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If there were any way that the Volkswagen Type 2 Camper Van could be made more loveable, it would be to build one out of Lego. Well, good news, someone has...
Rene Hoffmeister, one of only twelve officially certified Lego model makers in the world, has done just that and the fruits of his labour (aided by his colleague Pascal Lenhard) are on show at the f.re.e leisure and travel fair in Munich.
The Lego T2 Camper has been made to full size, so the overall length of the model is more than five metres. It weighs a whopping 700kg (not far off what the real thing would weigh) and has been made form more than 400,000 Lego bricks. And it very nearly wasn't made at all...
As with any major project, this one hit a crisis point when it turned out that they were missing 20,000 transparent bricks for the T2's windows and their supplies dried up without warning. "Essentially, we would have needed a 9-day week", recalls Hoffmeister. "However, as they don't exist, the only option was night shifts." Hoffmeister and Lenhard, therefore, carried on 'playing' with their Lego bricks from morning to night and over the weekends in order to still finish it in time for the trade fair.
The Lego T2 features a full set of interior fixtures and fittings, a Lego-ised version of the ever-popular pop-up 'Westphalia' camping roof, and even a working sliding side door, which Hoffmeister said was the hardest part of the car to create.
Hoffmeister and Lenhard's Lego creation is available to view at the trade fair until the 24th of February and sits just down the hall from real, modern-day Volkswagen camper vans, which are also on display at the show. Those ones aren't made from Lego. As far as we know.