 PM, said:

Nice! Simple, yet straightforward. It looks really good yet fairly basic, but I bet you just hid away the complicated connections which tend to be in most (if not all) of your MOCs. For example the "inverted" cheese slopes (which TLG really need to do inverted, with a stud up) at the wheels, or the front grille.
Hiding the complicated solutions are often tricky, but as I said, you managed very well. Great work!
Where did you get that 1 x 2 "112" tile? I´ve never seen it before...

Thanks. There is some pretty weird stuff going on under the bonnet, indeed. I'd normally use 45 degree inverted slopes for front fenders like these, but they wouldn't fit in the colour pattern. The only solution I could figure out was mounting cheese slopes upside down. They are held on with 1x2 plates that are attached to 1x8 technic plates, a very useful element for building inverted. Most of the trickery went into building the front -headlights, bumper, grille. The most difficult part about the whole car, however, was getting the proportions more-or-less right. I;ve been building a lot of large American sedans lately and they're rather different than a European hatchback.

L-space, on Jan 16 2010, 10:32 PM, said:

That's custom for sure.

Great work again Ralph.

Now it looks better then in my rearview mirror.  

Keep it up.  

The tile simply has a sticker on it. If only LEGO would make tiles with the emergency telephone number for The Netherlands    
Seeing one of these in your rearview mirror probably isn't good news indeed.

TheOtters, on Jan 16 2010, 10:33 PM, said:

What a great MOC, Ralph! Make sure you check out Classic-Town.net tomorrow morning :)

Thank you. I'm glad you like it.  

Cheers,
Ralph

[Rick]

True Ralph style again, complete with the craziest half-stud offsets everywhere. You managed to capture the striping pretty accurately again. Well done.

[simonwillems]

Prachtig!

You are now officially my favorite MOC'er on this forum, and I even missed the Firetruck and Ambulance which, like this policecar, couldn't be more accurate than they are now.
Where I live in Amsterdam this is the standard policecar and I see them racing by every day. They are standard VW Golfs but with a stronger plated chassis and raised wheels to negociate with curbs and all of the small bridges.
It has been a long time dream of mine to construct a good looking Dutch policecar one day (I only ever constructed a policemotorcycle that I am quite happy with), now I know that it can be done!

For people to realise how good this model resembles the real thing, here's a picture of a real car:

[Ralph_S]

Rick, on Jan 17 2010, 11:46 AM, said:

True Ralph style again, complete with the craziest half-stud offsets everywhere. You managed to capture the striping pretty accurately again. Well done.

There are a fair few half-stud offsets here, indeed   . The real car is much wider near the bottom than near the top and the side panels are gently curved. Getting all of that to hold together with the stripes running through it was a nice puzzle. I do think I'm really running into the limitations of making the stripes this way, though. They are a bit ragged and they are bigger than the stripes on the real vehicles so I can fit less of them on the side. For the fire engine and the ambulance this wasn't really an issue, because they have lots of stripes anyway, but for this smaller car the number of stripes I can fit might be a bit too low.

simonwillems, on Jan 17 2010, 01:03 PM, said:

Prachtig!

You are now officially my favorite MOC'er on this forum, and I even missed the Firetruck and Ambulance which, like this policecar, couldn't be more accurate than they are now.
Where I live in Amsterdam this is the standard policecar and I see them racing by every day. They are standard VW Golfs but with a stronger plated chassis and raised wheels to negociate with curbs and all of the small bridges.
It has been a long time dream of mine to construct a good looking Dutch policecar one day (I only ever constructed a policemotorcycle that I am quite happy with), now I know that it can be done!

For people to realise how good this model resembles the real thing, here's a picture of a real car:

Thanks for finding a reference pic and for your very nice comments. I did try to model a Golf V like this one, although I did opt for a slightly different light bar. I tied to make a light bar like the one in your picture, but transparent tiles stuck onto a white plate looked a bit rubbish. Fortunately I found a picture of a car with a black lightbar.

Cheers,
Ralph

[Wouwie]

It's like 10 times better than I had ever thought it would be. All the functionality, all the little details...Everything on it is great!
1 thing, would it be possible to remove the the the front row of white plates on the hood and replace them with tiles, so you could make it a specific Police Corps? Like on the reference picture. Or is the engine to big for that?

Wouwie.

[Ralph_S]

Wouwie, on Jan 18 2010, 02:01 PM, said:

It's like 10 times better than I had ever thought it would be. All the functionality, all the little details...Everything on it is great!
1 thing, would it be possible to remove the the the front row of white plates on the hood and replace them with tiles, so you could make it a specific Police Corps? Like on the reference picture. Or is the engine to big for that?

Wouwie.

Thanks. I would have loved to have have a row of tiles, but there's no way of fitting it without a comprehensive redesign of the whole front of the car The engine isn't the issue, but the half stud offsets at the sides and the SNOT work that holds on the front bumper, headlights, radiator and the cheese slopes used on the mudguards are. One thing I did modify since I took the pictures was swap a few white plates for orange ones on the first row of plates.

Cheers,
Ralph

[Perterz]

Wow this is amazing, so detailed!

I'm really loving the graphic work, must have been a pain to create yet a challenge is always good :)

Are you a Legoland designer? Your work always reminds me to my trip to Danmark past summer.

[Ralph_S]

Perterz, on Jan 18 2010, 03:33 PM, said:

Wow this is amazing, so detailed!

I'm really loving the graphic work, must have been a pain to create yet a challenge is always good :)

Are you a Legoland designer? Your work always reminds me to my trip to Danmark past summer.

Thanks. I'm flattered by you wondering whether I work for LEGOLand. I don't work for them, but I really like the way they build their car models. I bought a copy of a book about ten years ago called 'The Ultimate LEGO Book' (I've got a version in Dutch) that has a lot of pictures of models built for the various LEGOLand parks in it and those were a huge inspiration for my own car building. I'm glad it shows  

Cheers,
Ralph

[Legostein]

Hello!

Whenever I see the cars of yours, I am impressed with the side patterns like the stripes of your emergency vehicles. I think it's great how you imitate the lines without stickers. Use the brick to get as close as possible. And you've done it perfectly again here.

Cheers,

~ Christopher

[Ralph_S]

Legostein, on Jan 18 2010, 09:06 PM, said:

Hello!

Whenever I see the cars of yours, I am impressed with the side patterns like the stripes of your emergency vehicles. I think it's great how you imitate the lines without stickers. Use the brick to get as close as possible. And you've done it perfectly again here.

Cheers,

~ Christopher

Thank you. I did consider using tape to make the diagonal stripes on this car and the ambulance and fire engine that preceded it and still use the odd sticker now and then (including a few on this model), but I indeed felt that if I could make it look decent with bricks, I should give that a try. I am glad you like the result.

Cheers,
Ralph

[djo]

this is a great creation.
nice details and shape.
i like all 5 doors and front hood can be opened.
rear side view is my favorite.
nice interior too.

[the Inventor]

Great MOC, Ralph_S  

You have created a really great dutch police car.
I like that you made the stripes with bricks, instead of with stickers.  


the Inventor

[Ralph_S]

djo, on Jan 19 2010, 11:15 AM, said:

this is a great creation.
nice details and shape.
i like all 5 doors and front hood can be opened.
rear side view is my favorite.
nice interior too.

Thanks. The cars from LEGOLand are a massive inspiration, but it doesn't make sense for them to have functionality. I, however, love making opening doors and such on my cars and if the doors open, they should have a decent interior. It makes the build more complicated, but also more fun. I'm glad you like it.

the Inventor, on Jan 19 2010, 06:21 PM, said:

Great MOC, Ralph_S  

You have created a really great dutch police car.
I like that you made the stripes with bricks, instead of with stickers.  


the Inventor

Thanks. Building them was a nice little puzzle.

Cheers,
Ralph