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LEGO Speed Champions racetrack display

by Thita (admin) on April 28, 2017

The LEGO Speed Champions series has been quite popular with both LEGO fans and car enthusiasts, due to the very nicely detailed minifig-size version of real racecars. Those who have been collecting all of the sets would have close to thirty LEGO Speed Champions cars by now, and there is likely more coming in the future. 🙂

Whether you have the whole collection of LEGO Speed Champions vehicles, or just a few, displaying them is going to take a bit of planning. Of course, you can just line them up on a shelf and they will look fine, however if you really want to showcase them properly, you are going to have to build them a racetrack!

Fortunately, building a racetrack out of LEGO bricks is not that difficult, especially since the LEGO Speed Champions sets already include some of the most difficult sections. The #75911 LEGO Speed Champions McLaren Mercedes Pit Stop includes a fully equipped pit stop that you can use for any of the vehicles. The #75912 LEGO Speed Champions Porsche 911 GT Finish Line comes with a start/finish line, as well as a podium that doubles as a mini-garage (see above). The set also includes eight interchangeable national flags (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, UK, and USA), trophies, and some other useful accessories. The #75874 LEGO Speed Champions Chevrolet Camaro Drag Race includes a start/finish line as well. And the #75876 LEGO Speed Champions Porsche 919 Hybrid and 917K Pit Lane has another well-equipped pit stop. The most complete of all of the sets is the #75883 LEGO Speed Champions Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team with a grandstand, a pit garage, a corner barrier, a hairpin corner with camera rig, a pit wall section, and even a hot dog stand (see below).

You can pick any of these sets to add some really nice details to your racetrack – see the LEGO Speed Champions section of the Online LEGO Shop. Other than that, all you need is some road-plates for creating the tracks, and stands for the spectators. You can get both straight and curved road-plates, as well as standard large baseplates directly from LEGO from the Brick Accessories section of the Online LEGO Shop.

For the bleachers, all you need is some standard LEGO bricks and plates to make a very nice and functional structure. I particularly like the one made by BrickVault, as you can see in the following video. Only basic blue bricks are used to build up the height, and 2×8 plates in white and red make up the seats. It’s a very simple, but really good looking design. I also like the addition of white and red tiles at the edge of the road-plates to make it more like a racetrack. If you would like to build the bleachers yourself, Richard from the BrickVault shares the LEGO Digital Designer file here: LEGO RACETRACK LDD FILE

If you don’t have enough room to display an entire racetrack, you can just make a straight section with the bleachers behind and the road-plates at the front. Such an arrangement should fit on most shelves. This way your racetrack doubles as a permanent display for your LEGO Speed Champions cars, and whenever you want to play, you can take the assembly down from the shelf and quickly expand it to a full track with more road-plates.

The LEGO Speed Champions cars are fun for racing, look good on display, and are perfect for minifigs to drive around or even race in your LEGO city! If you want to make your display extra special, you can add a bit of detailing with the ideas mentioned above.

What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Speed Champions sets? Do you collect them? Or just have a few? How do you display them? And how do you like the racetrack we discussed here? Feel free to share your thoughts and own display ideas in the comment section below! 😉

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

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LEGO Superman classic car alternate colors

by Thita (admin) on April 27, 2017

in Featured LEGO Creations

In one of our previous discussions, we talked about adding classic vehicles to your LEGO city for a bit of interesting variety, and using vehicle designs from official LEGO sets as a template (see: Classic Style LEGO Cars in Official LEGO Sets). Classic vehicles fit particularly well with the LEGO Modular Buildings, as the two cars that come in the collection (fire engine in #10197 LEGO Creator Fire Brigade, and limousine in #10232 LEGO Creator Palace Cinema) both depict vehicles from the 1930s. Even if your LEGO city is in more modern times, you might have some minifigs tinkering on an old car in their garage. 🙂

One of my most favorite classic car designs is from the extremely rare 2015 San Diego Comic-Con exclusive LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman set. The set is only 145 pieces, but because of its rarity, it sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Unless you are a collector of rare sets, it’s not really worth getting it at that price. Instead, you can just copy the design of the vehicle to make your own. You can download the building steps from the BrickFan.

The original car in the LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman set is standard green with yellow detailing to match the iconic artwork from the cover of the original comic book. There is some debate going on about what kind of vehicle the picture actually depicts, but according to this very interesting article, it could be a 1937 DeSoto, a 1937 Plymouth, or perhaps a 1937 Ford sedan.

While you can easily rebuild the vehicle in green from the LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman set, as all the pieces are common, the roof-piece in green is exclusive to this set, and pretty much impossible to find. However, the same roof element is readily available in white, black, yellow, red, dark-red, and light-gray.

When I decided to rebuild the LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman car, I choose not to use green, as for me the standard LEGO green doesn’t look like a common color for classic vehicles, and I wasn’t really building it for Superman, but for my LEGO city. When you look at the parts-list for the set on BrickLink, you will notice that most of the pieces are available in many different colors, so you have plenty of color options. The only thing you need to keep in mind is the limited color choices for the roof. However as long as the rest of the body matches the roof color, you should be good to go.

I chose to build the vehicle in black, dark-red, medium-blue, and tan, but you can also make it in other colors like yellow, bright-light-orange, red, blue, dark-blue and dark-tan. You can also pick combination colors like tan and dark-tan, which would look really nice with a white roof. Another nice combo could be blue and dark-blue with a black roof. And yellow works well for a taxi, especially if you add some checkered stickers (remember though, that the vehicle can only seat one minifig).

The reason I went with black, dark-red, and tan is because those are such iconic colors for classic cars. I added the medium-blue variation later, when I found those curved slope pieces with beautiful silver prints (from #41053 LEGO Disney Princess Cinderella’s Dream Carriage). I consider this a special edition for choicy minifigs.

Another option you might consider is a convertible version of the LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman car. This can be achieved very easily by just removing the roof and the back window section, and replacing it with a 2×4 curved slope, to make it look like a folded canvas top. I decided not to do this, as I already have other open top vehicles in my city, but it does look sweet.

Anyhow, I just wanted to show you my alternate color versions of the LEGO Action Comics #1 Superman car, as I know many LEGO fans are interested in this vehicle. If you like this vehicle, and built some other variations, feel free to share in the comment section below! 😉

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

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LEGO Speed Champions racetrack display

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