When I saw pictures of some of the automobiles designed by Ben Fleskes I was inspired to build a whole fleet of undersized vehicles to clutter the streets of Mini New England. I posted a pictoral building guide on BrickShelf, and announced it on LUGNET, but I did this on September 10, 2001, and it somehow quickly lost relevance to anyone, even myself.

Still, the fleet grew, limited mainly by my limited supply of decent windshield glass and classy wheel rims. I have tried to make every car a little bit different, except in rare cases like taxi cabs. This has been interesting, because I have kept the basic "chassis" more or less the same while I have experimented with a variety of fenders, bumpers, roofs, color schemes, headlights, taillights, and trim.

One vehicle that I wouldn't be caught dead driving was an experiment in what percentage of the sand red pieces in my collection could be consumed in a single MOC. I achieved a surprising 83% without straining the credibility of the model too far. The interior of this automonstrosity is too small to seat a minifig, but it looks great parked on the sidewalk.

I have also built a few tractors, modeled from my memory of my uncle's tractors. The design for the trailer walls was borrowed from a panel truck design by Jonathan Dallas.

The big truck happened recently when I found a big box of LEGO for sale at a local toy consignment shop. (Scoop!) The box had several old sets that just begged to be built into an 18-wheeler. It is designed after a U.S. Mail truck, but the trimmings are a bit fancy for that. The chimp likes to cling to the side of the truck, so I made the driver look like Burt Reynolds.

Ask my cohorts in NELUG about my infamous South Park Bus. I guess anything bigger than a Citroen should be six-wide, but nobody told me that. Not until I arrived at a train show with a 4-wide school bus. I ended up borrowing some pieces from it for another project, and I haven't yet rebuilt the school bus in a more appropriate scale.

See it on BrickShelf

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