I would quite like a Suzuki Jimny, a real one, but it's hard to justify, given I live in a city, hardly drive and only have room for one car, and we are not getting rid of the MX-5 we have (can you sense I like tiny cars that look like toys) but this does not mean I can't have a Jimny made of Lego.
For this I need to head to Rebrickable were people post instructions for making none official Lego sets, and type in 'Jimny' I see a lot of options, a couple in very realistic lime green, but I don't have the part for this, then I spot an 'alternative build' which is a build made entirely from a single official Lego set - and better still I have this set, The Fiat 500 - a set in very unusual lemon yellow.
A actual Jimny
The donor set
So all I have to do now is pay the designer 4Euro, download the PDF instructions, deconstruction the Fiat and start building.
Where it all begins - a box of pieces and a dream/Instruction book
Non official instruction can be sketchy, with strange instruction, building techniques and fragile builds, but this has none of this - it's a really well thought through build, it's not a smooth and perfect as a official set would be but it always amazes me how these things can be redesigned into something new.
It of course starts with a platform, the stickers on a rebuild are always a problem, you can see the stickers on what was a suitcase and is now a footwell in this shot, they will be convered in the final build
It pretty quickly starts taking shape - the whole build is maybe 2 or so hours. I tend to measure them in podcasts, albums or songs I'm listening to while building. I can tell you I started with Tracey Chapman's self titled debut album, which if you haven't finished to lately is still amazing and then moved into a spotyify playlist so I lost track of time.
Early days seats
One of the things I find interesting is understanding how other people build. This set had a series of tiny subbuild, you would build a section on it's own and then add it to the car, this is not really how official sets work, but it a more logical way to free builders to do it.
The complicated and packed engine bay is actually about 5 mini builds all placed in there
And the Roof a separate piece again
I always lack photos towards the end of the build as I get lost in it and I'm too desperate to finish that I don't take time to stop and take photos, but here it is in it's finished form
