-World War II KitsA rare Mercedes taken by an Allied soldier from a German industrialist jailed for supplying the Nazis is set to sell for £6million following an international legal battle. The 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500K Special Roadster was found on the estate of industrialist Hans Prym after he was jailed at the end of the Second World War in 1945. The car was transported to America, where it spent the next 66 years before being sold for £2.9million to a Dutch collector. But when new owner Frans van Haren took the vehicle to a show in Germany, it was seized by local authorities. Prym’s grandchildren alleged the car had been stolen from him and the German courts agreed. The family has now put the Mercedes up for sale at Bonhams, who have valued it at £5.95million. Philip Kantor, the auction house's European head of motoring, said: “This incredible motor car is finally back in the hands of its rightful owners. “It’s no surprise that the 500K appealed to Hans Prym, who was a highly successful industrialist.
“It represents the pinnacle of 1930s automotive technology and is one of only 29 of its type produced. “The vehicle is vast, stately, and incredibly powerful, it was only possessed by the elite. “It’s in magnificent condition and we certainly expect strong bidding.” The disputed claim of ownership hinged on the 30-year statute of limitation rule. This means someone who says they own an object must come forward within three decades. Officials in Germany decided that because the Mercedes spent its post-war years overseas, the 30 year period restarted when it touched German soil. This sparked a legal case between Mr van Haren and the Prym family, which went in favour of the descendants of the original owner. It is not known if Mr van Haren has ended up out of pocket as a consequence of the case. Hans Prym, who died in 1965 aged 90, ran the oldest family business in Germany, which for 12 generations produced haberdashery, copper, and brass products. During the war, the company made turbine blades and other military-related materials for the German government but he never personally joined the Nazi party.
The Mercedes 500K Special Roadster is considered to be one of the greatest performance cars of the 1930s. Between 1934 and 1936, only 342 of the 500K’s were manufactured - of which only 29 were Special Roadsters. The two-door convertible has a five-litre engine and can reach speeds of up to 100mph. The vehicle was hidden from the Nazis during the war years on Prym’s estate on Stolberg, near Cologne. It was liberated by an unknown US serviceman and shipped to the States. The vintage motor will be sold by Bonhams in Chantilly, France, on September 3.This page is updated once an hour. It was last updated on Mar 1, 2017 08:17 and took 29,845.5600 seconds to generate.Come Play With Us! Bricks & Minifigs® is your one-stop LEGO® shop! We are the largest toy store of our kind, specializing in only new and used LEGO® items. We buy and trade all things LEGO®, from tubs of bulk to storage unit sized collections. If it’s LEGO®, we’ll take it!!Enjoy our selection of individual minifigs, bulk bricks, components and accessories.
With the largest assortment of new, used and retired sets we keep your collection growing! Bricks & Minifigs is built on the principle of the 3 R'sREBUILD with thousands of pieces to choose from ensuring you'll have those childhood sets rebuilt in no time.REUSE is our way or saying that we buy, sell and trade anything Lego brand and pay top dollar for it.REIMAGINE those sets you get from us by creating your own masterpiece straight from your imagination.The Hawker Typhoon, known by the RAF as Tiffy for short, was a British single-seat fighter-bomber, produced by Hawker Aircraft during World War II. Einon‘s LEGO version of the Typhoon features a fully retractable landing gear and carries eight rockets under the wings and two bombs. The real life bomber had a few design issues but Einon has managed to iron out some of these in his minifigure-scale version. The brick-built propeller is a good solution for sizing on this model but the invasion stripes on the upper wing surfaces and fuselage seal this as an accurate wartime Typhoon.
Einon has made a short video that not only shares more details about the Typoon, but also demonstrates his version’s retractable landing gear and how swooshable this LEGO bomber can be.Tell all your friends! Master aircraft builder Maelven has built some unique and historically accurate planes, but perhaps none are as eye-catching as his newest build, the Focke Wulf Ta 152 H-1. Designed by famed aeronautical engineer Kurt Tank, the Ta 152 was a last ditch effort by the Luftwaffe during the closing days of the Third Reich to combat the high-altitude bombers deployed by the Allies. Although only a handful were built the Ta 152 proved itself as a capable interceptor and among the fastest piston-driven fighters of the war. The long nose and superbly sleek design which characterized this butcher bird are created expertly here in LEGO form. The builder chose to adorn this particular model with the red-orange paint scheme used by Luftwaffe ace Fritz Aufhammer. Legend says Aufhammer adorned his plane in such colors to notify trigger-happy Flak crews that this strange and unfamiliar aircraft was actually on their side.
The Ta 152 is seen here in the process of being maintained and refitted. The exposed engine compartment is a nice touch, and along with the other details, really helps to bring this build to life. Most LEGO Sherman tanks we’ve featured here on The Brothers Brick over the years have been smaller minifig-scale versions, like the 1/35 Brickmania Sherman tank that’s inspired so many others (my own included). In contrast, Tommy Styrvoky has followed up his 1/18-scale motorized LEGO Sherman “Crab” tank with one inspired by the movie Fury. Click through to see all of this tank’s working features As we begin ramping up over the next few weeks toward our alternate WW2 LEGO display at BrickCon here in Seattle, I’ve been keeping an eye out for inspirational builds, and this “Dingo” Combat Walker by SweStar certainly fits the bill. The feet look like the “toes” are powered by pistons, and the mech’s head is festooned with enough doodads for a naval ship’s bridge.
I particularly like the judicious use of stickers and yellow LEGO pieces. Maarten W is proving himself the master of the LEGO street scene. We’ve previously featured his Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and desert market creations, but this WWII-inspired diorama is his best yet. It’s a recreation of the moments when Allied forces liberated the Dutch town of Venlo on 1st March 1945. The damaged buildings are beautifully done, giving a sense of what the townsfolk must have endured as the battle raged around them. Maarten has included numerous small vignettes throughout his diorama, such as the American GIs interacting with the survivors. The details of the left-hand house are particularly poignant — the remnants of the upper-floor telling a tale of shattered domesticity. And whilst I’m not a “dog person” myself, even I can appreciate the message of hope for the future as one of the townspeople finds his pet amidst the ruins. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve reviewed the custom LEGO kits designed by Dan Siskind of Brickmania.
Back in 2013, I reviewed the Dodge WC54 Ambulance, and writing those reviews really got me started in building World War II models seriously. In the meantime, Dan and his team have continued to release new custom kits, on a near-weekly cadence. One of Dan’s recent Brickmania releases is the M3A1 Scout Car, produced by the White Motor Company between 1940 and 1944. The vehicle served throughout WW2, and its basic design served as the basis of the iconic M3 Half-track. Like some of the custom kits I reviewed back in 2013, the M3A1 Scout Car is a WW2 vehicle I also built back in 2014, so I’ll be comparing Dan’s version with my own. Click through to read the full review There are a lot of LEGO models of the Vaught F4U Corsair out there, but none of them are as shiny as this one. This WW2 Pacific carrier workhorse has never been so dark or brooding. I generally think of the Corsair as being dark blue, but apparently they were also available in black. Marcus Schultz was the designer, and his use of high-contrast waterslide decals really brings the model together.
Along with the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, the B-25 Mitchell with its iconic twin tail fins is one of my favorite World War II aircraft. As more and more LEGO elements have become available in dark green, nelsoma84 and Florida Shooter have been collaborating on a design for the venerable bomber. Here’s nelsoma84’s Mitchell in its Pacific Theater gunship role with the “Air Apaches” of the 345th Bombardment Wing. The builder says that the eagle-head nose — here with its ferocious complement of .50 caliber machine guns (there were 18 total on the airplane!) — is modular, and can be swapped out for a clear nose. And here’s his collaborator’s version, the blue-nosed 499th Bomber Squadron version. Jon Hall has built an amazing replica of a great dieselpunk dogfighter design by Jake Parker, and it has me soaring through the air with joy. This build is so detailed, the colors are perfect, the wing shapes are amazing, and even the details with decals are superb.
As a fan of planes — real or fictional — this model hits all the right spots. Congratulations Jon, you made made me badly yearn to swoosh this plane. The current Iron Builder battle has been producing some fantastic builds and the latest entry by David Hensel is definitely one of my favourites. The Enigma machine built by David is a LEGO replica of the German military model used during and after the Second World War. The Enigma machine is a combination of mechanical and electrical subsystems. The mechanical subsystem consists of a keyboard; in David’s model this is the main area using the Iron Builder seed part, the Fencer’s Foil. There are also a set of rotating disks called rotors (Technic Gear 24 Tooth Crown) arranged adjacently along a spindle, and a method of ‘stepping’ to turn at least one rotor with each key press (1×1 round tiles). David, can you just whip up a quick LEGO British Bombe to help decipher your LEGO Enigma machine please? James Cherry has posted images of his beautiful F-4J Phantom II which I highlighted as my “Best In Show” in the roundup of BRICK2015 in London.
The model is 1.2m long, contains around 6,000 pieces, and took James nearly 5 months to design and build. But beyond the impressive scale and the lovely custom stickering, it’s the smooth curves and the shaping of the various sections which make this creation stand out for me. I also really like the handful of studs left exposed, creating a feel of riveted panels around the intakes. James managed to squeeze no less than 5 Power Functions motors inside the model, allowing the rudder and various flaps to be operated using a remote control. It was very cool to see these features “in the brick” in London last weekend, and I wasn’t alone in thinking it was a highlight of the show. Carl Greatrix – one of the best LEGO plane modelers around – spent ages examining this creation and pronounced it “Bloody good”. I’d heartily recommend a visit to James’ Flickr photostream to check out all the details of this amazing model in the close-up images, as well as photos of his beautiful custom-chrome P-51 Mustang model.
As the grandson of an American World War II veteran who was born and raised in Japan, I have a rather complicated relationship with the Pacific War in World War II. From Nanjing to Bataan, there’s no denying the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese military against both the peoples of fellow Asian nations as well as Allied prisoners of war, and yet I feel deep sympathy for the genuine suffering that the people of Japan experienced themselves — from the firebombing of my hometown Tokyo to burning Okinawan civilians alive as they hid in caves. The end of World War II could not come soon enough, and Japan’s surrender ensured that my GI grandfather did did not get shipped from Hawaii across the Pacific to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands. To commemorate this important event 70 years ago today, Dan Siskind has built the American battleship USS Missouri, which was the venue in Tokyo Harbor for Japan’s surrender. At 26 feet long, Dan’s “Mighty Mo” is the largest LEGO warship ever made (four feet longer than Jumpei Mitsui’s Yamato).