'71 Buick Riviera and '66 Ford Galaxie

[Ralph_S]

Those of you who know the sort of things I build may have noticed that I like to build big American cars. In the last two weeks I have built two new ones that I'd like to share with you. They may both be classic American cars of roughly the same size, but were very different builds

I completed the latest model today. It is a 1971 Buick Riviera, a car whose styling was pretty controversial back in the day and that because of the shape is also known as a boat-tail. I normally relish a challenge when it comes to building. I like to sculpt difficult shapes and when I decided that I was going to build a Riviera I knew it was going to be pretty difficult. It turned out to be so difficult in fact, that out of sheer frustration I came pretty close to slamming my hand down on the bits I'd built a few times or throwing the thing through the room. It's been a long time since something gave me such a hard time and I grew that frustrated. The part that gave me seemingly endless difficulty wasn't the tail end, but the front bumper and radiator. The final result might not look overly complicated, but it took ages to come together.

More pictures, as always, are on flickr

About a week ago I completed another classic American car, a 1966 Ford Galaxie. This was difficult for a very difficult reason. While the Riviera has a lot of pretty strange curved and angled lines, the Galaxie looks like a box on wheels at a first glance. The challenge here was in making this box look interesting. I paid a lot of attention to getting the subtle tapering right, in fiddling with details such as the taillights and had a lot of fun building the interior.

Here too, more pictures are on flickr

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited January 6, 2010 by Ralph_S

[prateek]

Woah. That's all I can say! You got the angles perfectly, and I love the colours

[DLuders]

I actually OWNED a 1971 Buick Riviera about 20 years ago, and can vouch that Ralph S's model captures the essence of the real car -- a BIG wide hood and the pointy BOATTAIL. The car I had was gold in color with a black VINYL roof. Boy, does the model bring back memories of the HUGE 455-cubic-inch V8 engine powering the car through the deep snow! I wish I could get a LDD file of this model, so I can build my own sometime! Great job!

Edited January 5, 2010 by dluders

[Legostein]

Hello Ralph!

As usually both cars are spot-on! This time I like the rear side of both best! The backlight constrcutions are simply awesome. Simply using a transparent grill tile gives the perfect look for this model. Furthermore the snot techniques on the Ford's back light is remarkable. Very accurate!

Cheers,

~ Christopher

[simonwillems]

Great work!

A long time ago I tried to make a seventiescar myself (I belive a Cadillac from 1970) but I got so utterly frustrated that I did what you resisted: I flung the creation across the room and took my car building back to the fifties...

The typical curves in the front and rear ends were too much for me, but not for you because they look spot on.

I love the front lights on the Ford Galaxie and the fact that both cars are in eleven wide, that makes it difficult to incorporate (next to the details) also some sturdiness.

You make me want to go back to building big cars again, but I can't because I am currently finding a way to make a 5 pf motor truck....

Keep it up!

[Ralph_S]

Woah. That's all I can say! You got the angles perfectly, and I love the colours

Thank you. The colours were pretty much what I had available. Yellow seemed nice for a 'seventies car. I originally wanted to build the Riviera in blue, but soon realised that I sufficient parts in dark red as well (mainly because it wouldn't require many large plates). Since the Riviera was supposed to be an elegant luxury type car, dark red seemed suitably classy.

I actually OWNED a 1971 Buick Riviera about 20 years ago, and can vouch that Ralph S's model captures the essence of the real car -- a BIG wide hood and the pointy BOATTAIL. The car I had was gold in color with a black VINYL roof. Boy, does the model bring back memories of the HUGE 455-cubic-inch V8 engine powering the car through the deep snow! I wish I could get a LDD file of this model, so I can build my own sometime! Great job!

I can imagine that these were fun to drive, provided they'd work

A cousin of mine had one (albeit much more recently) and it would break pretty much every time he took on the road. He sold it because of that. Sadly I don't see him very frequently, so I never actually saw the car before he got rid of it. I don't think I'll LDRAW it, and you probably don't expect me to. I don;t like 'virtual LEGO' and with the model being pretty complicated, this job would be a total bastard.

Hello Ralph!

As usually both cars are spot-on! This time I like the rear side of both best! The backlight constrcutions are simply awesome. Simply using a transparent grill tile gives the perfect look for this model. Furthermore the snot techniques on the Ford's back light is remarkable. Very accurate!

Cheers,

~ Christopher

Thank you Christopher. The taillights on the Ford gave me a few difficulties, but I felt it was really important for the little (reverse?) light in the middle to be there. Of course it would have been easier to ignore it and just make the tailllights as 2x2 stud transparent red squares, but it would be dull. When I looked at pictures of the Riviera's tail lights, I immediately felt that red grille tiles were the ideal part for them. I mean, the real light units actually look like red grille tiles to me

Great work!

A long time ago I tried to make a seventiescar myself (I belive a Cadillac from 1970) but I got so utterly frustrated that I did what you resisted: I flung the creation across the room and took my car building back to the fifties...

The typical curves in the front and rear ends were too much for me, but not for you because they look spot on.

I love the front lights on the Ford Galaxie and the fact that both cars are in eleven wide, that makes it difficult to incorporate (next to the details) also some sturdiness.

You make me want to go back to building big cars again, but I can't because I am currently finding a way to make a 5 pf motor truck....

Keep it up!

Thanks Simon. I know you're into big American cars too. They produced some horrendously ugly vehicles in the 'seventies and I have largely avoided cars from that decade. I tend to either build fairly recent models or cars from the 'sixties and older. The Riviera always struck me as a comparatively nice vehicle. I'd seen this type of car before (I used to watch 'Northern Exposure' on TV quite frequently and one of the characters in that series drove a boattail), but most of the classic cars I build are based on photographs in two books that I've had for a few years. I'm pretty sure that when I first saw decent pictures of the Riviera I felt that it would be neat to build one sometime in the future. Unfortunately I hadn't a clue at the time how to actually do it. It's only because I've now got parts that I simply didn't have back then (cheese slopes and a lot of trans clear plate) that I felt I could do the model justice.

The 11-wide construction does pose a few difficulties with the structure, although I tend to work with half stud offsets so frequently that all in all it doesn't matter all that much any more. Many of my models have bits that are an odd number of studs wide, even if the overall width of the model might be even. It just takes some getting used to, as well as fairly large quantities of jumper plates and 2x3 and 1x3 stud plates. I'm looking forward to 1x3 tiles

Cheers,

Ralph

[Milan]

I'm looking forward to 1x3 tiles

Welcome to the club

I think these vehicles are one of your best.

Maybe I am wrong, but Galaxie is somehow the most beautiful car of yours. It just have something that I love on it.

Keep up, please!

[Big Cam]

You know I must say I've been passing over this thread on the Active Topics page becasue I had low expectations and I must apologize, these are amazingly accurate.

They would be cooler if they had tiles on top, but still they are very accurate to their real life counterparts.

[Milan]

You know I must say I've been passing over this thread on the Active Topics page becasue I had low expectations and I must apologize, these are amazingly accurate.

They would be cooler if they had tiles on top, but still they are very accurate to their real life counterparts.

Big mistake for you to passing over this part of forum!

I think that the tiles wouldn't improve the look, as for rounded shapes on the vehicles visible studs are better. They make spherical shapes more spherical than tiles, which would make it more sharper and therefore, not so rounded.

Just my opinion!

[Ralph_S]

Welcome to the club

I think these vehicles are one of your best.

Maybe I am wrong, but Galaxie is somehow the most beautiful car of yours. It just have something that I love on it.

Keep up, please!

Funny that. I built it for a build challenge on flickr that was specifically about a '66 Galaxie. I didn't like it much at first. I felt it was a bit dull and that I'd rather build something with a more interesting shape. After pondering this for a bit i realised that even though the car would look like a boix on wheels, the real challenge would be to make that look good. I don't think I'd call it the most beautiful car in my collection, but when I finished it, I was very happy with how it ended up and it does look good in my collection. I'm not sure which I think is my most beautiful car, by the way, but I'm partial to the Chevy Impala and my Jaguar Mk. 2.

You know I must say I've been passing over this thread on the Active Topics page becasue I had low expectations and I must apologize, these are amazingly accurate.

They would be cooler if they had tiles on top, but still they are very accurate to their real life counterparts.

No need to apologize. I don't read everything on eurobricks either. It's also my experience that when people are particularly detailed in the title of a thread describing their MOCs, the actual MOCs are more likely to be disappointing. If somebody builds a model of a car and calls it a Ferrari Enzo, but it doesn't really look like an Enzo I cannot help to be disappointed. If they were to build that same car and call it 'supercar inspired by the Ferrari Enzo', I'd probably be far less critical. A big part of building cars like this is doing research and I'm convinced that somebody who knows their cars could actually tell that the Ford is a '66 rather than a '65 (the indicator lights flanking the radiator are a giveaway) and that the Riviera is a '71 (because only that year had little vents in the bootlid).

Milan has already explained part of the reason for the studs. The surface indeed isn't smooth, but by using both tiles and plates with studs, you can make a shape appear to be more gradual -part of the reason for the 1x8 tile in the roof. It's also personal preference. I like m,y models to clearly be made out of LEGO and studs are a part of that.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Big Cam]

Big mistake for you to passing over this part of forum!

I think that the tiles wouldn't improve the look, as for rounded shapes on the vehicles visible studs are better. They make spherical shapes more spherical than tiles, which would make it more sharper and therefore, not so rounded.

Just my opinion!

I only passed it in the Active topics area, not the entire sub-forum.

And I do see your point on the stud and tile mix. I didn't realize that's what you were going for.

[Lasse D]

You can also see the mixed-stud style on some cars in LEGOLAND, such as on the roof of their Toyota Prius II. I really like these old American cars, (or old American cars in general), and the models here are simple marvelous. If only there was a way to show how much work and prototypes you had to create in order to get to these results.

[Palms]

I'm speechless, they are both incredible especially the Buick .

[Paul B Technic]

I am very impressed with both of these, excellent detail in both of them and I love the colours.

Paul

[Ralph_S]

I only passed it in the Active topics area, not the entire sub-forum.

And I do see your point on the stud and tile mix. I didn't realize that's what you were going for.

It is much more obvious if you were to see the cars in real life.

You can also see the mixed-stud style on some cars in LEGOLAND, such as on the roof of their Toyota Prius II. I really like these old American cars, (or old American cars in general), and the models here are simple marvelous. If only there was a way to show how much work and prototypes you had to create in order to get to these results.

I haven't seen their Prius model yet, but I know it's a technique they use a lot and their cars are a major source of inspiration for what I do. As for the work and prototypes, the Ford cam together in about 6 hours in total. It came together without too much trial-and-error. The Buick was a different matter. Some parts did come together fairly easily. Before I started building it, I was mostly worried about the tapered rear window and the actual boat-tail, but they were built in one go, without any revisions. The front was a complete and utter nightmare. It was the first part I built, but after countless hourse spread out over two days, I still didn't have a design I liked. I must have rebuilt it 20 times, before finally finishing it.

I'm speechless, they are both incredible especially the Buick .

Thank you. I love how the Ford turned out, but the Buick was by far the most difficult of the two to build.

I am very impressed with both of these, excellent detail in both of them and I love the colours.

Paul

Thanks. I am glad you like them.

Cheers,

Ralph