Ralph_S Posted May 5, 2011 Posted May 5, 2011 Before I finished my Su-24 Fencer military jet,I actually finished another build which I haven't posted yet. The LEGO car club on flickr, LUGNuts, had cars from Germany as the theme of it's monthly build challenge. I decided to build a German Police car for the challenge: a BMW. Polizei BMW (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Years ago German police cars used to be white with green panels. The scheme has evolved a bit since. Many cars now have silver as their base colour, rather than white and it is becoming more and more common to have blue markings rather than green. I could have chosen blue, of course, but the green looks more distinctive and I had matching stickers from two LEGO sets (many LEGO city sets sold in the Netherlands also include stickers in German in addition to English). Polizei BMW (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The rear of the car was also tricky. I didn't want the aft pillars to be too thick, but I also wanted to have side windows. here was a fair bit of fiddling involved to get everything to match up without too many awkward gaps. Polizei BMW (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr What didn't help with the construction is that I wanted the doors and the boot to be able to open. Polizei BMW (5) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Many of these BMWs are 325Ds, with a six cylinder diesel engine. The engine in my car isn't completely realistic, but at least there is something under the bonnet. Polizei BMW (6) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph Quote
prateek Posted May 5, 2011 Posted May 5, 2011 This is awesome! I really like the front, and the hood is great too. Do you have a reference pic by any chance? Quote
Ralph_S Posted May 5, 2011 Author Posted May 5, 2011 This is awesome! I really like the front, and the hood is great too. Do you have a reference pic by any chance? Thanks Prateek. The BMW 'Kidneys' were tricky to pull off and they're not really the right shape, but there's only so much you can do on this scale. I do have some reference pictures from other flickr users. Police BMW in Munich by Yurasov, on Flickr carspotting germany POLIZEI - 2009 to 2010 048 by livinginchina4now, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph Quote
Paul B Technic Posted May 5, 2011 Posted May 5, 2011 Really good work with this, looking really good. Paul Quote
FROGG Posted May 6, 2011 Posted May 6, 2011 The car looks great, you nailed the color scheme. The police officer figure is a nice touch too. Does the car have working steering? Quote
Fuzzylegobricks Posted May 6, 2011 Posted May 6, 2011 Very cool car! I remember seeing this on here somewhere or it may have been your Flickr. I think the details were really complex to make, in my opinion. Quote
Ralph_S Posted May 6, 2011 Author Posted May 6, 2011 Really good work with this, looking really good. Paul Thank you. I'm glad you like it. The car looks great, you nailed the color scheme. The police officer figure is a nice touch too. Does the car have working steering? Thanks. It does, kind-of. I can pose the wheels and they and are connected such that they move together. The whole set-up isn't connected to the steering wheels, however. I have experimented with that in the past on cars of this scale and it was never much of a success. Very cool car! I remember seeing this on here somewhere or it may have been your Flickr. I think the details were really complex to make, in my opinion. Thank you. You've most likely seen it on flickr or some blog somewhere, because I haven't posted it here before. It's only about two weeks old. The front and rear end of the car were the most difficult. The nose on the real car slopes down a bit, but it didn't really on the first version of it that I built. I had to lower the whole front and that made building the two-tone bonnet extra tricky. On the rear the difficulty was getting everything to fit without ending up with gaps all over the place. I've used a lot of half-stud offsets on this care and they complicated things. Cheers, Ralph Quote
Lasse D Posted May 6, 2011 Posted May 6, 2011 Anhalten! Great Model Team car as always. That Lugnut group really makes a lot of car builders produce a lot. Not only does it steer, but you also managed to recreate those small annoying windows. Well done. I wonder. Have you tried a couple of 'chrome' cheeses in the snout? I know the real car has more black than chrome, but I wonder how that would look. Quote
Ralph_S Posted May 7, 2011 Author Posted May 7, 2011 Anhalten! Great Model Team car as always. That Lugnut group really makes a lot of car builders produce a lot. Not only does it steer, but you also managed to recreate those small annoying windows. Well done. I wonder. Have you tried a couple of 'chrome' cheeses in the snout? I know the real car has more black than chrome, but I wonder how that would look. Thanks Lasse. I was a bit bothered by the lack of grilles in the 'Kidneys' myself, but decided to simply leave holes. I can give putting some silver cheese slopes in there a try, although I wonder how on earth I'd ever attack them to anything, as the only silver plates I have are 1x1! On a BMW 7-series I built many years ago (probably back in 2005, obviously before I discovered the macro function on my camera!) I used grille bricks, which worked OK on that car, but I didn't fancy using them on a three-series, also because they look too rectangular. Cheers, Ralph Quote
Lasse D Posted May 8, 2011 Posted May 8, 2011 It's worth a try to see how silver kidney cheeses look, as that 7 series looks more distinctively BMW. Didn't the Agents series produce some 1x? plates in silver? I want to get into building more cars in this scale as well. It really is quite a challenge to make cars recognizable (The front of my Pontiac took me ages, and I'm still not completely satisfied). Quote
Ralph_S Posted May 9, 2011 Author Posted May 9, 2011 It's worth a try to see how silver kidney cheeses look, as that 7 series looks more distinctively BMW. Didn't the Agents series produce some 1x? plates in silver? I want to get into building more cars in this scale as well. It really is quite a challenge to make cars recognizable (The front of my Pontiac took me ages, and I'm still not completely satisfied). It's amazing how they managed with such a limited parts palette. but the only other small plate I could find on bricklink is the 2x2 corner. This isn't going to happen. The only alternative I can think of is getting rid of the cheese slopes altogether and trying to wedge a stack of 1x1 round plates either in black or chrome in there, but I don't fancy that option. What Pontiac are you building? Cheers, Ralph Quote
Lasse D Posted May 9, 2011 Posted May 9, 2011 That settles it then. Not only is your BMW great, it is locally optimal I have built a Pontiac Solstice Coupe. Pictures on Brickshelf Quote
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