Lego Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can afford • The Register

Hands-on Having admired the Concorde perched atop the Sinsheim Museum, we wanted one of our own but had to settle for the next best thing – the LEGO® Concorde.

This set has been out for a while now, but it remains available and is one of the best aviation sets LEGO has ever made. Both detailed and with some thoughtful moving parts, the Concorde rivals the Space Shuttle Discovery for attention to detail and construction fun.

Consisting of 2,083 pieces, the set is enormous. According to LEGO, it is 105 cm long and 43 cm wide at its widest point – the trailing edge of the iconic delta wing. It is also gloriously free of the sticker overload that has typified recent builds, including the Artemis SLS set, where even the base on which the finished article stands has a printed element.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of fiddly elements in the construction. Pop off some of the fuselage, and part of the passenger cabin is visible. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t Minifig scale – we can’t imagine how big a set that would entail. However, perhaps LEGO could have pushed the boat out for some Nanofigures. There is also no cockpit to peer into.

Lurking within the fuselage are Technic components to lower or tuck the landing gear away with a twist of the aircraft’s rear. The flight control surfaces can also be moved, as can the famous drooping nose of the supersonic airliner.

This is probably the most divisive part of the build and an area where something clearly had to give to avoid creating too many custom parts. Keep the nose straight, as if in flight, and the model looks great. Drop the nose, and… it just looks odd. The cockpit window is a custom LEGO piece, but when tilted down to create the droop, a bit too much of the model’s inner workings are exposed.

The LEGO Concorde droop – click to enlarge

This is a bit unfortunate in a model that is otherwise so thoughtfully detailed. However, it is also forgivable, considering the complexity required to solve the problem.

Also vaguely annoying is the livery, which is a close approximation of what was on the test versions of the aircraft. There are aftermarket kits to bring a British Airways or Air France look to the model, but it’s a shame those were not included in the box to give builders a choice.

All these are relatively petty gripes in an otherwise excellent model, which doesn’t even command too much of a heart-stopping price tag compared to some of LEGO’s sets. That said, at £169.99, it’s not cheap.

But compared to how much the real thing cost to build, operate, and fly on, it’s a steal. ®