sky_lina

Hello there! I love building cars - mostly virtual with the help of LDD and Mecabricks, and very rarely come around making my cursed contraptions out of real LEGO. I have an occasional moment of inspiration here and there to build something original, but the vast majority of my MOCs is inspired by existing vehicles (this may include fictional ones, too), which makes them replica vehicles, or replicars =P All of them must possess an ability to fit one minifigure inside and be buildable IRL - at least on the basis of "all parts are connected". Thus, the topic would serve as a compilation of such MOCs in chronological order starting with relatively recent builds (2023 and further), and I hope to update it each time I'll have new things to show. Without further interruption, let's begin with something unapologetically British =D --- [December 2023] LTI/LTC TX4 The London Taxi Company - one that makes the black hackney carriages of London since the later iterations of Austin FX4 (as Carbodies) all the way to the newest electric-powered LEVC TX. What I chose to replicate, however, is their last ICE-equipped vehicle, originally known as the London Taxis International TX4. The reason to do so was a certain spy movie franchise directed by Matthew Vaughn known as the Kingsman. Being a prominent taxicab in the midst of 2010s, TX4 was a vehicle of choice for the eponymous spy agency operating in the capital of England. Their rather modest cover, a tailor shop on Savile Row (based on a very real H. Huntsman & Sons atelier), was also something I wanted to include in my build, so I made a quick approximation of its facade based on some pics from Google Maps =D 3D view is available on Mecabricks. --- [March 2025] Nissan Skyline DR30 2000 RS-Turbo/RS-X "Tekkamen" Skyline R30 is my favourite generation of this car throughout its almost 70-year history, despite having no GT-R trim. For no apparent reason other than I love how it looks. And this build is when I pushed myself to the edge of what I consider legal - LDD went nuts trying to reconcile with my decisions, so Developer Mode was a must. I'm very happy with the result, though. Title picture is a consequence of my obsession with a very comfy indie video game called Keep Driving. There is no Skyline available and I doubt five people and a dog would ever fit into 2-door coupe together, but I felt obligated to clash together two loved things of mine nonetheless. A weird descriptive text of what is even pictured here would be in the spoiler below =P Oh, yeah - apparently R30 was a movie star in its' homeland. Seibu Keisatsu aka "Western Police" was a show I don't know much about (and I doubt I need to know), but there were some cool cars with pretty visual modifications, and Skyline was one of them. The car dubbed Machine RS-1 even had a twin machine gun on the roof. And it was an easy modification to make - the famed Super Silhouette would definitely be much harder. 3D view is available on Mecabricks. --- [June 2025] T-180 Racer Motors Mach 4 The Speed Racer (2008) of Lana and Lilly Wachowski is an underrated masterpiece, period. And the Mach 4 design is a Speed Racer (2008) of the Speed Racer franchise, if that makes any sense. I saw a lot of Mach 5s made out of LEGO, based on both anime and movie depictions, but the WRL championship car of Rex Racer wasn't given much love from the fans. Well, I decided to take the matter into my own hands, which resulted in my first vaguely Speed Champions-sized car - but at the same time, the T-180s in the movie are huge, and Mach 4 was no exception to that rule, so I consider it to fit right into my imaginary standards of minifigure scale cars =P 3D view is available on Mecabricks. --- And that'd be all. At the very least, for now =D Stay tuned!

Fair enough! I had adopted the "1 stud = 300 mm" system for minifigure-scaled builds from one of my friends, most European buses have a standardised width of 2550 mm which makes them 8.5-wide after conversion, but I can see the need to do something more compact, as long as it works =) By the way, Rosenbauer Panther, the airport fire truck LEGO set is loosely based on, has a 4x4 configuration, so your MOD is perfectly reasonable =D

Cobb Vanth's speeder (75437) sure is popular here =D Got one too, a long-awaited reunion for my ol' reliable Mando's speeder from 75299 Trouble on Tatooine (75436 is a downgrade... though I can't help but think of buying one to make a fusion of these sets, it's dirt cheap anyway). And 75460 (Mando & Grogu tie-in) is sure tempting to have as my very first X-wing. But that's not a purchase yet =P

That's unfortunate, your build is fun and unorthodox, definitely would've been competitive :c Obsessed with these motorcycles (love minifig-scaled motorcycles in general), that's a cool build that wouldn't be out of place in a City setting, even if just a bit large. Took me a little while to identify NPU of 13608 in the front fork segment, and it really is "N"! could've downloaded the instructions instead, but it's not that interesting xD

Mecabricks to Blender pipeline is still the ultimate choice when it comes to rendering, though I admit Stud.io is the most accessible for the general audience. And in my weird head nothing has really surpassed LDD core experience. =P Answering OP's question: You can only do so much in one app and it still wouldn't be enough to satisfy the most specific needs. I'd rather see a LEGO CAD focused on compatibility and open source, so it could be easily modified and its assets could be used elsewhere. Thankfully all existing platforms maintain a sort of compatibility already, however flimsy it is - LDD was linked with LDraw, Mecabricks supports LDD and Studio files, Studio and Mecabricks builds can be exported as Collada 3D models... The problem is, the only way of tinkering with them is unsanctioned modding. Kinda works in case of LDD and Studio, but just imagine what could've been if these apps were actually designed to be modded.

Maybe if Racers as a theme itself made a return... Sounds extremely unlikely, as you've already said, Speed Champions happened and made licensed vehicles the only flavour of racing cars we can expect from LEGO nowadays. Though I don't think it would be that hard to license them all - 2K Drive had two McLarens (Solus GT and F1 LM), Skyline R34 GT-R and Charger R/T from F&F. AFAIK Forza Horizon 4 DLC had brick-built versions of Morris Mini Cooper and Ferrari F40. I'd wager that toy cars are easier to obtain a license for than if you're going for a photorealistic depiction. The unfortunate reality is that no one needs a racing game anymore, let alone a LEGO one. Need for Speed, THE racing franchise for generations, is now officially on hold, which means "cancelled" translated from legalese. Every other arcade racer apart from Forza and some independent projects (and even then success is rather limited) flops. The launch price was most certainly overblown, no doubt that was a mistake from them. I've bought 2K Drive in 2025, and it was less than 10 bucks on 60% discount, so at least it became accessible at some point... way too late =(

I hope it won't be a crime to bump this thread just because I wanted to vent how disappointing is that this game was probably the last we'll ever see on the topic of LEGO Racers. Since I don't see it mentioned anywhere, I'd rather do it myself - LEGO 2K Drive is delisted from Steam since May 2026 (what a "great" three-year anniversary gift that was), and next year online services for it will be shut down. The worst thing is that 2K Drive was not a bad game, I found the core gameplay rather engaging (even if nothing from the awfully short list of LEGO racing games surpasses Drome Racers for me). And its' building system is surprisingly flexible and polished. What actually killed that game was predatory monetisation scheme (season passes were atrociously greedy and insanely time-consuming, too) and a disgusting publisher which will milk dry anything they touch, to think they had the nerve to put their dirty name in the title!!! Their AAA titles can survive such a treatment because they're just that big (GTA, Mafia, various sports sims and whatnot), but not a small-ish vidya game in the niche genre. It's sad. I love LEGO, I love cars, I love video games and I love anything in between these three, but LEGO themselves have a very complicated relationship with that concept. Ever since Drome Racers 2 and Racers Create+Control being abruptly cancelled, everything seems to be going from bad to worse. Now it can't be any worse than this, and that's a "consolation", I guess. Certainly had it better than MMO fans at least.

TWONGI and zero comments here? Absolutely sacrilegious. I deemed these square windshields from SC cars to be useless in any serious copy-building, glad to be proven completely wrong =D Solid build all around, like to see all these ordinary cars being given their place under the spotlight, even if the TWONGI is anything but ordinary.

re: F40 - I just wanted to say I absolutely love what you did to it <3 I really hated 6-wide Speed Champions back in the days, because they were somehow even more cartoonish-looking than the regular Town/City vehicles, and these are already not a pinnacle of realism (although LEGO did improve in that regard, and some 6-wide cars in licensed series i.e. Ideas are legitimately cool - courtesy of Adam Grabowski among the others). And that was the right decision to make, looks sleek and actually deserving of F40 nameplate =) Now I'm interested in whether the other SC oldies could be refurbished the same way. Height is a huge problem for many of them... re: bus - even-to-odd conversion certainly takes courage, good to see it executed so nicely. I'd go all in on it and made it 8-wide, but that would be a much more part-consuming modification, almost to the way of making it a MOC rather than MOD. What you did is nevertheless very pretty and much more down to earth than whatever the original goofy-no-ladder double-decker is =D

The changes are quite dramatic IRL since the Formula One itself underwent a regulations change in 2026 that resulted in smaller cars with a different active aerodynamic package. 2027 Speed Champions lineup should be similar to 77259 Audi Revolut F1 Team R26, which is the first current F1 car from LEGO (technically a 2026 demo car from FIA with Audi branding, but eh, close enough), and that almost certainly means less parts for the worse price tag compared to 2025 sets. I kinda feel bad for SC designers - you can't win with this setup at all and they are forced to take a blame for something that is by all means an F1 "problem", not a LEGO set problem. Revuelto news is disappointing, though. One slot already taken by a clone that will most likely be just the same as it was in 2025. It's not like there's nothing else to take from Lamborghini, Temerario is here if they need a newer model. And a lot of much better choices if they don't. Diablo could've been a very cool one.