Designing The Land Rover: An Interview With Terry Fisher

We know you don't see much LEGO Ideas stuff on BrickNerd, this is intentional. If we tried to hype every project that we get notified about we'd be nothing but a LEGO Ideas website, and that already exists. But when a project joins the 10k club, that's worth celebrating. BrickNerd's Jim Walsh recently caught up with the Land Rover designer Terry Fisher and chatted with him about the project.

BrickNerd: Tell us about yourself
Terry Fisher: We are Dadandlad (Terry and Ben) a father and son team who love to do things together and as a family with my wife Linda. I have an engineering background and have always loved to build things or tinker. My son Ben age 11 is at High School and as with all boys loves his LEGO of which he has built up a bit of a collection.

BN: How long have you been building, and did you have a dark age away from LEGO?
TF: I used to play with LEGO as a child with my two brothers, building something from our imagination as we had a tub of LEGO and no actual sets to build. After that I had a break from LEGO but when Ben came along I got interested again and it really kicked off again when I had some time off sick.  I tidied up Ben's LEGO, the imagination started again and building commenced.

Legolandrover

BN:  How did the Land Rover MOC start?  What inspired you, and why the Land Rover?
TF: The Land Rover MOC started when I was discovering new LEGO elements from my sons collection, and I built a V8 (Rover) engine. Ben suggested building a vehicle to put the engine in, we then made a list of vehicles that had the engine fitted one being a Land Rover. Then we noticed LEGO don't make a large scale 4X4 in the creator range, and we said we just need to do this and the idea was born.

BN: Are there variants you are especially proud of?
TF: We have made a number of different variants all of which I am proud of for different reasons, but especially proud of the Black Defender version as it's a copy of a friend's Defender who helped me through a bad time. The White Land Rover is Ben's favourite as he helped customise that. But at times I wish we still had the first one we made, all multicoloured from Ben's LEGO collection.

Lego Land Rover (24 of 24).jpg

BN: How did you set about gathering supporters for the project?
TF: At first it was family and friends and it seemed impossible, but then we had flyers made up and attended a Land Rover show where the response was amazing. Then there was our first LEGO show, the Yorkshire Brick show, which was a fantastic experience. This led to us attending event after event, both LEGO and 4X4 events but the one that was extra special was the invite to Jaguar LandRover's launch of the new Discovery with the record breaking LEGO bridge.

BN: What are the next steps?
TF: The Land Rover is now in review until May/June and out of our hands, so we wait anxiously for the results of that.  We do continue to promote it and Land Rover Monthly have ran a follow up article in their magazine  

BN: Have you enjoyed the Ideas process?
TF: Oh yes. It's hard work getting the 10,000 supporters but we have enjoyed the process and learned a lot. I would highly recommend creating your own MOC and if you think it is something for the wider audience and LEGO would appreciate it then get it on LEGO Ideas.
And if nothing else you will get to meet a whole world of new people who share your interest and the insight into all the LEGO events that go on and amazing things that others have created who are more than willing to share ideas.
It has been a great experience and we are just pleased to get this far.

BN: Thanks for the chat and best of luck with the review stage.
TF: Thanks, fingers crossed!