Review: 40532 Vintage Taxi

I like fact its quite easy to build.

I still had been holding off the order of the Boutique Hotel modular. Partially because I still think it looks a bit undersized next to previous modulars ; at least in the pictures I have seen so far.
But also because I have been waiting for a nice GWP to go with it, like last years "vintage car".
Of course the threshold for the GWP is high, but it is in line with this years modular which price also raised from 170-ish to 200 euro.
And to my surprise, I also get the Year of the Tiger GWP on top of it...
Sometimes patience is a virtue... :)

This is great. Loving the colour scheme. It takes me back to a yesteryear favourite of 603-3. And definitely a bit of a bonus having the tiger still available!

The threshold seems to be 199,99€, actually (in Germany at least). I got it and the Tiger with a mere boutique hotel order. It is also added to the cart when I only put the BMW technic bike in it (same price). Putting sets for 199,98 into the cart (sonic+city of lanterns) and only the Year of the Tiger shows up.

As for the taxi itself, 4 wide windscreen on a 6+ wide base looks really odd to me, and I had told myself last year after buying too much stuff I didn't need* that I should stop chasing GWPs, but oh well... I wanted the boutique hotel anyway.

*And that was for Amelia Earhart - an excellent set (also, more parts at a lower spending threshold)

[Edit] just when I thought I had seen most quirks of the Lego shop... I got a confirmation email that showed a higher total than the website showed on checkout, replied to that mail (to reply @lego.com!) asking what's going on, then got an auto-reply saying "you don't have permission to send to it.
Ask the recipient's email admin to add you to the accept list for the recipient." :crazy:

@Lamarider said:
"I mean, Lego has heard of exchange rates, no?
They do know the difference between a dollar and a pound in value?"

But that's not quite how it works. You have to compare cost of living as well. It's mostly identical between Canada and the US, hence why the exhange rate is mostly followed, but it is NOT the same once you cross the big Atlantic pond. You absolutely need to assume that 1$ = 1€, otherwise you start bleeding from the eyes, nose and ears... Same goes for the UK and Australia, although Brexit and the massive cost of extra freight to reach the Australian cousins definitely affect the price dynamic.

It's a high threshold but the globe comes out Monday and it is $199. Think of it more as a free taxi with purchase of the globe and it doesn't feel as bad.

Pretty nice but very simple, almost City-like. Well if it wasn't for the unusual large amount of 1x1 plates that all have to be lined up, no less than 26 in a 144 piece car!

I think the front looks odd with the two pairs of headlights (?), one of which is supposed to be directed upwards (??) and the tiny bumper. The upper headlights certainly look better the way you positioned them.

As seen on the back of the box the driver has to lean back, but I guess that's an okay trade-off for having some space between him and a prospective passenger plus luggage space at the back (neither of which the 76178 Daily Bugle taxi has).

Lego confirmed that Lego City is located near Barcelona or Buenos Aires.

Very nice and interesting taxi, by the way. To bad the threshold to get one here will be very pricey.

@Yergs said:
"$279 on the Lego website in Australia, if you go to a certified Lego store you get to pay 99 cents more at $279.99 minimum spend.
This is a bit over the top, I was saving up some of the kids sets to get this for myself but had to buy a $90 set to hit this stupid threshold. "

Agree, I thought we were looking at $200 here so picked some sets (which took a long time as there wasn't much that was calling to be bought) and then to be told it is $280. I did the reverse used that gap to get a set for my daughter. It would have been much easier if my son wasn't in his dark ages.

The steering wheel sits under the windscreen too so there's room, first time I've seen that.

Since everything that I want, and that would meet the jaw dropping spend threshold, is out-of-stock I thought I'd finally pull the trigger on 10278 Police Station. I've been collecting the Modular Series for several years and will need to pick it up eventually. Nope! Out-of-stock as well. So, do I toss the remains of my treasured Christmas funds on several Kinda Want To Have sets, rather than a Must Have set, just to get a free GWP that i Really Want? Nah... Ball's in your court LTG. Come at me bro's.

@ab21 said:
"The threshold seems to be 199,99€, actually (in Germany at least). I got it and the Tiger with a mere boutique hotel order. It is also added to the cart when I only put the BMW technic bike in it (same price). Putting sets for 199,98 into the cart (sonic+city of lanterns) and only the Year of the Tiger shows up.

As for the taxi itself, 4 wide windscreen on a 6+ wide base looks really odd to me, and I had told myself last year after buying too much stuff I didn't need* that I should stop chasing GWPs, but oh well... I wanted the boutique hotel anyway.

*And that was for Amelia Earhart - an excellent set (also, more parts at a lower spending threshold)

[Edit] just when I thought I had seen most quirks of the Lego shop... I got a confirmation email that showed a higher total than the website showed on checkout, replied to that mail (to reply @lego.com!) asking what's going on, then got an auto-reply saying "you don't have permission to send to it.
Ask the recipient's email admin to add you to the accept list for the recipient." :crazy:"

Lego has an automatically generated email system for the shop and can only send, not receive. You will have to contact customer service in order to talk to them, on phone or email.

I think it's a great little set.

Why is the front bumper so small compared to the back? I need to add orange round tiles as indicators in front on the mirrors, and replace the grey tiles under the bonnet with black tiles to give the impression of a square bonnet. Then may try to redesign the trunk to open for luggage!

I was able to get the taxi GWP with only a Bricks and Pieces purchase. Definitely an alternative to shopping in the U.S. store which is pretty empty (as pointed out above). Also, the Monkie Kid and Tiger GWPs sold out weeks ago in the U.S.

Yet, now I can stage my own Huw review photos and see how many $1.80 BnP sheep can fit in the taxi?

This doesn't make sense as a taxi without two minifigs.

@MrClassic:
It does not have two sets of headlights. It has one set of headlights, and one set of fog lamps. Modern cars do high-beam/low-beam with a dual-filament bulb (unless they have LED headlights, in which case I don’t know how they work). The filaments are positioned so the reflector will bounce the light far in the distance, or really close. Older cars actually switched between two different fixtures, because driving with regular headlights in the fog reduces visibility for the driver by basically just lighting up the fog in front of the car. Fog lamps were set really low on the car so they could shine under the fog, or at least where it was less dense. On these older body styles, they were also often tinted, which was probably supposed to help cut down on how much the fog would reflect back at the driver. I think yellow might have been a common color, but you can definitely see fog lamps mounted inside the front bumper of Ecto-1 in the original Ghostbusters, and they have a distinct blue tint when they’re turned off.

@sjr60 said:
"This is great. Loving the colour scheme. It takes me back to a yesteryear favourite of 603-3 . And definitely a bit of a bonus having the tiger still available!"

What about 608-2 ??

I’m happy. Wouldn’t spend the money just for this but I’ve been waiting for a good GWP to order the police station and mobile crane - threw in a few extras and got the tiger GWP, taxi and flowers and chocs.

@PurpleDave said:
"It does not have two sets of headlights. It has one set of headlights, and one set of fog lamps."
I was actually thinking that the lower ones could be fog lights or similar, but with the same transparent pieces used and the exact same horizontal position I think it looks just odd. Now the 1x1 round plate is not available in trans black but the 1x1 round tile is, might be an option for the lower ones (I think trans yellow would probably stand out too much).

Looking closer it's the lower lights that ever so slightly restrict the length of the ridiculously short front bumper. Swapping them to tiles would make no difference, they'd need to be moved back or up. Or removed.

I quite like it, but there are a few things that bug me:
- Those big flowing fenders...and then a second set of smaller fenders on those.
- Wheels look too small, wide and deep for a classic car.
- And while I don't really mind the windscreen on the front, having another one on the back looks weird. Classic cars never had so much glass, especially in the back.

As a whole, these elements make me think more of some modern retro car designed to look classic (something like Mitsuoka would do....) than a true classic car. Not bad, but it could really benefit from a few modifications.

The nominal price of the set is £13.49: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/vintage-taxi-40532

@bigmanjones:
608-2 is a child-sized roller skate.

To me it's quite clearly based on a Bugatti Type 57 Ventoux, which exist in this color scheme but i hardly doubt one of this fancy car has ever been used as a taxi :o)

Clearly meant to go with the Modular Hotel, but more expensive than it....why,

And then the modular is in backorder as well..

@sickboy276 said:
"To me it's quite clearly based on a Bugatti Type 57 Ventoux, which exist in this color scheme but i hardly doubt one of this fancy car has ever been used as a taxi :o)"

It's based on the Citroën Traction Avant in the Barcelona Taxi color scheme.
https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/coches-a-escala-1-18/tc/2014/12/20/21/46869631.jpg

The POV of this set is around 25€. There are no exclusive parts other than the torso I think.

Good review! It's definitely charming and a beautiful match for nostalgic vibes of the Modular Buildings Collection. The only other set I remember with old-school curved fenders like this was 70911, and needless to say that was at a far more exaggerated scale! It's a great demonstration of how useful the 1x3 inverted arch can be for automotive detailing.

And while the curbside scenery would take some modification to work into a Modular Building layout, the use of Medium Stone Grey curbstones and Dark Stone Grey paving stones seems like deliberate invitation for builders to make those modifications. The signal lamp/sign marking the taxi stop makes a great new type of street furniture to add to a layout, and uses common enough parts that it can be easily be duplicated to create additional stops for a larger layout.

I suspect the driver sharing parts with some earlier minifigures in Modular Building sets (e.g. the cook's face from Downtown Diner, the leather jacket from Corner Garage, and the cap from the Police Station) is nothing more than coincidence. As I see it, of the various minifigure parts in production currently, these ones just happen to be particularly appropriate for working-class characters in this time period.

@darthnorman said:
"I mean, Lego has door pieces, why not use them?

Other than that it looks nice and works together very well with the modulars from the last years."

Yeah, I don't think there's any way that the standard LEGO vehicle doors would really work with this model's proportions or curved bodywork. You'd have to extensively redesign both the interior and exterior to line the doors up with the gap between the front and back windscreens AND keep them from colliding with either the occupants' arms on the inside or the fenders on the outside. It'd be more trouble than it's worth for a set like this one.

In fact, it's pretty telling that these days most LEGO vehicles that use the traditional vehicle door pieces are trucks and vans with tall windscreens and deliberately "boxy" designs. Those doors were designed for a time when those traits were standard for pretty much all LEGO road vehicles, even if the proportions were wildly inaccurate to their real-life counterparts.

But beginning in the 90s, LEGO road vehicle design standards started to change. Many road vehicles started using shorter windscreens with a more gradual slope and longer side windows, like the one in this set (which was originally introduced for airplanes, not cars or trucks). And pretty much right off the bat, it started creating problems for those classic door pieces.

Case in point: look at the van designs from 1687 or 6345. Both still use the old 1x3 vehicle doors, but because of the shape and size of the windscreen, the minifigure can't possibly exit the vehicle via the side doors, only by lifting the roof!

As design standards have continued to change and evolve — such as with molded wheel arches and curved elements becoming more ubiquitous on LEGO vehicles — the practicality of those traditional door pieces has diminished further and further.

It was only the uniformity of '80s LEGO Town vehicles that made one-size-fits-all vehicle doors like that viable to begin with. And no matter what changes the future has in store for LEGO City vehicle designs, I don't think they will ever go back to designs as repetitive/generic as those ones were.

@bigmanjones said:
" @sjr60 said:
"This is great. Loving the colour scheme. It takes me back to a yesteryear favourite of 603-3 . And definitely a bit of a bonus having the tiger still available!"

What about 608-2 ??"
I'd gone dark age by then... 603-3 was 6/6 of my pocket money!

I find the inconsistency between modular cars very strange. The diner gets one where two people could sit side by side, but then the garage gets something like you’d find in City. I know this GWP isn’t a defacto modular set, but it’s a pity it isn’t wider. I’d always hoped we might get something like ER0L’s fantastic designs to buy one day. (I wish I could figure out how to reverse engineer some of those. Alas…)

As a modular buildings 'enthusiast', I feel compelled to get this set for my collection. Despite the high buy-in, I made a purchase today. Feed the beast.

@MisterBrickster said:
" @kenjr24 said:
"How much will this sell for on the secondary market? Like if someone just wanted to buy it and not spend 200 dollars right now. "

I'd wager about £50, based on the sailboat going for £30-35 with a lower purchase threshold. Whether that would map directly to USD I have no idea. Lego seems to think prices should. I also expect that a lot of people wanting the set without wanting to spend £200 will drive the price up even more."

I am seeing them locally for C$50.

Why the bloody hell couldn't this have been included with the Boutique Hotel?

The coffee stand made no sense, a random coffee stand isn't really the sort of thing that is outside luxury hotels usually, and looked like a side build from a $20 Creator set.

Get rid of that silly art gallery which also made no sense (a full art gallery modular would have been much better, and could have included some more Lego versions of famous art, like the Mona Lisa for example).

In fact, just the stairs and upper bar area would probably have done to 'sacrifice' parts. The taxi looks awesome, it's so nice getting vintage cars in Lego (and we rarely ever get them) so it's very annoying that they are all GWP these days.

For those of you that hate vehicles in modular sets (there have only been three so I don't understand what all the whinging is about), I would like to know how this taxi would have 'completely ruined' Boutique Hotel, had it been included?

Because the fact is, we didn't get a vehicle, but we still only got three rooms! The Bookstore didn't have a vehicle, and yet the bookstore interior (both bottom and upper floors) was still lacking.

On the other hand, the Downtown Diner included a car, but was fully detailed and I see no areas where it was lacking, apart from maybe another booth (which couldn't fit anyway due to the ground floor design). Therefore all arguments that 'vehicles take pieces away from the build' are null and void.

I have missed out on 5 GWP so far. After a number of phone calls and harassing Lego stores I may have managed to get myself one, but I'll wait until it's in my hands before I celebrate. Australian Lego stores never have enough stock, and sometimes don't even get some GWPs at all.

Lego should just release these as regular sets. The price needed to get this is ridiculous, $279.99 AU is a LOT of money, and would only really be spent on a modular or some other 18+ set (which people are usually going to buy anyway). Personally I would just get rid of GWP all together, because so many people miss out on sets they want
1. We don't own teleporters to just appear in the Lego store the moment the GWP is out
2. We aren't made of money so we can't be spending hundreds of dollars to get a little set like this 3. Thanks to the death of the Lego store calendar no one can plan anymore to get GWP.

As for the car itself, it looks great, I love that it is based on a Citroen Avant (one of my favourite cars of that era) and it also proves the usefulness of that new inverted slope piece, which I immediately recognised as perfect for vintage car fenders when it first appeared in Police Station.

However, only one minifig? That's a plain rip off. The vintage car, sailboat etc. all had 2 minifigs. A driver and a passenger is not that much to ask. Especially given the price needed to get this.

Also, the 'taxi' aspect of this is very lame. While I appreciate the ability to have this as a regular yellow and black car, surely Lego could have included a couple of TAXI stickers for the side, and a better roof sign. Lights on the top are very historically inaccurate, and make this look like its trying to be a construction vehicle of some sort.

Finally, the bumper bar looks really bad. Surely that could have been continued along the entire front of the car. I build vintage cars like this all the time, and never exclude a bumper bar for the front and back. The smallest bumper I've used is a lightsaber bar piece.

I really don't mind that it only comes with one minifigure. I already have enough citizens in my town that need rides and don't need a dedicated rider.

@Aanchir:
https://www.imcdb.org/v244268.html

I’ve long been wanting to make Abby Sciuto’s 5-window Ford from NCIS, but I’ve never liked any of the solutions I’ve seen for that style of front fender. I think I came up with something that would work for the back, and this might give me a starting point to make the front ones.

Looks good, LEGO should use the basic build to make a 1940s Batmobile.

I’m having regrets getting the boutique hotel when it released.

@craiggrannell said:
"I find the inconsistency between modular cars very strange. The diner gets one where two people could sit side by side, but then the garage gets something like you’d find in City. I know this GWP isn’t a defacto modular set, but it’s a pity it isn’t wider. I’d always hoped we might get something like ER0L’s fantastic designs to buy one day. (I wish I could figure out how to reverse engineer some of those. Alas…)"

I think if this taxi or the tow truck from the Corner Garage were wider, it would feel out of proportion with the other buildings and vehicles in the Modular Buildings Collection. After all, the car in the Downtown Diner set is modeled on the huge luxury cars of the 1960s that were colloquially known as "land yachts" for how massive they were — it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for a set like this one to be even wider !

And I think a big part of why LEGO was able to work side-by-side seating into those earlier vehicles in the Modular Buildings Collection is that they were vehicle types with no roof, no side windows, and either flat side walls or none at all! All these factors made it quite a bit easier for them to deal with the minifigure's awkward, unwieldy proportions.

But none of those workarounds would not be applicable to the Vintage Taxi, which appears to be inspired by the Checker Taxi Model Y from the 1930s, or to the Corner Garage's truck, which seems to be inspired by Ford F100 pickup tow trucks of the mid-1940s. Both these vehicle models are characterized by a narrow hood/bonnet and cab with wider fenders and running boards on either side — which at this scale leaves no room for a front passenger seat.

And truth be told, even at the standard of detail we've come to expect in adult-targeted sets like the Modular Buildings Collection, there's a LOT of stuff even in the buildings alike that gets "condensed" in one way or another due to the practical limitations of the scale.

For instance, Grand Emporium should realistically have separate "up" and "down" escalators. Palace Cinema's auditorium has woefully limited seating. Downtown Diner has no refrigerator or cabinets for ingredients, no cash register for customers' payments, and no sink or dishwasher. And a lot of the sets (even residential ones) don't have any bathrooms!

So I suppose the same is to be expected with vehicles at this scale, given how much less space they offer for all the sorts of details we'd expect them to have in real life, seating included. Thankfully, the designer of this particular set was able to leave room for a passenger and their luggage in the back seat, which is the bare minimum it needs to function as a taxicab. But I'm sure it's no easy task to find the right balance between those sort of practical features and aesthetic refinements, particularly since Modular Building enthusiasts like us have come to expect so much of both!

It seems a lot of people don't understand the purpose of a GWP- that is, to encourage a purchase! TLG knows some of us will buy some sets Day One; there's no need to give us anything else. The GWP is incentive for other people to buy.
And this might not be the only way to get this taxi- two days ago, I saw the 40491 Year of the Tiger in a hobby store at $10.99. So maybe the taxi will show up elsewhere, too.

Every taxi I've ever rode in, we had to ride in the back behind the driver unless there were more than 3 persons sharing the ride. So not bothered at all that this is a two-seater front-to-back.

@Aanchir:
I’ve been making 6-wide cars since 2006-2007. Side windows and minifig arms don’t get along, but I’ve never had problems with adding a roof. I can do bucket seats with a center stickshift, bench seats, RWD driveshaft with transmission and rear differential, gas cap, windshield wipers, adjustable headrests, and even a working rumble seat. Running boards can be faked with rail plates, which don’t stick out any farther than the fenders used on this car. All but my Pixar Cars cars, some of my Batmobiles, and my 1960’s Ford Good Humor truck (which doesn’t have them in real life) have working doors, but I’ve been considering other options because the 1x3x2 car doors really do limit your color options.

@darkstonegrey:
In Mexico, before their use was banned, the original VW Beetle was still produced until 2003 due to demand for cheap taxis. They usually resulted in a front-seat passenger. Even if there was only one passenger, it’s a 2-door car with a tiny back seat, so climbing into the back was difficult for most, and impossible for many. Even climbing into the front passenger seat was impossible for people of a certain height or girth.

On our return from Alaska, my parents and I caught a taxi back to their house, where I’d left my car. The driver arrived in a minivan with no rear bench, twin single seats in the middle row, and a center console up front. Unless I wanted to sit on the floor, I had to ride shotgun.

@PurpleDave said:
" @darkstonegrey:
In Mexico, before their use was banned, the original VW Beetle was still produced until 2003 due to demand for cheap taxis. They usually resulted in a front-seat passenger. Even if there was only one passenger, it’s a 2-door car with a tiny back seat, so climbing into the back was difficult for most, and impossible for many. Even climbing into the front passenger seat was impossible for people of a certain height or girth.

On our return from Alaska, my parents and I caught a taxi back to their house, where I’d left my car. The driver arrived in a minivan with no rear bench, twin single seats in the middle row, and a center console up front. Unless I wanted to sit on the floor, I had to ride shotgun."

I only ride in real taxis, if someone pulled up in a two seater van I'd be getting my gun out. Owned and drove a yellow 1975 VW Beetle for several years, drove it down to Mexico in fact, no one tried to get in when I was at a stop tho.

@darkstonegrey:
Are you from NYC? They’ve got a standardized taxi, probably due largely to the purchase of used Police Interceptors. The NYC taxi medallion system forces standardized yellow color schemes, the taxis all have dividers between the front and back seats, and the use of taxis is a way of life there. Or was, before a bunch of Uber, Lyft, and whatever else drivers started clogging up the roads looking to make a couple bucks over the wear and tear on their cars, and the cost of keeping the tank full of gas.

In Metro Detroit, nearly anyone who isn’t a kid, too poor to own a car, unable to legally drive (blind, prone to seizures), or just visiting drives. Detroit proper is just under half the size of NYC, with a population that’s about 1/15th the size. It’s got one of the lowest skylines of any major city in the US. Detroit residents mostly use the bus system, and people in the suburbs mostly drive. Taxis aren’t really a familiar site around here. You can’t just hail a cab without waiting hours, maybe days, unless you’re stepping out of a DTW airport terminal (the cabs just line up after dropping people off, and front of the line gets the next fare). Individual cab companies have their own livery, and some of them look like they were painted with a brush (those tend to have “TAXI” and a phone number written on the door with those little rectangular stickers you use to mark your house number and family name on streetside mailboxes).

The minivan we rode back in had four seats, all captain-style, in two rows. The third-row bench was removed to make room for luggage. I believe the driver owned the vehicle, and just signed up with a cab company to provide dispatching in exchange for a cut of his fares. He was an immigrant from Africa, who got in on the lottery system I believe, and I remember we talked about the differences in laws regarding elephant ivory (illegal to trade pretty much anywhere under international law, unless it’s antique) and Alaskan ivory (illegal to collect or carve if it’s fresh, unless you’re of Eskimo descent, but legal for everyone if it’s antique).

As for your yellow Beetle, I’m guessing there were no markings on it identifying it as a taxi?

@yellost said:
"I like it, it reminds me a lot of the designs of the cars in the Indiana Jones set 7682."
It also reminds of SDCC2015-3: Action Comics 1 Superman:
https://brickset.com/sets/SDCC2015-3/Action-Comics-1-Superman