[MOC] Storm IV Twin Pod Cloud Car

[lostcarpark]

I'd like to share my version of the Twin Pod Cloud Car:

Storm IV Twin Pod Cloud Car 01 by James Shields, on Flickr

The Cloud City part of Empire Strikes Back has always been one of my favourite parts of the Star Wars saga, and I think the cloud car is one of the most under-rated vehicles (it doesn't even get a mention in DK's "Complete Vehicles" book).

LEGO have only attempted it once at minifig scale, all the way back in 2002:

I've always felt the LEGO version could be improved on, and that feeling has only grown as the selection of orange curved parts has grown over the years. A couple of years ago I started collecting parts for my own version. I made several attempts to build one, but always got frustrated and ended up putting the project on the back burner.

"You will not deviate from your present course." by James Shields, on Flickr

Back in June, I decided to give it another go, using some techniques I'd picked up since my last attempt, as well as some better reference material I'd found. This version came together relatively quickly.

Cloud Car over Bespin by James Shields, on Flickr

I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I'm reasonably happy with the basic shape, and it scales pretty well to the UCS Millennium Falcon, so I think it's a good size. I expect I will keep tinkering with the design, and hopefully will keep making improvements.

I also made a little bit of Cloud City:

Cloud City Landing Pad 01 by James Shields, on Flickr

The landing pad actually rests on the table, but I thought it would be fun to make it look higher, and add some other Cloud City buildings in the background.

Thanks to Rhys Knight, who helped with the custom cloud car pilots:

[Makin Bacon]

Very nice parts usage, you captured the shape very well with those round parts, especially on the back of each pod.

[AndrewShun]

Shouldn't it be smaller?

[lostcarpark]

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the size, I think the answer is, "it depends". I feel the 2002 version probably scaled reasonably well to vehicles LEGO were producing at that time, but most of the ships have grown considerably over the years.

I've tried to use the UCS Millennium Falcon as my scale reference. One reason for this is because I'd like a shot of the Cloud Cars escorting the Falcon, so would like to have them to scale. But this seems to be roughly the scale LEGO work to as well, with the caveat that large ships tend to get shrunk, and small ones tend to get expanded.

The cannon size of the Millennium Falcon is 34 metres. The UCS model is .84 metres or 105 studs long (I measured off 10179, but the new one is roughly the same size), making a scale of about 1:40.

The cannon size of the Cloud Car is 7 metres long. This works out 17cm or 21 studs long, which mine is pretty close to. I actually printed out a top-down view of the cloud car with a stud grid overlaid, so I was able to lay sections of my model over it while I was building.

And for comparison, the last T65 X-Wing (2012) was about 42 studs long (when the engines are included). The cannon size is 12.5m, which at the above scale should be 38 studs long, which is close enough in my book.

If anyone is interested, a Star Destroyer would be about 36 metres long at this scale! :-)