Christmas and Legos are deeply entwined in my psyche. We got our first taste of Legos in Austria in the fifties, when they were just suitable for building little houses and such. Gave me my first taste of housebuilding. I longed to build cars with them, but the Lego wheel hadn’t been invented yet, if you can believe that. And Legos weren’t yet sold in the US when we moved here in 1960, so my grandmother sent a box every Christmas. And I’ll never forget the year the first wheels came. Wow! That opened up a whole new world of possibilities, in testing the limits of Legos’ structural integrity. But back then it was just blocks, windows and wheels, so we had to use our imaginations, big time.
Today, for the right price, you can build this quite reasonable facsimile of a classic VW Bus. Stephanie found this gallery of Lego-mobiles at the UK Telegraph site, so the prices are in pounds, and some are pretty stiff, but if the wish list we made the other day doesn’t seem to be coming true, here’s a good back-up plan. A few more:
A Unimog is always appealing; so many possibilities!
And a genuine Ferrari F-1; the priciest of them, of course. £399 in the UK; maybe I’ll just see if my mother still has our childhood box of Legos somewhere.
Didnt have leggo as a kid Meccano was the one you could build all sorts of working models I even had a miniature steam stationary engine to power things and yes I did mount the engine on a rudimentry platform so it drove itself but it didnt steer not a success. Mind you that Unimog is cool.
Here is a Lego Corvair for you in case Stephanie will not allow you to Amazon the Westphalia.
Ooh; nice!
I had Legos, but they came only in red and white. Hot Wheels with the orange plastic track were the big thing back in the ’60s.
Instead of lego, I’d prefer a VW Campervan tent.
I saw these in the flesh a couple weeks ago at legofest with my son. They should be available in the US at the lego shop website. I told my wife to get me the unimog but I don’t think she took me seriously
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mercedes-Benz-Unimog-U-400-8110
Found the VW on the site
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Volkswagen-T1-Camper-Van-10220
If I can be permitted to be a downer…
What a shame it is, what have we lost, in that it’s no longer LEGAL…to build such vehicles, even as low-volume special-interest reproductions. People want them. Look at the interest. Some of them will spend large amounts of money on such cars. Certainly they’ll spend money on relatively useless items like models or tents, or even faux reproductions like the New Beetle or the PT Cruiser.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was a small industry building reproduction 1920s and 1930s cars for movie sets and the well off. But today, it’s not legal to build retro Corvairs or Transporters – or Unimogs or even old Jeep CJs.
I have a Lego Volkswagen T1 camper van, it is very realistic, was fun to build (being a Lego geek of course), and costs about $120? Only problem was that it took 6 hours to build.
P.S. Paul,I believe the Unimog costs somewhere between $200-$500?
This year, I got a Lego Unimog for Christmas!