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Tigre (April 2005) the beginning of something wonderful

April 2005, after collecting all the yellow ramps and slopes I found in our collection, I created something that changed my enjoyment of LEGO forever, the Roadster Tigre:

A recent render (using Stud.io)

There are many places I could start this story: the first time I received a large Lego set (6339 Shuttle Launch Pad in 1995), the first time I acquired a Lego Racers car and some wheels, or even the first time my parents got me a bucket of lego... but this story does not start with legos, but with available technology: Summer 2004 - my first phone with a camera, the ultra-cool Nokia 3200 - besides taking photos you could also change its colour and background through changing the phone's physical background with your own custom drawings! Anyway, back to the point: I started photographing everything I could. It was a very low-resolution camera, but for the time it was my world! It wasn't good enough to take pictures of my drawings, so what else could I use the camera for...

Nokia 3200 with replaceable covers (I don't own this picture)

...for photographing my Lego MOCs (My Own Creation)! Lego had been a pretty big part of my life thus far, but I was always sad to destroy a MOC without any trace that it had ever existed - well no longer! With my camera I could destroy vehicles and spaceships because I could always rebuild them from the photos! And so I took photos of my brothers' and my MOCs.

Flashforward to January 2005. My studies had been going well and most of the excitement of a new academic year was gone. I was already planning that I would be doing Mechanical Engineering in University so in order to get ready for it I would be changing class and colleagues. I was making deeper friendships with the friends that would be moving into my new class, with similar interests in cars and technology, they further fueled my passion for motorised vehicles, I have always been drawing cars, but now I wanted to MAKE cars! One weekend, having been barred from playing on the Xbox for more than a few hours, I stumbled onto my Legos and with my camera, I photographed the MOCs I had made in the past so I could siassemble them and use those bricks to make cars! 

Spaceship no 4 (photo dated September 2004)

We had (and still have) quite a varied collection of Legos... the most recent acquisitions for cool slopes at the time were some Lego racers (4584 Hot Scorcher and 4587 Duel Racers) as well as Lego creator (4404 Land Busters) (you can start to see a theme here...!). Using the pieces of the spaceship no 4 (which I had no problem disassembling since the photo had been archived) I attempted at building an LMP1 car, titled "Le Mans". You can recognise the shared pieces between it and the Spaceship No 4.

LMP1 car titled "Le Mans" (photo dated January 2005)

Both the front and rear parts of the car open (really bad quality photos, why did I only take pictures at night?) which really made me think about the possibilities of building a real minifig-scale car.

Later that same year in March I built "Tuning", and you're probably noticing the same minifig used - my alterego. I wanted a car that a minifig could use comfortably.

"Tuning" (photo dated March 2005)

With "Tuning", although the car was "cooler" it was actually lesss functional and this was my lightbulb moment, what if I make a car whose doors open and which has a boot and an engine bay?

It was Easter Break, I grabbed the yellow pieces I had collected while building Tuning. I started from the middle by sitting my minifig and adding a window and doors. then the front of the car, then the rear. Added some hinges and would you look at that! A proper funcional roadster!




"Tigre" (photos dated April 2005)

Now what's particularly remarkable about this car is that official Lego sets would not attempt doing anything at this scale - being able to place 2 minifigs inside - until at least 2007 (4939 Cool cars which has a functional boot and doors) and after that they reduced the functionalities (6743 has functional doors) but let's be totally honest: Lego's "cool car" looks really ugly in comparison to the "Tigre"!

All the basic functions are there: there's a steering wheel, there's a gear shifter, there's a handbrake, there's a console, there's a functional hood and boot, there's doors, there's red lights in the back, yellow lights at the front, and indicators on the sides, there are rear view mirrors, there's exhaust pipes, there's even radiator stripes on the rear sides for the engine on the back - this car is the real deal! - I almost forgot - you can see the engine through the rear window!!!

Side-by-side comparison of the original car (circa April 2005) and a recent render using Stud.io

There's inspiration from my favourite roadster car at the time - the 2001 Lotus Elise. Using the slopes I had available I crafted this fantastic car that I didn't think possible! I made something better than the official Lego sets!

As for criticism, yes, the wheels are extremely large which forces the car to be wider and have naked tires. In order to open the boot you need to remove some pieces from the front of the car, but for a first attempt, this was fantastic!

I added a V6 engine to the render (I could not waste hinges using my own pieces) and made slight changes the exhaust pipes on the back.

This roadster set the standard for what I wanted to do going forward: A "real" mini-fig-scaled functional car for every occasion, this would be the start of a brand of cars which I named Ramos - after my own surname - and many cars would follow: differently sized- four-seaters, an SUV, a van, more sports cars, etc... the sky was the limit!

Using the power of the renderer I've also looked at different colours, and I'm amazed at the results:


Link to this model in ReBrickable: https://rebrickable.com/users/Ramos_cars/mocs/

Features:

2 Doors, Hood and trunk (pieces must be removed to open the trunk in the front)

V6 engine placed on the rear axle

Size: 20 x 10 x 7.4 studs (0.5 studs ground clearance)

Mass: 166.7 g

Distance between axles: 10 studs.

Volume of boot: 9.83 cm3

Parts: 229 // Lots: 90

Price (May 2021): $ 51.91

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 Club the first four-seater!

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