I used to spend hours in my room creating and taking apart new vehicle designs out of my kit-bashed LEGO bins — a helicopter with blades that always had to be able to spin, doors had to open, landing gear could sometimes retract, and my golden rule was my creations had to fit a minifig. Now I wish I’d never stopped building, because this fan-made Iron Man kit is giving me ideas.
The first Iron Man movie from 2008 is still the most grounded and one of the best flicks to come from the modern “Marvel Cinematic Universe” of comic book characters, and it’s what kicked off all of, basically, modern Hollywood, for better or worse.
One of the most memorable moments in the movie is the “I can fly” scene, when Stark is prototyping the suit’s design in his garage. I remember geeking out at the time for featuring the then-new Audi R8, as well as a few other stunners like an AC Cobra, Ford Model B hot rod, Saleen S7 and an early Tesla Roadster. It’s no wonder his first suit runs into some maintenance issues on its first run, with a stable of maintenance nightmares like that.
My nostalgia for both the first Iron Man movie and LEGO has now peaked, as creator hachiroku24 on YouTube has modelled a brick diorama based on the scene with some really detailed cars I wanted to highlight.
I love how much detail is packed in this scene, with hachiroku24 impressively engineering the R8’s iconic side contrast blade and Audi grille and nailing the hot rod dead-on. But it’s the Cobra model in the video that really blew me away with its proportions, curves and tight dimensions! It looks great for a LEGO build, and nothing like that official attempt at the Aston Martin DB5 kit from last year that looked horrendous.
I also love that they managed to include the not-so-helpful MIT fire-fighting arm robot, the scene-stealer of the movie for me over a decade ago. Unfortunately, this build is not a kit we can buy, but it does inspire me to visit my parents to check the attic for my old boxes of LEGO to see if I’m lucky.
