Darth Sutius

ASTON MARTIN VALKYRIE 2072 COMMEMORATIVE EDITION This weekend's effort is based on the wonderful Valkyrie from https://brickset.com/sets/76910-1/Aston-Martin-Valkyrie-AMR-Pro-and-Aston-Martin-Vantage-GT3 The original car had some amazing build techniques to achieve it's distinctive shape - it's probably not that accurate to the real car, but I wanted to find a way to use some of those, as well as including more of the 'open F1 style' front section from the real thing. This started as a total 100% teardown but I ended up rebuilding the original 5-stud chassis to use as a base - this set is one of the few Speed Champions that doesn't include one of the larger bases. The teardrop shaping worked much better at 5 studs than 4 - although with part-swapping later on in the build it ended up really just being the car floor, and the distinctive lower red stripe. The back section is built around two of the grey 'wheel bearing 2x6' parts that I use for most of the engine areas on these - they're attached to the cockpit on their side via technic axle, with old-school technic blocks inside with connector pegs inside to make studs for the entire top of the back end to attach to. I only mention it because the back end doesn't look like it's doing anything particularly clever, but when you're limiting yourself to just the parts in the set you have to work with what they give you. The front section looks like it would be extremely flimsy but it's actually much firmer than it looks - it won't survive a drop off the shelf but the whole thing is sturdy and swooshable. The only other notes is on the interior - the driver is very reclined to fit in to the sleek profile, and the massive control sticks she's using are a total cheat; she's literally holding the exhaust parts in the bottom of her hands, with the blue studs attached to the top of her hands - they're not connected to the car in any way https://i.imgur.com/ohQ0gtV.jpg[/im

That's fair - it would need the big solid proud front and the side door scoops to sell it. But referencing the original car is secondary, and that set had the parts to make some more interesting angles and shapes so I went for it And where the sets don't use the standard 6x12 chassis as a base, I'll take that opportunity to go a bit more sideways with the shapes. So this weekend I might try the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Likewise this years new sets have a few cars without the standard chassis and axle parts, like the Solus - that thing will end up pure spaceshipspaceshipspaceship too.

Huh, it really does now that you mention it, although I had something else more 'F-Zero' in mind when doing it. Interestingly, the yellow Toyota looked a hell of a lot like Anakin's stolen speeder from the same chase for most of the time I was doing it.

TOYOTA SUPRA GR 3000 This one is unsurprisingly based on the divisive Toyota https://brickset.com/sets/76901-1/Toyota-GR-Supra. This one is probably my least favourite so far, but I like the idea of an exposed engine in the back; it just never quite looked right and I might go back and take another swing at this one some time. What I do like is that the original model started off as more or less pure yellow, while this has turned out as more of a black/yellow Bumblebee sort of theme. Still retains an element of the front prongs, but has the worst interior so far. 2070 DODGE CHARGER (Modified) Last up is a MOC of Dom Torettos Dodge Charger https://brickset.com/sets/76912-1/Fast-Furious-1970-Dodge-Charger-R-T This one took a few attempts and stop/starts/restarts to get right. The concept was simply, these muscle cars always have the engine bursting through the bonnet, so what if they just give up and have the engine completely separate? So the first few attempts were basically Pod Racer knock-offs with tethered engines and a small cockpit at the back but it didn't quite work (and was really unstable). Eventually I settled on this asymmetrical almost 'side car' design, which I'm fairly happy with. I would have liked a lot more greebling on the engine but the parts directed it to be more sleek. Unlike the other builds, this one had a much larger number of leftover parts, I wanted to make use of them somehow so I settled on giving Dom a way to work on his beast - which is a pretty core part of the movie franchise after all. Managed to a get a hoist, a jack and a work bench out of the parts. Pretty happy with it overall, interested to see what I can do with the Skyline next.

MERCEDES PROJECT 100 This was based on the Project 1 from https://brickset.com/sets/76909-1/Mercedes-AMG-F1-W12-E-Performance-Mercedes-AMG-Project-One This one was tricky, just based on the parts in the set - almost by necessity, it ended up being quite a 'greebly' shape, when I originally imagined something much sleeker. But it turned out ok. One of the limitations with most of these MOCs is incorporating the large car base piece, and the two large grey axle pieces - 5 of the 6 models use the axles at the structural base for the engines. While initially a little stifling creatively, it did help to keep an overall similar size/style between them. MERCEDES F2 W1200 Also coming from https://brickset.com/sets/76909-1/Mercedes-AMG-F1-W12-E-Performance-Mercedes-AMG-Project-One, this one was a chance to break away and try some different stuff - 3 engines at the back and a vtol underneath. This one keeps the front prongs theme that a few of these MOCs have, but in a much longer 'tuning fork' sort of way. This one also has a little bit of the original car structure still intact buried inside it. LAMBORGHINI COUNTACH 2099 This one is based on the incredibly excellent https://brickset.com/sets/76908-1/Lamborghini-Countach This one still retains the front 'prongs' design aesthetic while adding in some more interesting angles thanks to the parts in the set. I like that it uses some of the stickered elements to be very different functions than they were in the original model. It's also got a neat little 'co pilot' droid thing in the interior to use up some of the leftover parts...

I'm not a huge car guy, but the build techniques in the Speed Champions range have been nothing short of amazing - nearly every vehicle in recent years has come up with a new way to achieve the subtle shapes and curves the cars need. It's inspired me to get back in to MOCing my own stuff, and so I decided to start by doing alternate sci-fi builds for some of the Speed Champion sets. The inspirations are from any number of sci-fi franchises - I was thinking Wip3out, Pod Racers, a bit of Cyberpunk/Blade Runner even. At the same time, I've tried to keep some elements of the original car in the design where I can. These are pure no-cheat alternate builds, each one only uses the parts from the car/set, and each one uses the vast majority of the parts (with the 2-pack cars, it only uses the parts from each car, no swapping). In most cases, these ended up being complete top-to-bottom rebuilds (even when I didn't intend to in at the start...). Again, I haven't done any MOCing in almost 20 years so they're not exactly top-tier but I'm pretty happy with how they're turning out so far. There's more to come, but for now these are the six I've started with: Update 5/3/23: Added the AM Valkyrie 2072 Commemorative Edition (Let me know if there's issues with the images, it's been a while...) FERRARI 9ZT So first up is Ferrari, based on the 1970 Ferrari 512M: https://brickset.com/sets/76906-1/1970-Ferrari-512-M This was an obvious first choice because the car already looks like a spaceship - the cockpit piece was just asking for it! It established some basic design rules that most of the cars stick to (and some intentionally break)

Please, please don’t make the rest of us Aussies look like idiots - go learn some economic basics before saying dumb stuff like that.

A gamorrean barracks, Han/Chewie jail cell and droid torture room would be my first place to start. If I owned either of the two sets :-P