UCS Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

So the picnic basket was quite tricky to build in real life! There were two main challenges...

1. Making the overall box strong enough but thin enough to put a wicker layer all over it (the slotted bricks used for the wicker effect add little to the structural integrity). The end result is structurally quite different from my original LDD design but outwardly looks very simliar.

2. Getting the basket's hinge right. The original hinge that I designed digitally proved to be too weak for the opening and closing action - the hinge kept snapping off from the box. By its nature the hinge has to reside outside of the box so that the lid opens upwards and outwards clear of the box, and clips down properly when closed (always a challenge in LEGO). In the end I had to redesign it completely using clips and bars at the back. The render is cleaner, but the real one is stronger!

I couldn't think of what to call this bit - it's part of the bonnet and it's shaped like a cowl thing.. so bonnet cowl it is!

I'd like to think that this is the part in the film where Caractacus Potts walks into the house, removes a large metal hood from inside the chimney breast and walks out, leaving Grandpa and the children in wonder!

This part is built up using flexible hoses that clip down onto two posts that in turn are anchored into the base of the boat cabin.

So it's true - it's unlikely that LEGO would produce a model with such a lot of chromed parts. With that in mind, I thought I'd tweak a few of the brick finishes to see what a more realistic model would look like.

Metallic

LEGO has two official metallic colours that we can use on Chitty: "Warm Gold" and "Silver", both of which have a semi-shiny effect. While not as impactful as straight-up chrome, I actually really like this colour scheme. I think it gives the car a softer, slightly aged look.

Flat Colours

This is what the car would look like with standard flat gloss colours, that are already available. I think I chose light-bluish grey and a dark yellow like sand yellow. It still looks decent, if a little less glamorous!

Chitty takes the lead in the Ideas Showcase on Brickset! https://brickset.com/article/42449/ideas-showcase

Thank you to FlagsNZ for writing the article!

Next up - the seats. I hadn't intentionally designed them to be individually removable but turns out they are (to a certain extent).

I decided that the floor in the digital model was too flat and shiny. I wanted something more like you'd find at the bottom of a rowing boat, so went for a slatted grey floor instead. Think it looks okay!

This is a quick update to show you the windscreen, which is different from the original images.

I had a question from user NatiC asking why my Chitty had a yellow windscreen, when the real Chitty has a clear windscreen I hadn't actually noticed and can only think that I had seen an image where the glass was yellow, tried it and forgotten to change it back!

In this pic I've had a chance to add the (temporary) steering wheel with brass steering shaft.

The boat part of the car has a beautiful arching wooden dashboard upon which sits the windscreen. This was a bit of a puzzle to construct  in LEGO, as it's a flowing round shape. I decided that best way to make it would be in slices, where each slice is one stud narrower than the previous one.

To make the bulkhead stronger I decided to link the main three pieces together with technic pins. The second piece here looks decidedly flimsy, but when joined togther with the others, they become a stronger whole.

The fourth piece isn't attached with pins, as it needs to be added at the end and as more of a finishing 'veneer'.

At this point I haven't taken delivery of the arched pieces to finish off the interior of the dashboard - these are coming!

The boat-shaped cabin is one of the defining features of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There are obviosuly lots of ways to construct the boat shell out of LEGO but I chose to use actual boat parts for the simple fact that Chitty really is part boat and I wanted the model to be part boat too - it just seemed fitting!

There are some other benefits too - it would take several hundred pieces to make the boat shell out of smaller bricks, which would increase the piece count (beyond the LEGO Ideas limit), add to the cost and make the model heavier that it needs to be. On top of all that it probably wouldn't look as good.

I discovered that the 4 'slices' making up the bulkhead aren't very strong as they're not joined together (something I missed when designing in LDD/Studio).

In the next update you can see the redesign of these to make the overall structure stronger.

The running boards were quite tricky to design - not the horizontal plates but the folding sides. The main reason is that they had to be strong enough to not fall apart but thin enough to be able to fold up wihout the hinges and their own thickness getting in the way of the wings and fenders.

In the end I was very pleased to find that the actual design copied from my LDD/Studio blueprints worked exactly as I'd hoped.

Inside you can see a sneak preview of the wings folded away!

With the engine bay half finished, I removed it to fit on the engine. The engine is a simple block with 4 cylinder heads, spark plugs, HT leads, air intake manifold with air filter, exhaust downpipes and a prop-shaft fore (to drive the fan) and aft (to drive the car). It's not a working engine, but that's not the point of this model!

It just clips right onto the engine bay floor.

And I think it looks quite nice :)