It’s a Review day here at The Lego Car Blog, and with much of LEGO’s latest product line-up covered we’re going to take a journey back to 1997, and to one of LEGO’s forgotten gems; the 8479 Technic Barcode Truck.

LEGO had successfully produced programable robotic models as far back as 1990 with the marvellous Control Centre and its mark II follow-up in 1995. Both sets allowed children to control a Technic model via a joypad and to program a series of functions into the system so that movements could be repeated. The only drawback was that the ‘brain’ control brick was a large black box that remained external to the models under its control.

For 1997 LEGO designed its first robot where the control brick and memory were integrated into the model itself, allowed by the continuing compacting of computer storage technology. Called the ‘Code Pilot’ it’s a neat handheld battery pack containing the model’s power source, memory, control buttons, and – rather inventively – a barcode scanner, just like you’ll find by the till in any shop. In short, this is LEGO Mindstorms’ genesis.

The Code Pilot allowed control of the vehicle in several ways; via the buttons on the unit itself, through the record function, or through the barcode scanner. The last of these three options was the set’s selling point, as it came with a large plastic sheet containing many ‘building blocks’ of possible functions; for example a motor direction, a time duration, or a noise command. The user could scan these codes in the order desired to build up a sequence of movements and sounds, which the model would then act out.

This is effectively the same process as today’s LEGO Mindstorms system, only it doesn’t require a computer to make the set operational. A wise move in 1997 when many children didn’t have a home PC, and one we actually think deserves a renaissance today: plug and play is always a winner.

So, to the truck: 8497′s main model is a large and quite good-looking European tipper truck, with a grab lift attachment fitted to the front. One of the first models to include the then-new and far more powerful 71427 motor, it also was also one of the first to feature the new design direction that used axels rather than solid beams for most of the bodywork. Hidden inside the truck are two touch sensors, which would become a mainstay of the early Mindstorms sets, and a gearbox to help multiply the functions available through the single motor. These include drive, the closing and lifting of the grab arm, and the tipping of the truck bed to unload the cargo.

These functions work extremely well, although the need to often switch the gearbox mid-way through a routine meant that the system wasn’t quite as automated as LEGO would have you believe. Blame this on the single motor – the set has capacity for two but the bean-counters probably vetoed a second one; even with one motor 8497 was a very expensive set in 1997. Besides the limitations of the single motor the only problems we’ve encountered in over a decade of use are the failure of one touch sensor and hand-of-God steering which isn’t always up to the job of controlling such a heavy vehicle. It’s stood the test of time then, which is not something that can be said about most other electronic toys from the mid ’90s.

In addition to the truck 8497 also included full instructions for second model (a slightly ugly buggy, but one that could reverse when it came into contact with an object, turn to avoid it, and then continue forwards) as well as ideas for many more, all within a single reassuringly chunky instruction manual.

As with all LEGO’s past flagship sets the Barcode Truck likely commands a high premium on eBay now. However, we think this set is hugely underrated when compared to others of the era. As a display piece it does the job as well as many of LEGO’s supercars, but using 8497 for this purpose alone would be a great shame. It’s easily as fun, and almost as capable, as a modern LEGO Mindstorms set, and because it requires no computer software the programming hasn’t dated at all – and there’s no need to find a Windows 95 PC to make it work.

A solid 8 out of 10 then, and a superb highlight in one of LEGO’s weaker years. If only they had fitted that extra motor…

You can find all of The Lego Car Blog’s past set reviews via the Set Review Library.

…”This isn’t a car”. We continue our run of movie vehicles with this; the superb ‘Bat’ from The Dark Knight Rises, built by LEGO genius Sariel on MOCpages.

Powered by LEGO’s Power Functions motors and LED lights it’s probably the coolest creation we’ve featured this month. It’s not the first Bat Wing built from little plastic bricks though as that accolade goes to the equally brilliant Mahjqa. Both builders have devised ways for their creations to ‘fly’, but they take rather different approaches. See how Sariel achieved it in his video via the first link, and watch Mahjqa’s film in the second. Neither fixed the autopilot though.

There’s more to this Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon by Tim Inman than meets the eye. 50% more in fact. See why on Flickr.

We’re kicking off the week here at TLCB with some big creations. First up is this colossal Scania R124G complete with low-lowder trailer and excavator. Built by Dennis Bosman aka ‘legotrucks’ you can see more of the rig here. Next is one of the more unusual vehicles that we’ve featured, but without which all the others here would have nowhere to drive. They’re a pair of grader/scrapers, used for removing old tarmac before new is laid. Suggested to us via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page they’ve been built by bricklington on Brickshelf, and you can see the full gallery via the link above.

The Italian designer Bertone penned all manner of beautiful exotic cars (and the Vauxhall Astra Convertible), so it was a moment of brilliance by Scandinavian truck maker Scania to employ the company to design their new truck in 1996. An instant success, European truck drivers split into two camps; those that drove a Scania and those that wanted to. Sadly Bertone himself died just a year later and the Bertone company was absorbed into the FIAT group. Norton74 pays tribute the design great with his superbly recreated Scania 164G trucks. See more of his creations on either Flickr or MOCpages.

Paul Boratko (aka Crowkillers) is one of our favourite builders here at The Lego Car Blog. His models look and function brilliantly, but it’s they way they’re built which sets them apart; they’re as easy to build as a LEGO set. His latest, entitled ‘Some kind of monster’ is another beautifully engineered modular build, and one that can be easily modified with Power Functions motors. See the gallery and be inspired on MOCpages.

No, not a roadtrip by Snoop Dogg, but Google’s (incorrect) French for ‘Off Road’. This awesome Power Functions controlled Technic buggy is the work of  Charbel, who has his own website showing how it’s built and with videos of it in action. His site is in French though, so if your grasp of the language is a bit merde you can check it out in English via the Eurobricks forum.

The story so far…

The Lego company make the 9398 Technic remote control Crawler. It works well and looks awful. Lego launch a competition to design a prettier body. Said contest is won by a talented Russian gentleman called Egor Karshiev, whose ‘Boss Crawler’ design gets the nod. Lego announce they will only make 20,000 of these sets, with many unique elements and extra features, and sell them for the same price as the standard 9398…

Cue the most ridiculous speculator-driven feeding frenzy since Beanie Babies tanked…

As I write, just one month after 41999 was released, these change hands, sealed, on eBay for around £350; or nearly three times RRP. Many are being bought by the same UK-based buyer (not me!) in the hope they’ll keep climbing.

I’ve just got the one, bought from Lego for a very reasonable price, for the purpose of building it, displaying it, even *gasp* playing with it… I’m willing to bet that more than half of these plastic building toys will remain forever sealed in their boxes in the hands of collectors or, worse, speculators; unbuilt and unloved. A shame, because it’s a really good set, and here’s why:

The box is pretty special. A simple, elegant design on the front showing a close-up of the distinctive dark blue panels that so lift this model; it’s made of sterner stuff than usual, too. Inside this treasure chest it’s fairly tightly packed with lots of good stuff; enough for a few hours of leisurely, pleasurable building.

There are four instruction books which are easy to follow, as we’ve come to expect, and there are no mistakes. The build is relatively straightforward, but there’s no shortage of cool features:

4 Wheel Drive: This is achieved using a new L motor on each axle, and although the name Crawler might suggest extreme slowness, I’ve seen slower; it goes fast enough and seems all but unstoppable. The engineering purist in me doesn’t like having the heavy motors on the axle assemblies and therefore unsprung, but the motors themselves seem able to survive the resulting onslaught; and this solution does help to keep the centre of gravity lower. A good system.

4 Wheel Steering : Activated by a Servo motor, which makes this a much more easily controllable RC vehicle than those steered by a normal motor, the rear wheels steer in opposite phase to the fronts, and to the same degree. This is just as well, since the lock is pretty poor: without four steering wheels it’d have the turning circle of a supertanker! As it is, it’s good enough – just. The system uses 8110-style gear blocks at each wheel to improve ground clearance, and although these hurt the steering geometry (forcing the pivot point away from the wheel) they do benefit this model’s go-anywhere ability.

Suspension : Live axles at both ends, sprung by the bigger, harder new Unimog-style springs, the system works extraordinarily well. Travel is huge, as is the possible axle articulation, and together with the grippy nature of the balloon tyres and low-speed torque of the drive motors, this thing can climb over almost anything! It really is impressive watching it work and it won’t stop until you put something really big in front of it.

Two little extras in this set that 9398 doesn’t have is a very nifty electric winch, controllable from inside the car, that’s just the thing if it does get stuck; and lights at the front. The winch fills the underbonnet space, but since the drive assemblies are confined to the axles themselves a fake engine wouldn’t be easily doable anyway.

Topping all this is, of course, Mr Karshiev’s stylish bodywork, and very nice it is too; especially after the horror of the standard 9398. The dark blue technic panels and beams are unique to this set – expect replacements to be very hard to come by! and the silvered elements at the front give it a real lift. The styling is reminiscent of any number of ’70s US Muscle Cars, but to these eyes it most resembles a Dodge Challenger. The doors and bootlid open – a nice detail – although the boot doesn’t have a floor, I guess one could easily be slotted in. The doors are clasped shut by a pair of rubber axle holders on each side; a system I expect we’ll see popping up in mocs all over the place pretty soon – mostly because it’s simple and works really well.

There is a sticker sheet, to allow you to give it the full NASCAR look if you want, but I think it looks better without…

Criticisms ? Nothing major, although the battery box could be more accessible (a fairly extensive operation is required to retrieve it) and the nicely made tan seats are really half-seats, since the floor is so high.

Overall, it feels like this set combines the best aspects of Technic kits (robustness, well proven functions) with the looks of a much more refined moc, and all for the same price as the inferior, uglier 9398. Lego themselves can’t have made any money with this; they didn’t want to: it’s a halo product created by a fan for the fans. If you can afford it, I’d still recommend it, for opening up and building! Remember, investments can go down as well as up, but when this bubble bursts we’ll still have a very enjoyable model. 10/10

Our American readers may laugh at Fiat’s tiny off-roader, but mock at your peril; the original Panda 4×4 will beat a Hummer off-road on a typical snowy European farm-track. Piterx’s Technic version of the little Fiat is remotely controlled and includes all-wheel-drive. See it in action at his blog, or join in the discussion on Eurobricks.

LEGO’s Technic mobile cranes have always been firm favourites with builders (read TLCB’s reviews of the official sets here), but are less common as MOCs. When done well though, crane MOCs can be more than a match for LEGO’s own efforts. Today’s comes from TLCB veteran mbmc137 on Brickshelf. His Liebherr LTM 1090 features a huge array of remote control functions including drive, steering, boom raising/lowering, rotation and extension, winch and outriggers. Even LEGO’s own sets don’t fit all that in! See more at the link above or join in the discussion on Eurobricks.

Designing and sharing creations is what the Lego Community is all about. ‘MOCing’ as it’s known is what makes LEGO the world’s best toy. There’s no trick to it; put a pile a bricks in front of a 3 year old (or a Lego Car Blog Elf) and they will instinctively and intuitively begin to build, although staff here don’t blog their own MOCs, as then you’d know who we are!

Besides MOCing however, many members of the Lego Community would love to build and own some of the amazing creations that have been designed by builders who don’t work for The Lego Group. Creations such as Crowkillers‘ Lamborghini Gallardo above and this incredible remote control Tow Truck by Dirk Klijn shown below.

Well now you can!

Dirk has made instructions for his spectacular creation available through crowkillers.com, where it’s joined by another 9 amazing models by Paul Boratko (aka Crowkillers), Nathanel Kuipers and Jennifer Clark. Pricing ranges from free to $15 and instructions come in the form of a PDF download.

Click here to see the full range of model instructions currently available.

Paul ‘Crowkillers’ Boratko has also very kindly accepted a visit by our Elves, who thrust a Master MOCers voice recorder under his nose.

Read Crowkillers’s story in the fourth instalment of TLCB’s Master MOCers series here.

This Lamborghini SV by Brickshelf’s Spiderbrick features all the usual Technic goodies (suspension, all-wheel-drive etc.), but it also features something we’ve never seen before; working airbags. Yes, this car really will deploy both driver and passenger airbags in the event of a frontal collision. Controlled by a Mindstorms NXT and pneumatic system, we’re not sure whether the ‘bags inflate suddenly via stored pressure, or whether the driver will knock themselves out on the steering wheel and awake to find a gradually inflating balloon pressing against their gentleman’s area, but either way it’s one of the most innovative ideas we’ve seen in Lego form. Check out the system and the vehicle it’s fitted to at the link above.

This good old-fashioned Technic telehandler was discovered by the Elves on Flickr. Bobofrutx has included 4-wheel steering and of course a telescopic bucket arm for all that telehandling. See more at the link. Just don’t let the Elves follow you – we’re not rescuing any more from the bucket.

Technic Man is our kind of builder; his MOCpage is full of properly engineered Technic vehicles. His latest prompted several of you to contact us via The Lego Car Blog Feedback page to ask if it could be featured here, so here it is!

This MAN TGX truck is a good model in its own right, but is even more impressive when you discover it’s built solely from the parts of LEGO’s 2013 41999 Rock Crawler. And for that, we like Technic Man even more, as many of LEGO’s 41999 sets will stay unopened in the basements of speculators and collectors, never to see the light of day or feel the hands they were designed for.

You can read our review of 41999 here, and if you own one, take a leaf out of Technic Man’s book, and have some fun with it!

Another day, another Elf returns to The Lego Car Blog office clutching its find. One meal token and a yellow Smartie later and we can bring you this incredible working Liebherr A928 excavator by Flickr’s Tobias. It’s fully Power Functions controlled and features probably the most complicated pneumatics system we’ve ever seen. Check it out at Tobias’ Flickr page via the link above, and to read TLCB’s reviews of LEGO’s own excavator sets, click the ‘Reviews’ tab in the main menu.

The Elves are fiercely competitive creatures. They have to be, otherwise they won’t win any food tokens from TLCB staff. Whilst this occasionally leads to fights/riots, it can also lead to a bumper haul of similar creations. Today is one such event, so here’s our Mid-Week Motorcycle Special!

First up is BricksonWheels’ magnificent Harley Davidson, available to view on Flickr and MOCpages. This black ‘n chrome ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Street Glide continues BricksonWheels’ recent run of motorcycles, and you can check out its predecessors by using the Search function at the foot of this page.

The second creation in today’s special swaps chrome for Technic and was discovered by a lucky Elf on MOCpages. Bernhard Mollema‘s motorcycle, nicknamed ‘Fat Pig’*, puts the awesome wheels from the 8448 Supercar set to a great new use. Check it out at the link above.

The final creation in this Hump Day Special was suggested to us by one of our readers via the Feedback page. This mean looking Hard Tail, nicknamed ‘Widowmaker’ (it seems you can’t build a motorbike without giving it a name!) is the work of Jonsson on the Eurobricks forum. See the pictures and join in the discussion at the link, and if you’d like to suggest a creation take a look at our Submission Guidelines here.

*Your Mom.

Brickshelf’s Nico71, a veteran of The Lego Car Blog, is back with a model a little more unusual than the Ferraris, and Lamborghinis that regularly grace these pages. His superb Citroen 2CV is a fully functioning Technic ‘Supercar’, featuring working suspension, engine, gearbox, steering, and much more besides. You can see the full gallery showing all the technical details on Brickshelf at the link above. Cheap and slow can be just as impressive!

It’s a supercar double today here at The Lego Car Blog. And this one is really super. Built by Technic legend Sheepo, this Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 is the pinnacle of what can be achieved from LEGO bricks technically. The well-known Lego blogs are often not interested in the technical realism of Lego models. Here though, whilst we may not feature an expertly landscaped castle, we do love to see what Lego can be used to do technically. With Sheepo’s talent and engineering prowess it can be used to do a lot.

This astonishing Shelby Mustang GT500 features the usual Technic supercar requirements (steering, suspension, engine and gearbox) and adds remote control drive via LEGO’s versatile Power Functions system. But Sheepo doesn’t stop there. Not only does his Mustang drive and steer remotely, it features a remotely operated sequential 5+R gearbox with an automatically triggered clutch, and remotely operated disc brakes that can also be engaged from a working pedal in the cabin. If it was any more realistic this car would be for sale in a Ford dealership.

See all of the photos and join in the discussion on Eurobricks, and you can check out the full technical specifications and builder commentary of the GT500 on Sheepo’s website here.

YouTube Video:

Suggested by a TLCB reader, this Technic Dodge Challenger by Flickr newcomer Dustyen055 includes Power Functions remote control, working lights, and one very cool stripe. The star of the 1971 road movie Vanishing Point, the Challenger goes out with a bang. We’d quite like to recreate the final scene with Dustyen055′s model and a pair of Lego’s own remote control 8275 Bulldozers.