Lego Carbon Racers: Black Baron

Here it is, the first of the Lego Carbon Racers! I'll admit this wasn't the first LRC I built; this was further down the line, at the point I was running out of color varieties and wondering, "What next?"

On store shelves right now, I know there are Lego car models with all-black wheel hubs, but I think the silver-trimmed hubs make the model pop a little more, don't you? (Translation: I didn't buy any black-wheel models, even the stupid cheap ones, because I keep forgetting. I'll stand by my defense of silver, though.)

What really sells me on this model--other than those amazing silver-trimmed wheels--is the streamlined profile, from the the "frog-eye" headlight slits which look like they'd help a real car's downforce and all the way back to the rear spoiler which fits beautifully with the rear fenders.

In case you couldn't fully appreciate the Black Baron's sleekness from the above pictures, enjoy this 360-rotation gif. Bricklink's Studio software is capable of rendering more frames than this, but holy hayfever, would that have taken an eternity to render on my PC. We're not only short on bricks here at Not Enough Bricks; we're also rationing our time.

This model employs a pretty basic Tiny Turbos base structure. I mean, I was basically throwing black pieces together to see what would happen, and a sleek car just sort of appeared before I called it done.

Nothing too fancy yet. You know, I'm a bad judge of which parts are and aren't out of date. Heck, even if I did the research to find out what was still being made, there's a chance Lego would bring the outdated pieces back. My best bet is to not bother researching. You know, the lazy and out-of-touch route.

Would this car look different if I had four black curved fenders available instead of just two? Maybe, but the nice thing about part limitations is it forces you to get creative, which was the purpose of these car designs anyway. You may find this to be a recurring theme with Lego Carbon Racers.

OK, that oddly connected curved piece in step 8 was the one I was thinking about when I was wondering about outdated parts a couple of frames ago. Is that piece still common? Was it ever common? Is someone reading this in the dystopian far-future where Lego building is outlawed (but not the reading of online Lego blueprints for some reason)? I may never know.

Here's something else which will likely be another recurring theme: part substitution. I didn't have enough of those black 2x4 curved pieces for this model, so I just used four 1x4 curves because I have plenty of those in the right color. I'll bet I have enough of those black 2x4 curves in other models of mine, but I didn't want to hunt them down; I mean, if they're much rarer than my 1x4 curves, there's probably a good reason I used them on the other models instead of using my go-to 1x4 curves. The point is, don't feel bad about substitutions. As you will soon discover, I do it all the time.

Boom, that amazing spoiler and those mesmerizing wheels. A word of warning about the spoiler piece if you didn't know it already: I used to have two, but now I only have one because the bar eventually broke off the second one, so treat your bricks with care. Also, yes, this will be the only Lego Carbon Racer with this spoiler. Like I said on the LRC main page, I try not to dismantle existing racers to make new ones.

There you go! That's the first Lego Carbon Racer assembled. If you made adjustments of your own--or even if you built the racer in a different, interesting color scheme--feel free to let me know about it; I'm always interested in what my fellow builders are up to. So, have fun with the Black Baron, and I'll see you around for the next Lego Carbon Racers blueprint: the Blue Boombox!