Hot Rod Built From, And Powered By, 500,000 Lego Pieces
This article is more than 2 years old
In my life, the vehicles I have owned came from a few different places: a hand-men-down from my parents, a cheap car bought from other family members, and something nice from a used car lot. I’ve never owned a brand new car, and while I used to think it was more of a financial issue, it turns out I also didn’t have enough toys or engineering know-how. Romanian Raul Oaida and Australian entrepreneur Steve Sammartino worked together on what they call the Super Awesome Micro Project, an endeavor that earns its name from being made up of almost 500,000 Lego pieces. The finished product includes a fully functional, air-powered engine.
Maxing out around around 20-mph, no one is going to try to get on the highway with this anyway. It’s an accomplishment more than a mode of travel, and honestly, I get slightly nauseous imagining the sound of small pieces of gravel rattling around beneath a Lego car at high speeds, shattering the plastic beneath. I’d have to keep pulling over to make sure I wasn’t hearing the teeth of old Tom Slattery chucking about between the bricks, haunting my very existence since that fateful playground incident. No wait, you can’t look at me like I’m crazy. These guys built a Lego car.
Oaida, a 20-year-old self-taught techie, met the Melbourne marketer after Sammartino put out a request on Twitter for backers for an interesting project. As few projects do, this one involved four orbital engines with 256 Lego-popping pistons. Of course, not everything is made of plastic, as Lego tires and axles would make for a trip powered by “err” as much as air. (I shall jump out of a moving Lego car for that one.)
Less puns and more Lego car, amirite? Here’s the Super Awesome Micro Project in action and in still form. If you need me, I’ll be hard at work trying to figure out how to build a submarine out of Mr. Bubbles.
Let’s give them a round (or rectangle) of applause, everyone. We’ve seen some awesome Lego-created things here at GFR, from cities to fighting robots, but never have I walked away from these stories wanting something more strongly than this Lego steering wheel. One day, one day.
