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Concorde

The supersonic legend in brick form, droop nose and all.

4.5/5

Set 10318 · 2023

Pieces2,083

Minifigsn/a

Year2023

Set number10318

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The verdict

If you love aviation or you just want a genuinely gorgeous display piece, this one is easy to recommend.

It nails the shape of the real Concorde, packs in working landing gear and that famous drooping nose, and skips stickers entirely for printed parts. Just clear a whole shelf first, because at 105cm long it is a big commitment.

Best for: Aviation fans and adult builders who want a showpiece with real functions

The full review

Right, let's talk about the Concorde. This is the LEGO® set that turns the most famous supersonic airliner ever built into a 2,083 piece display model, and honestly it is one of the nicer things the Icons line has done. The proportions are the star here. That long needle fuselage, the tapering delta wing, the slightly hunched stance on its gear, it all reads as unmistakably Concorde the second it is on the shelf. LEGO even worked in a little cutaway slice of the passenger cabin so you get a peek at the seats inside, which is a lovely touch on a model that could easily have been a solid white tube.

It is not just a static shape either. The nose droops down like the real thing did for takeoff and landing, and here is the clever bit: spin the tail cone and both main landing legs plus the nose gear raise and lower together through a hidden gearbox. The designer, Milan Madge, has said his Space Shuttle Discovery experience fed straight into making that mechanism behave. The set also comes with a faux wood and metal stand styled after the '60s and '70s, printed with the cruising speed and first flight details, so you can pose the plane in flight, takeoff or landing modes.

Now the honest bits. It is big. Really big. 105cm long and 43cm wide, so this is not something you tuck on a bookshelf between paperbacks, it wants a whole surface to itself. The build has a reputation for a slow middle too, because those enormous wings are a lot of repetitive plate laying before the satisfying stuff kicks back in. And a few builders have grumbled that the landing gear assembly is fiddly enough that they had to start a section over. None of that is a dealbreaker, but go in knowing the wings are more marathon than sprint.

So who is this for? If you are into aviation, or you lived through the Concorde era, or you just want a big elegant centerpiece that does something when guests poke at it, grab it. The 4.5 out of 5 community score on Brickset is well earned. If your shelf space is tight or you want a build full of constant variety, this might test your patience. But as a display model it is one of the best looking planes LEGO has ever put out, and the working functions push it over the line from decoration into something you will keep fiddling with.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build splits into the fuselage, the two big delta wings, and the tail with its mechanism, and the pacing is a real tale of two halves. The fuselage is the fun part, full of SNOT work, brackets and clever little internal locks that snap the wings on solidly, plus that cabin cutaway detail. The wings are where patience comes in, since they are large flat expanses of plate laying, though there is neat technique hiding underneath. 1x1 round plates with bars, headlight bricks and freshly recoloured 1x3 rounded plates all get used to keep the wing surface smooth right over the retracting rear gear, which sits inside a wing only a single brick thick.

For parts nerds there is real treasure here. The set introduces a new 4x4x2 windscreen cylinder with dual moulded (not printed) trans black windows, a brand new 4x4x3 cone for the tail cone, and a reworked 1x6x5 slope mould (2937) with a reinforced nail rail for better clutch. On recolours, this is the first set with the 1L bar with clip in red, and it packs 23 of the exclusive white 1x3 rounded plate with 3 open studs. Add the ten unique printed elements, no sticker sheet in sight, and for around 200 dollars you get a genuinely parts rich 2,083 piece set that MOC builders will happily raid.

Fun facts

01The real Concorde was a 1960s joint venture between the UK and France and was the first supersonic passenger carrying commercial airliner to enter service.
02The model is built to 1:60 scale and stretches to 105cm long and 43cm wide, big enough to swallow an entire shelf.
03Designer Milan Madge has said the gearbox that drops and raises all the landing gear together drew directly on his earlier work on the LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery.
04Despite being a 2,000 plus piece set, it uses zero stickers, with all 10 unique details printed onto the parts including the retro display plaque.