4 seats? Check. 2 doors? Check. Openable hood and trunk compartments? Check. Style? Double check!
The "Club" was my attempt at a Car for the "Club" of friends. In the lore of our Lego adventure, this car was used by the baddies who were all very buddy buddy with each other. It has space for 4 minifigs, two wide doors (6 studs long), a hood and a trunk - you can spot the lego hinges in the figures above.
The front features a lot of lights, a pair of round lowbeam/high beam facing forward and 4 daytime running lights, as well as an indicator on each corner. There are also indicators on each side of the car acting as the door hinge and on the back of the car, once again in the corner. On the back of the car, there are two tail lights, fog lights next to the indicators and brake lights on the top, as well as a reverse light in the centre just above two exhaust pipes. All the indicators are at the same height and the car is flat to the ground (unlike the Tigre with 2 plates difference between the front and rear axle).
The rearview mirrors are connected to the chassis and not the door. The back has a trailing slope behind the wheels, very 50-60s styling which would not be repeated in future cars. There are headrests for all 4 occupants and the car features a steering wheel, a gear shifter and an on-board computer for the driver and for the back passengers.
The engine is the same 3 litre V6 that powers the Tigre (as there was not space for much more) but as a cosmetic engine it works great.
After building the Tigre, I wondered how far I could push my lego design skills - particularly with the pieces I had available to me. While playing around with some prototypes that we were building to test new functionalities we realised that we could make doors by pinching a brick between two plates and this gave me an idea...!
I grabbed the next set of wheels we had available and voilá: - luckily they were smaller than the technic wheels used in the Tigre. You may also notice that there is a considerable height to the floor: people (minifigs) sitting on the "Club" have 3 plates below them. This was due to the rear seats, which are 2x2 slopes, built on top of the bricks used to hold the wheels on the rear axle. This would only be repeated in one more car as the axle distance would be increased in future cars.
Let's just straight to the features, although the design may look dated now, the Club was a very ambitious car when it was built. Making a sports car out of lego pieces is easy in comparison to making a city car - just add a bunch of ramps at the front! A city car is more challenging - particularly if it needs to take more than one passenger - A car for one single minifig will not cut it! Are we all driving McLaren F1s? Or three wheelers? No! A proper car should have lights at the front, indicators on the sides, an engine (even if cosmetic) and a way to access said engine and a boot/trunk to keep stuff! The Club has all of that!
Onwards to the criticisms. For some reason, in these early attempts, I always made it so that both the hood and the trunk opened in reverse... which in retrospective looks very strange - and very unlike real cars. If I make a redesign of this particular model that will be the first thing I address. There's also the considerable vehicle relative height (3 plates) and the incredibly large boot door which was a result ofa lack of pieces, no doubt!
How does it compare to the Tigre? With the same (cosmetic engine), a lower mass Tigre (166.7g) is faster than the Club (193.2 g). The Club has a larger boot as it is a family car. They both use roughly the same number of pieces (Club 225 // Tigre 229) but there's less variety of pieces in the Club (77 // 90 bricks). This results in a lower overall price of $32.26 vs $51.91, which also means a lower price per piece. The main contributors to the hiked price of the Tigre are the front "silver" vents which are quite rare and sough after, each going for $3.64 a piece.
As for appearance, the Tigre looks good in isolation, but side-by-side with Club, we can see the impact those massive technic wheels have. The Club is actually lower to the floor than the Tigre (6.6 vs 7.4 bricks) however without wheels that difference is smaller (6.2 to 6.6 bricks) due to the aggressive angle on the Tigre. Overall the club feels more "minifig-scaled".
The verdict: Once colour-coordinated the Club looks really iconic, particularly due to the 2 round lights in the front. Both cars had 2 other versions made before and you will be reading about them in these blogs, see you next time!
Link to this model in ReBrickable: https://rebrickable.com/users/Ramos_cars/mocs/
Specifications:
2 Doors, Hood and trunk
V6 engine placed on the front
Size: 20 x 10 x 6.6 studs (0.4 studs ground clearance)
Mass: 193.2 g
Distance between axles: 11 studs.
Volume of boot: 20.48 cm3
Parts: 225 // Lots: 77
Price (May 2021): $ 32.36
In this blog I plan to add some in-depth detailed information about all the cars I built in the period between 2005-2006. The next post will be about Incroyable, the first SUV!
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