Building minifig scale vehicles

[Ralph_S]

In the last week or so I've been participating in quite a few discussions about minifig vehicles. Since I find myself frequently writing the same comments, I figured I ought to put my ideas in a post of its own.

This is not the "be all end all" of minifig scale car building, but I've built about 50 or so in the last two years, so I know a thing or two about them.

Minifgures are awkward little creatures. They are much too wide for their height. Consequently, if you want your minifig scale car to seat two figures side-by-side it is going to look too big with the figure standing beside it. If you want your models to look good with figures and buildings going for a smaller scale can work. What can also work is building larger things to a slightly smaller scale than small things. That's what they tend to do in LEGOLand parks. In any case, there is no such thing as 'perfect minifig scale'. Since they are so oddly-proportioned, I pretty much gave up on using minifigs 20 years ago.

However, about two years ago, The Brickish association organised a competition for our Christmas get-together that involved building a cafe-corner compatible building. I dug out the old minifigs and had a blast building mine. While I was at it, I also decided to build two cars to go with it and I immediately ran into the question what size they were going to be.

Not too long before, LEGO had started introducing new vehicles in their city range, including a fire truck, set 7239. It has a six-stud wide body, but including the mudguards is 7 studs wide. It has been one of their best-sellers for years and with good reason: the proportions are just about spot on and they'd reached a level of detail that was almost unprecedented in older minifig scale vehicles. Many truck models they have released since have a similar design: the same size wheels and mudguards and an overall width of 7 studs wide. I worked out that when I take the width of most real trucks into account, the scale of these is about 1/45.

They have also released a number of smaller cars, with bodies that are four wide, mudguards that are five studs wide and tyres that stick out to a total width of 6 studs. They generally use the same tyre size as the trucks. They are nice toys, but IMO don't look too realistic. Regular cars ought to have smaller wheels than trucks and the tyres on real cars (generally) don't stick out of the fenders. So, rather than sticking to LEGO's design, for my own two cars I chose to stick close to the scale of the trucks which means that your average regular car ends up being approximately five studs wide. I also wanted smaller wheels, for which the wheels from 'Racers' sets came in very handy. The results were a Ferrari model (inspired by a 348TB) and a London black cab:

As you can see, the wheels don't stick out of the sides and the overall width is 5 studs. This started a renewed interest in minifig scale cars, and I have built many since, as I wrote before of many different types.

A few general rules I try to stick to:

Width

A truck is wider than an SUV, a pickup truck or van.

SUVs and vans tend to be wider than regular cars.

Tyre sizes

Trucks tend to have larger wheels than SUVs, pickup trucks or vans.

SUVs and vans tend to have larger wheels than regular cars.

On SUVs and pickup trucks, large tyres mean larger ground clearance and smaller tyres smaller.

I'll give a few examples illustrating the basic idea on my own approx. 1/45 scale vehicles.

Trucks:

For the 'Eurotrans' truck I stuck close to what LEGO do, The cab is six wide and I use the same wheels. However, because on a real truck the rear wheels and mudguards don't stick out from under the trailer, it is 7 studs wide. The American wrecker truck is 7 studs wide as well and I decided to use larger wheels.

Buses:

Because the wheels and mudguards on a modern bus don't stick out of the sides, these two are also 7 studs wide overall. This has the added advantage of giving enough room inside to have two rows of passengers sit side-by-side. The larger bus has large wheels, quite simply because the regular size looked too small on such a large vehicle.

Pickup trucks/ SUVs:

Both of these have bodies that are five studs wide and mudguards (and running boards on the SUV) that stick out to 6. These two illustrate the relation between ground clearance and tyre size. Generally, SUVs don't always have particularly large ground clearance, so I stuck to using the same size wheels that LEGO use. I wanted the pickup truck to look like it was intended for some pretty heavy off-road work, so I raised it and fitted chunkier tyres.

All of the pictures are links to larger versions on flickr.

All of my minifig scale vehicles can be found in my minifig scale vehicles set on flickr.

Obviously the 'rules' aren't rigid, but having seen pictures of the cars in the Legoland discovery center in Berlin (on Brickshelf) I have found that they too use the same tyres and same widths for their minifig scale vehicles! Since I am talking about relative measures here, they are obviously independent of scale. If you like your cars bigger than five studs wide, you'll probably have to make your trucks larger than 7 studs wide for them to be approximately in proportion.

Sometimes going for something radically different can lead to fun results (such as 'pimped' cars), but I am convinced that if you keeping these things in mind building convincing minifig scale vehicles really isn't all that hard. I hope that they can be useful for all of you city MOC builders out there as well.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited January 18, 2010 by Ralph_S

[BlueBard]

Really interesting article, with nice advices and building guide ideas Thanks for sharing your MF scale vehicles knowledge, RalphS!

[curtisrlee]

Hmm, interesting...

What if the EuroTrans said EuroBricks!

[MetroiD]

What if the EuroTrans said EuroBricks!

Well, what then anyway? This post still wouldn't have made much more sense!!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on building vehicles in minifig scale, Ralph! You're a huge asset to the EB community and I think all Town fans will agree that your building style is so distinct it's as good as unmistakable. So it's always nice when a builder such as yourself comes forward and shares not only his creations, but also the thought process that went into designing those.

I myself also like to include 4-wide in the range of scales. It's certainly not "the" most accurate scale, because it really is a bit unrealistic, but then again there are some vehicles that are really veeery narrow. Besides, I feel that having even more diversity always adds fun to a town!

Perhaps we might organise a 4-wide vehicle challenge later on, just for the fun of it?

[prateek]

Finally! A guide by the world renowned Ralph-S! This is an awesome guide, and I might use it in the future. Your Chevy SUV has got to be my favourite minifig scale vehicle ever

Edited January 18, 2010 by prateek

[iamded]

I'm not generally a city builder, but this guide looks to be very helpful if ever I heed the call of vehicle building. Very well put together, very nice! Thanks Ralph_S!

~Peace

[Tom Bricks]

Great article, this is great advice for any town builder. I personally like 4 wide cars even if there not as realistic because they don't seem to big in the streets. The only thing that I don't like about some of these is that the windshield is more than one piece, it looks unrealistic for the most part.

[ACCURATEin]

I guess it is rather difficult to scale a vehicle to the relative height of the minifigure.

Nice writeup!

[Ricecracker]

Ralph, let me start off by saying that we both know I build at a slightly larger scale. That being said, recently, I've been trying to build at 1/45 scale. I think that while exactly 1/45 isn't for me, this sure is a great guide for people who want to start by building in the odd wide vehicle range.

Many of these tips can be applied to different scale vehicles - I use almost all of them on my own.

I'll be adding some more thoughts tomorrow.

P.S. I finally found out which book you've talked about as inspiration for you wrecker and reefer truck. It turns out I own it, just not in a language I understand.

[Rick]

Ralph, nice that you took the time to write your thoughts on the issue down. I hope that this will turn out to be a useful and comprehensive resource for building minifig-scale vehicles. To hopefully stimulate some discussion, this has been blogged on Classic-Town.net.

[Ralph_S]

Thanks for the great comments. I am glad to know my insights are appreciated.

Some people prefer a larger scale because they want to fit more figures inside. Some people prefer a smaller scale because they build big cities, because they fit in with older city sets they have in their layouts or because they scale things to fit with their 6-wide trains. It all depends on what you want to do with your vehicles. However, for a realistic collection of vehicles the guidelines still apply no matter what the scale as Ricecracker confirms. As some of you know, I also build larger vehicles (approx 1/22, with trucks usually 14 wide and regular cars 10-11) and the same guidelines work there as well.

The 1/45 scale is simply the one I prefer as offering the right balance between level of detail, not dwarfing the minifigs standing next to them and also because it fits with sets. I myself tend to not use sets in my own city displays, but in collaborative layouts some people do. I also normally don't build trains. I built one a few months ago and made that 8 studs wide. Obviously it doesn't do corners well, but I have no intention of running it on a layout, so that's not an issue.

Building cars with a body that is an odd number of studs obviously comes at a price. They are more complicated and take up more parts than the cars in City sets. I go through 1x1, 1x2,1x3 and 2x3 plates, jumper plates and 1x1 tiles, for instance, like they are going out of fashion. Even a small hatchback can use as many as 17 jumper plates. Windows are another issue. Lego don't make suitable car windows that are five or 7 studs wide. Sometimes you can work around it, as I have done on the green bus/coach, by fitting a six-wide window to a 7-wide body. On real cars the roof is typically narrower than the body, which means that you can use a four-wide roof construction and windscreen on a five-wide vehicle.

Some vehicles do end up being an even number of studs wide; my SWAT van, for instance.

I see classic town 4-wide vehicles as a special category. When I had city sets as a child cars were 4-wide, so there's a certain nostalgia at work when I see them. However, in my opinion they aren't really realistic representations of real vehicles. I think they are somewhat cartoonish impressions of vehicles, just like minifigs are cartoonish impressions of people. Still, even on four-wides trucks typically had larger tyres than regular cars.

@Ricecracker: I cannot overestimate how large the influence of 'The Ultimate Lego book' has been on my car-building. I used to build cars before I bought my copy almost 10 years ago (mine is in Dutch by the way 'Het ultieme Lego boek'), but the level of detail displayed by the professional builders from the LEGOLand parks was far beyond what I used to do at the time. My cars nowadays tend to be full of half-stud offsets and that too is largely due to seeing cars in the book.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Selander]

Suberb post Ralph S ! Just imagine if all posts would have your high quality level

You have done an excellent overview and I fully agree to most of your recommendations and thoughts.

Futhermore you are a brillant builder of small cars.

As an addition, I like to share a few personal comments, as I find this topic very interesting too.

Since I am mostly into Lego trains, I do prefer the Lego "original " train scale = 6-wide bodies for locomotives and train wagons.

Concequently, since trucks, trailers and containers in reality are about the same width as trains, I choose to make my trucks 6-wide.

I fully share your view that wheel size should reflect the size of the complete vehicle, but I didn't see you mention any difference

between front and rear wheels as real trucks have. I typically use the below size for truck wheels and put the rims with "hub" in front,

and a wide rim "without hub" in rear, to get a realistic look.

No part of wheels or mud flaps are sticking out, so all is within 6-wide width.

See following example:

For SUV:s and small cars, I (so far) built only 4-wide bodies, and use smaller wheels as you recommend.

For SUV:s I use the same wheels used by Lego in set 7239, together with mudguards which makes it about 5-wide over the wheels.

Smaller cars have smaller wheels without mudgards so they are about 4-wide, like the "Smart".

See following example of the three different wheel sizes and corresponding vehicle size.

Once again many thanks for your excellent post.

[JayDuck]

Thanks for the writeup, Ralph. I've enjoyed looking through your models on flickr, and it's nice to be able to read some of your thoughts on design as well.

[Ralph_S]

Suberb post Ralph S ! Just imagine if all posts would have your high quality level

You have done an excellent overview and I fully agree to most of your recommendations and thoughts.

Futhermore you are a brillant builder of small cars.

As an addition, I like to share a few personal comments, as I find this topic very interesting too.

Since I am mostly into Lego trains, I do prefer the Lego "original " train scale = 6-wide bodies for locomotives and train wagons.

Concequently, since trucks, trailers and containers in reality are about the same width as trains, I choose to make my trucks 6-wide.

I fully share your view that wheel size should reflect the size of the complete vehicle, but I didn't see you mention any difference

between front and rear wheels as real trucks have. I typically use the below size for truck wheels and put the rims with "hub" in front,

and a wide rim "without hub" in rear, to get a realistic look.

No part of wheels or mud flaps are sticking out, so all is within 6-wide width.

See following example:

For SUV:s and small cars, I (so far) built only 4-wide bodies, and use smaller wheels as you recommend.

For SUV:s I use the same wheels used by Lego in set 7239, together with mudguards which makes it about 5-wide over the wheels.

Smaller cars have smaller wheels without mudgards so they are about 4-wide, like the "Smart".

See following example of the three different wheel sizes and corresponding vehicle size.

Once again many thanks for your excellent post.

Thank you for your very flattering comments. I appreciate them. Your vehicles are lovely. They might not be the exact same scale as mine, but they are nicely proportioned and detailed as a collection they look great together. Trucks are wider than SUVs. SUVs are wider than cars. Fantastic.

I agree on the truck wheels. The size that LEGO uses for their trucks only come in one variety, so there is no difference between the front and back. However, for the slightly larger diameter wheels I use for some of my trucks and you use for yours there indeed is. I have used different rims, but the same idea on my wrecker truck and the green bus/coach.

Thanks for the writeup, Ralph. I've enjoyed looking through your models on flickr, and it's nice to be able to read some of your thoughts on design as well.

Thank you. Of course, this is all a ploy that allows me to be lazy in the future by referring to this thread rather than explaining things from scratch whenever I see a new minifig vehicle that looks a bit weird

I forgot to reply to MetroiD: a four-wide vehicle challenge might be fun. In order for a four-wide to fit in my scheme, it's going to have to be a model of a really small car: a Mini or a Smart, for instance.

Cheers,

Ralph