howitzer

Hard to really say one way or another, could also be an aesthetics thing with the truss pieces having those bar-thickness diagonal supports instead of liftarm-thickness ones that MOC makers and TLG alike had to deal with before the introduction of these new parts. I haven't really tested personally how easily liftarm-built lattice frame would come apart by twisting, but the Liebherr's frames seem to be quite resistant to it, loosening a bit first but then no more. Of course if you use enough force anything will come apart but I imagine TLG has standards on that - these are toys after all so they'll have to withstand whatever children might reasonably do to them, but no more than that.

The water bottle idea is nice, though I wonder if they wanted an easily adjustable counterweight, as in you can just add or remove counterweight pieces as necessary. Or maybe the water bottle just didn't cross the minds of designers. I think the new lattice frame pieces were necessary for the design as they allow for much stronger and simpler structure than liftarms and friction pins. Friction pins also have an unfortunate tendency to dislodge and come loose if the structure is twisted and bent a lot, unless the whole structure is properly form-locked, which I think wouldn't look that great here and also would add more pieces.

Any chance you could produce a computer image of the suspension system so we could see how it works? I'd be curious to have a good look on your implementation and the compromises you made (I tried some, but they wouldn't help enough to make it viable). I guess that's true from TLG's part, while the suspension of the real thing is quite complex, perhaps that's not enough as a selling point for a set, and beside that and steering there's not much a snowmobile does...

It looks really great in every respect! I attempted to make a snowmobile for another contest, and learned the hard way that suspension is indeed anything but simple and in the end I couldn't make it work but apparently you have, which is great! And it's a good looking model too! Makes me wonder why TLG has never attempted to create a proper snowmobile set...

There were Volkwagen T1 and T2 camper vans but not in Technic. For the iconic pop culture models Technic might not be the best platform, as looks is very important and they might need lots of stuff beside the van itself and perhaps even minifigures, so I doubt Technic will ever see those.

If we're talking about commercial vehicles with cranes and dump beds, TLG is making plenty of them. If we're talking about normal vans with no fancy functions, it's the same reason as why they don't make common cars that you see on the street every day: those don't have the fast-thing appeal of supercars and racecars, nor they have the rugged appeal of offroaders. I agree that having a normal family car or even a normal van would be a real fresh breath to the endless line of fast cars but I don't see it happening. Seems that everything has to have some superlatives attached to it these days, be it fastest, biggest, strongest or whatever. There's no marketing appeal in normality.

Yeah, some of the best technical functions lately have been in other themes, aside City there's been many sets in the Icons theme, like 10323, 10327 and 10363 with some nice functionality while majority of Technic is "Speed champions with fake engines and steering". I haven't yet built 42209 myself (bought it but have had too busy of a June) but it for sure seems to represent everything that Technic as a theme should be. But it's just one set among two dozen and the rest don't really live up to the Theme's title. There has been a couple of nice sets every year but there could be so much more. I agree that the huge RC sets aren't really ideal especially with the PU implementation, and non-RC motorized sets (like 42145) pneumatic sets (like 42128) are much more interesting. I hope to see more of those along with the likes of 42209.

I haven't done any analysis either, but it seems true that significant majority of MOCs presented here in this section of the forum are indeed cars and the remaining are mostly other types of vehicles. I think this is also evident in our various contests: the small car contest had I think highest number of participants of all time while other contests like the recent non-vehicle contest or the earlier GBC contest had quite low number of participants. Part of this phenomenon may be related to the difficulty of building different kinds of things. Cars are easy, they all share the same basic functions (4 wheels of which front steerable, fake engine, drive train with or without gearbox, etc.) while stuff like GBC's require some novel ideas and thinking, combined with difficult mechanics and time-consuming fine-tuning. So in a sense it's not surprising that people tend to build lots of cars and little of other things, and TLG's set portfolio seems to reflect that. Construction machinery is somewhere in the middle so there's more of them than non-vehicles but less than cars.

Yeah, the current trend makes it quite easy to save money on Lego. Very few truly interesting sets and those tend to be on the smaller end so cheaper too.

Yes it was, as indicated by the /s in the end of the line.

Indeed, that's one of the coolest building technique innovations I've seen in a long time, it's so beautiful in its simplicity.

It can be disassembled as it's possible to pull the axle with stop out even if it's fully inserted, though it's not easy. Still a badly thought out assembly, they really should've placed the blue pin last, as mentioned in the comment above.

It's not intended to be removed, so it probably means there's no way to get it out cleanly: https://www.newelementary.com/2025/05/review-lego-11203-blueys-family-house.html#legobluey11202

That's entirely reasonable! Perhaps I'll see you there!

That's cool, I hope the tickets aren't very expensive!

Omg, I'm actually planning to be in Utrecht at that time... how do I attend?

I agree, anything that's not a vehicle would be great.

Excellent review as always, and the set looks to be something worth buying day one. The connections and density of the build are really something to behold!

That would be really cool, Bowden cable-like system would be enormously useful. Too bad the original flex system wasn't that well implemented with easily broken cables and so on. Properly made grader has been on our wishlist for years and years and while there's hope that some day TLG grants our wish, I'm not holding my breath. Though I hope that the implementation would be pneumatic for the aforementioned reasons.

I have also history of starting my building thread and then not finishing the entry for the contest, either due to time constraints or technical difficulties. Nothing wrong with that and at least I learned a little bit each time. I very much agree that posting a topic which shows progress throughout the project is important, if someone posts a finished model just before deadline without putting out any info on progress first, it feels somehow like cheating (even if it's not against the rules).

Looks to be a pretty good set for a car, with something novel in terms of functions for a change. I can also appreciate the new parts it brings, finally a shorter link piece and so on. Still not going to buy it (it's a car after all) but it gives me hope of improving quality of Technic sets.

Ooh, the 2L beam with offset axle in black would be very useful. Must make an order to Pab when it's available there.

Just my opinion, but I think making the tracks out of third-party rubber bands would go against the spirit of the contest, as that would involve excessive amounts of them.

Just speculating here, but the link shaft should ideally be as stiff as possible while still being not too thick for easy moulding and using less plastic, and cruciform shape for cross section fulfils these goals better than octagon or circular shape. As for being exactly like axles in shape - that's probably just a familiarity thing.