Thoughts on 6538: Rebel Roadster
This is set 6538: Rebel Roadster, and I'd like to talk about it.
Set 6538: Rebel Roadster is a Town set, released in 1994 and comprised of 57 pieces, it retailed for $4.50 (US.) It's a bonafide classic, even thirty years on, and is one of the best of LEGO's cool 90s cars, but let's look at our sole minifigure before getting into the vehicle itself.
Our man here is definitely dressed for the part in his big black leather jacket with its cool lapels and all its zippers, red shirt worn underneath, and paired with some black pants and a white flat-brim ballcap.
But while his outfit obviously exudes cool, his face betrays that rebellious nature we're expecting with this set and such a cool car, doesn't it?
This face in particular, part #3626bpr0007, was introduced in 1994 and featured in nearly a hundred sets and retired in 2004, arguably earlier seeing as its last appearance was in a re-release of the LEGO Soccer (or Football, if you prefer) set 3420: Championship Challenge II, the only difference between it and the original being a total scrubbing of all Adidas branding.
This is one of my least favorite heads and it is all over LEGO's 90s sets like a bad rash, it feels like a strange attempted replacement for the classic smiley face head, part #3626bpr0001, and thankfully an unsuccessful one despite the piece's decade-long production. Something about those eyebrows is uncanny in a way I can't pin down, eyebrows are such an important part of human expression but their perfectly neutral state combined with the placid smile makes the head print kinda creepy.
So because I think it looks so bad, so I've decided to have our little rebel let his hair down for this one.
There we go, that's about 100% less square (besides all the squareness minfigures naturally have).
This head is also a permutation of the classic smile, but this time with some bangs, introduced in 1993's Space subtheme Ice Planet 2002, there's a youthful energy to part #3626bpr0024, even with its white hair.
But despite being released earlier and retired sooner, this piece never officially made it out of its two home themes, the aforementioned Ice Planet 2002 and the also wonderful Western theme, featured as the face of Deputy Zack in sets like 6755: Sheriff's Lock-Up and 6765: Gold City Junction.
While it technically never got to play in any other themes, no Town sets or even Paradisa, where it would've been a perfect fit, this head was an occasional, supposedly erroneous, replacement for part #3626bpr0338 in a number of sets. A beneficial mistake, really, seeing as the other head is the same thing but a lot worse.
Anyway, we're gonna let this dude rock out with his locks out and move onto his roadster.
You wouldn't know it from looking at this bad boy, but it's yet another car built on top of part #4212b, mostly hidden away by the bodywork and the wide-set wheels, making use of a pair of part #2926 to push it into essentially six stud wide territory.
The extreme forward rake is achieved with the wildly mismatched wheels, the rear set placed almost within the wheel well of the #4212b but the front set placed well ahead, facilitated by a 2x4 plate underneath the front end of the car.
The 1x8 plates run along either side of the body and accommodate the doors, parts #3821 and #3822, and a quartet of body panels, part #4865a, along with a single 1x4 brick, all in bright red.
Two of the panels sit in the back, revealing this rod to be a modified truck, even if the bed is barely big enough to haul anything, besides possibly a passenger.
Under the bed and on top of the rear #2926 are two yellow studs, a faint implication of suspension, just enough to get the job done even if you'll rarely be able to see them behind the huge tires and under everything else.
Back up to the front we have LEGO's quintessential "big beefy engine" design, using four black studs on top of a pair of hinge pieces, parts #3937 and #3938, both of them angled nicely to appropriately portray the top of a big ol' engine block, exhausts and all.
In front of that is the radiator and headlights, unfortunately a proper piece for this, part #30147, wouldn't be introduced for another four years, so the Rebel Roadster goes grilleless, though there is an adorable radiator cap in the form of a red stud.
This style of engine still pops up now and again, even with specialized big beefy engine block pieces like part #50943, occasionally used in tandem with them for even bigger, beefier engines.
Now let's pop that soft top up, this here is one of my favorite discontinued elements, part #2349b with #2348b locked into it, more on that piece later. These old hinged roof elements are an unfortunate loss as far as I'm concerned, the modren solution of "tear the roof off the sucker," where you just remove either the roof panel or the entire roof assembly, pales in comparison to the simple elegance of these old sunroof pieces, or even their no-sun equivalents, part #4213.
The use here is particularly effective since the old style of hinge allows for more play than the modren (well, modren as a piece from 1999 can be) click hinges, so the roof can sit on top of the tiny windscreen.
And the roof opens up nice and wide to let you squeeze the driver inside, the cab being plenty spacious enough for the single occupant. Even with the long brim on his hat there's ample headroom, though he can't sit back much at all, still, it seems reasonably comfortable in there.
If he needs a little more air, the aforementioned part #2348b can flip up for some nice flow-through breeze, and though this is the instructions-recommended placement, the #2349b can accept it facing either way.
Possibly inadvisable for driving, since it'd just be an air scoop, blowing straight down into the cab and out the windows. Definitely not great for aerodynamics and probably really loud, turning the cab into an air tunnel like that.
And despite how it may look, the driver can easily see out the tiny windscreen at the front, letting him keep his eyes on the road and... mostly just the road, what with the forward rake and the sunroof blocking some of his vision.
But better to see the road than the anti-studs on the front of the #2349b, right?
But like I hope I've made abundantly clear, 6538: Rebel Roadster is one of those undeniably cool cars, and is unfortunately a bit of a lost art. The hot rod at this scale is very rarely seen anymore and if it is it usually doesn't even have a roof. They're also very likely to be relegated to side builds in larger sets, tertiary offerings to the rest like in 2012's 4438: Robber's Hideout or 2014's 60048: Police Dog Unit, vehicles belonging to bad guys and not cool dudes like the one featured here.
To be even more exact, there's one other set like 6538: Rebel Roadster in terms of scale and features, the 2017 set 30354: Hot Rod, a polybag offering with about twenty fewer pieces, no doors and no roof, likely inspired by this set but miserable in comparison.
Thankfully our man here knows some guys, he's in a club, see, and he's willing to bring us along as his plus some to meet his fellow enthusiasts, so let's hop in the back and get going.
 |
| Vrrrrooom! |
This is set 6561: Hot Rod Club, and I'd like to talk about it, too.
6521: Hot Rod Club is a Town set, released in 1994 and comprised of 237 pieces, it retailed for $26.50 (US.) Featuring two hot rods, a motorcycle, a whole bunch of tools and even a fridge for the club's cold ones, this open-air garage has a heck of a lot to offer, but let's take a look at the members before we get to the rest.
The minifigure selection is comprised of some of the coolest dude parts of the time, sunglasses were certainly the order of the day in the 90s and two of the guys here sport the most prominent designs.
The middle figure features part #3626bpr0048, a piece I have trouble not immediately associating with LEGO Island's resident mechanic, Nubby Stevens, especially with the black hairpiece, and the right figure features part #3626bpr0006 one of the most frequently seen heads of the era.
#3626bpr0006 is pretty ridiculously common, appearing 254 times over 172 sets, some sets would be populated entirely by sunglasses-sporting look-alikes, especially Police sets. Just from my own collection, both 6664: Chopper Cops and 6625: Speed Trackers have two figures sporting this same head, and in both cases the same torsos and legs as well. But if you think those are extreme examples, they're nothing, look at set 6484: F1 Hauler, featuring three figures with this head, or the zenith of cool sunglasses guy, 2554: Formula 1 Pit Stop with five figures, and all of them have this head.
I might have said before that part #3626bpr0007 (the one with the eyebrows, seen on the left figure above) was an unsuccessful attempt to replace the classic smiley face, but the sunglasses head pretty much did for more than a decade. They certainly appeared together multiple times, but the ubiquity during the 90s and early 2000s was the only thing comparable to the use of the classic smile in the decades prior. While I have issues with the weird eyebrows face, I have no such qualms with the cool sunglasses head, I find it to be totally evergreen and its coolness will never fade no matter how oversaturated its use was during its heyday.
Now that we've met the guys, let's take a look at the club's most prominent feature; the sign.
With a silhouette of the black and red rod from the set, along with some palm trees and leafy plants to the left and the word CLUB in big yellow letters, this is a great sticker design. Its placement here is a little off-center, but it came like this and I'm not about to try re-seating it, entirely because this is a STAMP. Not like it's been stamped on, STAMP as in STicker Across Multiple Pieces, this particular example is placed across two 1x4 bricks stacked on top of each other. This thankfully long-discontinued practice, LEGO now opting to either make pairs of stickers for the multiple pieces or using single pieces with more surface area, rendered the afflicted bricks totally unusable outside of their job as a sign, unless you wanted to tear the lovely sticker in half, something that's happened to an awful lot of STAMPs, if any bricks involved come apart the sticker's likely to be ruined. Thankfully a simple assembly like this is very unlikely to come apart without significant force, so this sign has endured for thirty years and will, hopefully, continue to look this good.
Heading down from the roof we see the next sticker above the fridge, a very simple design showcasing the life cycle of orange juice, I suppose, from orange to wedge to juice in a not very full cup.
In the fridge are three of part #4589 in transparent yellow serving as the cold ones kept nice and frosty in the case, a decent bit of parts usage seeing as the minifigure-scale bottle wouldn't exist until 2011, part #95228 being introduced with the LEGO Pirates of the Carribean sets that year. It's odd that the part is so comparatively modren, it feels so natural paired with the old wine glass piece, part #2343, that it feels like a piece from the eighties, too.
But these particular "bottles" do their job admirably well, though their color makes them look less like fruit juices or even beers, they look like certain brands of wine cooler that have this same bottle shape, or at least used to, it's been a while since I've seen a wine cooler. If that's the case, these fellas' day drinking is light and bubbly, which makes plenty of sense to me, don't need to be wasted trying to get a timing belt back on.
Of course, they could just be lemonades, which is in the upper echelon of cool drinks as far as I'm concerned, appropriate for a cool club of cool dudes.
If it's not obvious, this is a wheel balancer, and is fairly accurate to the real devices. These are used for correcting uneven weight distribution, ensuring the wheels turn smoothly and don't rattle themselves out of alignment, not that LEGO wheels can be misaligned.
It's a neat addition that I haven't seen replicated in any other garage or shop sets, and it adds a lot to the build.
On the complete opposite side of the garage we have this handy tool rack that sits under the big red awning piece, with ample space for a fire extinguisher, hammer, shovel (for scooping up oil spills, maybe?) wrench, push broom and part #4735 doing its best impression of a socket wrench, a pretty inspired part use seeing as a proper socket wrench piece, part #604615, wouldn't debut until 2013.
But along with these tools and the jack we'll see in a bit, there's one other tool that stands out for being completely brick-built.
This thing, made with a lever, part #298c02, and a 1x1 brick with handle, part #2921, is an example of some pretty clever parts use in the absence of a dedicated piece.
While I've personally never seen one in red, this is pretty obviously an oil can, and while it's not as fully-featured as the actual oil can element, part #55296, that released the following year along with the rest of the classic tool pieces, it works.
For a while there, just thanks to the color, I figured this thing was a long-nozzled gas can, not an oil can, since I've personally got a can that looks almost exactly like this, but the box and manual art set me straight on that one.
Now we move onto the vehicles, so let's get the not-rod out of the way first, just a black classic motorcycle and appropriate black helmet to go with it.
It's an odd inclusion for something called the Hot Rod Club, but I like to think this guy, in his big biker jacket and all, isn't much for driving the rods but is very into fixing up and tinkering with them, so he drives there on his bike.
Nobody ever said you had to have a hot rod to join the club, you've just gotta like 'em.
This sunshiney rod is not built on top of that old #4212b, instead built using part #4732, exclusive to this set in yellow. Brackety pieces like #4732 and #6087 are strange cases because they're very nearly POOPs (Part Out of Other Parts), since you could build them out of bricks and plates, but being a single solid piece provides a ton of rigidity, as it does for this model.
Hoisting up the front with the included jack, the sorely missed part #4629c01 that's unfortunately never been replaced and is rarely replicated with other parts, we can get a look at the front axle which for some reason has a pair of red studs underneath it.
I think they're supposed to be suspension, but their placement makes that a little questionable, still, they look pretty neat.
And of course there's the big beefy engine build, using red studs to either imply the block is red hot or is just painted to look cooler.
Coming around to the back, we have the final sticker of the set, a moody sunset with some rolling dunes and a pair of palm trees, very nice. Sadly this sticker is peeling up at one corner and is placed kind of askew, but otherwise it's in good shape considering it's been on there for thirty years.
The main issue comes from being on a curved surface, part #6081, though whoever placed the sticker initially could've always put it lower, mitigating most of the problem, but I'm a lot too late to tell anybody what to do now.
Besides the sticker, this hot rod features a pair of inverted 2x2 slopes and another side panel in black, and even some taillights unlike the Rebel Roadster. Now if there's a side panel back there, obviously the top assembly can't be in line with the rest of the studs, and it isn't.
The whole thing relies on the sunroof being able to rest on top of the windscreen, LEGO doesn't really have any modren equivalent parts to achieve the design seen here, click hinges have too little play and clips and bars would work only half as well.
But now our driver is comfortably in the cab, able to sit back thanks to the placement of the top, and even has ample hat space. This car really cuts a more unique silhouette compared to the other two rods, its shorter length but taller height, the completely different chassis design, the sloped rear and offset top, it's great.
And just like the Rebel Roadster, the driver can very easily see out the front windscreen, even with this one being taller.
Just in case you were wondering about that, I took pictures of the fronts of all three hot rods in these sets, and I'm gonna use them.
And here we are at the last hot rod, the biggest and the baddest of the bunch, this chrome-clad cruiser may share a lot of its basic design with the Rebel Roadster but it far surpasses it in several ways, and that's a high bar to jump.
Featuring an inversion of the black and red color scheme seen on the Rebel Roadster, this bad boy is is built in largely the same way, including the same black #4212b, but with a longer front end and adjusted rear axle, pushed back a stud to accommodate the gigantic chrome exhausts.
Parts #4466 and #4467 are some very rare elements, only appearing in a total of ten sets from 1983 to 2004, with their rarest variant being red in only one set, the Fabuland set 3826: Roger Raccoon and his Sports Car, which also served as the piece's debut. Surprisingly this element in chrome silver is no more rare than most of the other variants, appearing in three sets total, this and two Extreme Team sets in 1998, 2963: Extreme Team Racer and 6584: Extreme Team Challenge, not a bad run for such a coveted color.
The examples seen on my copy are in great shape for being a few decades old, no fading, no scuffs, no worn patches, they're as shiny as the day they were chromed, and I didn't even have to buff them!
Just like the other two hot rods we've already looked at, this one features the same big beefy engine design, along with the same radiator and headlights assembly. But of course, the big beefy engine is raised up by a quartet of 1x1 plates with clips to hold the enormous exhausts, and features grille pieces on either hinge brick instead of the studs seen on the others.
Also up front is a rounded section of hood just in front of the windscreen, made with a 1x2 tile and two of part #6091, making this hot rod's nose a whole stud longer than the others.
This rounded styling continues around back with the curved rear section, featuring some taillights just like the yellow rod but placed down below next to the back tires.
The soft top on this one has a very different assembly, making use of a pair of corner plates, part #2420, instead of a 2x4 plate for its base, and even features a rear window that matches the windscreen.
And you can see the ends of those enormous exhaust pipes, which just barely extend past the trunk.
Thanks to those corner plates I mentioned, this car's interior is even more spacious than the others, the driver having ample room to lean the seat back and get comfortable. Incidentally, this driver actually has a semi-official name, dubbed Scruffy Sam by this 1994 commercial, where he gets his bricks handed to him by the commercial's requisite LEGO Maniac, though I really think knocking his helicopter out of the sky to crash him is foul play. I guess it must've been illegal street/sea/air racing, no ref to call stuff out.
But even if Sam here was taken out by some nasty means, his car is still the coolest one, the color scheme, the chrome, the extra-long chassis and the red soft top make this a special one and obviously my favorite of the bunch even with the strengths of the others.
Though, kinda unfortunately, unlike the others the longer wheelbase required by the inclusion of the exhausts and the longer nose means that Sam can't quite see out the windscreen, but when you're in a rod this hot the only visibility you need is for onlookers, so they can get an eyeful of your magnificent machine as you cruise nice and slow.
And that's 6538: Rebel Roadster and 6561: Hot Rod Club, two of '94's finest and a couple of sets that are largely unequaled for their size and price. Like I said before, the former only has one set that even comes close and the latter... well, it's got a few sets like it, but still not as cool.
For example there's 2008's set 10200: Custom Car Garage from the LEGO Factory theme, a weird precursor to the Ideas theme that would debut as Cuusoo in 2011. The set features a lot of the same elements, it's a garage, it's got hot rod-like vehicles, but it's kind of... Well to use the term very derogatorily, MOC-ish, probably because that's exactly what it is. Everything looks very complex and very fragile, the amount of parts used to achieve very basic results is plain ugly, even if the designs are fairly impressive. Sleek roadsters those cars are not, mostly huge, lumpy and disjointed.
Moving onto 2020 there's set 60258: Tuning Workshop which features a garage and one hot rod, though it lacks a roof. Besides also being a garage and even featuring an enormous and ugly brick-built jack, the similarities are pretty slim, though the tiny trailer does have a fridge with nearly identical bottles in it, just with 1x1 round tiles on top of them for bottlecaps. It's certainly got more play features than the Hot Rod Club, with its sliding garage door and working shop crane for hoisting engines, but being a tuning workshop rather than just for hot rods, it's not quite on the mark.
Lastly there's 2023's 60389: Custom Car Garage, a repeat name for a not repeat set, but is the furthest from Hot Rod Club thematically, featuring only a pair of cars with mix-and-matchable front and rear ends. But even less like Hot Rod Club, it's presumably an interior, just an inside to a building you've got to imagine exists around it, with a drafting table, tool rack and some... spinny example pictures, I guess, it's all indoors, away from the warmth of the sun and the haze of the oil, all very neat and clean and professional, unlike the hobbyists of the club, it hasn't even got a cooler for cold ones!
So like I said before; 6538: Rebel Roadster and 6561: Hot Rod Club are unmatched in terms of size and quality, designs that've stood the test of time with pieces from a bygone era of LEGO. These cars could probably be outdone with modren building techniques and bricks, but not at the size and certainly not for the price, the days of getting such a complete set for less than thirty bucks is mostly behind us, and we definitely don't get cars and dudes this cool for that price point anymore.
But rather than end on this low note, I'll just ask a question; why are the sunroofs for the cars in Hot Rod Club transparent dark blue instead of transparent light blue like the one on the Rebel Roadster?
We may never know.
Comments
Post a Comment