LEGO savants Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida have constructed a life-sized car made almost entirely out of LEGO bricks – and it runs entirely on air! The pair put out a message on Twitter asking for support to fund the Super Awesome Micro Project (SAMP), and supporters quickly stepped up to the plate. The hot rod required over 500,000 pieces to build and, apart from a few load bearing elements, everything – including the air-powered engine – is made out of LEGO.
So far the vehicle has only gone about 20mph, though the limits haven’t been tested because, as the team puts it, “we were scared of a LEGO explosion so we drove it slowly.” The four orbital engines, which were constructed out of LEGOs just like the rest of the car, have no fewer than 256 pistons that allow it to run on air.
Sammartino actually managed to fund the project with a single tweet that read: “Anyone interested in investing $500-$1000 in a project which is awesome & a world first tweet me. Need about 20 participants…” Apparently enough people were interested that the project took life and a short while later, the SAMP was up and running. The car was built in Romania and then shipped to Melbourne and the team settled on the final hot-rod design “mainly because hot rods are cool.”
[youtube =https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-R3TVmZSL4]
Proving once again that a little bit of crowd sourcing and a giant pile of LEGOs can create magic.
+ SAMP
