The Lego Car Blog Review Library is packed with over one-hundred LEGO sets, books, compatible products, and even a theme park. But it didn’t have moustache. Until now…
Yes today we’ve finally reviewed the magnificent championship-winning facial topiary of mini-figure Nigel Mansell. And the car that transported it; the wonderful Williams-Renault FW14B.
Constructed from 799 pieces and aimed at ages 18+ (more on that later), the Icons 10353 Williams Racing FW14B brings one of Formula 1’s most famous racing cars to the LEGO range as part of the expansive array of Formula 1 cars past and present released in 2025.
It also brings one of the best enhancements LEGO have made to their vehicle line up in, well… ever, because 10353 features new proper, staggered-width slicks. Hurrah! These are even correctly branded ‘Goodyear’, forming part of 10353’s superb set of accurate sponsors, with only the tobacco ones (this was the early ’90s) absent.
These sponsors are all stickers of course, with the few printed tiles reserved for livery duty, but it’s an F1 car, so that’s appropriate. Gloriously, the technical details of the Williams Racing FW14B are all brick-built – no sticker-based laziness here – and some are really quite intricate. Whilst others are really quite pointless…
Before we explain why, 10353 begins with a large black box we’re used to seeing for the adult ‘display’ sets, inside which are a number of bags, now paper rather than plastic (good job LEGO), the aforementioned stickers, and the instructions.
The latter include some reasonably complicated sub-assemblies, and a little Nigel Mansell mini-figure progresses along the bottom of the pages as you build to chart your progress (although sadly he’s in profile so his moustache is obscured). Another nice touch is that a few pages include a fact about either the real car, or explain what it is you’re recreating in brick-form, which is something we think could benefit many sets, not just the 18+ ones.
The working features of 10353 are limited to steering and a removable engine cover, this set is all about visual display. As evidenced by the fact the last bag of pieces is reserved solely for a display stand, whilst the first contains mini-figure Mansell and an iceberg upon which he can stand for some reason.
Frankly we’re not sure these add anything to the set, other than perhaps being the ’18+’ differentiator (whilst 10353 does feature some advanced techniques, it’s no more technical a build than many younger-rated sets), however the Williams-Renault FW14B itself is excellent.
Immensely detailed, 10353 includes enough greebly-grey pieces to keep even the Lego Space Community happy, with probably a dozen of these, plus the same number of bows and clips, completely alien to this TLCB Writer.
Many of these parts form the mighty Renault V10 engine, accessible once the engine cover is removed, but weirdly many more are hidden elsewhere in the model with no way to access them whatsoever. The only person who’ll see that detail is you during the build process, before you cover them up forever with blue and yellow bodywork.
We’re not quite sure why LEGO chose to add invisible internal detail to a model that’s designed to be put on a shelf, and for us both it – and the display stand and iceberg – are rather superfluous, inflating the price beyond where it needed to be. At £70 / $80, 10353 is far too expensive.
However the car is spectacular to behold, more delicate than most LEGO sets, and more visually detailed too. It’s also currently available for quite a bit less than the £70 / $80 launch price, which means that even if you – like us – feel the stand, iceberg, and invisible detailing are pointless costly additions, you can make the Williams Racing FW14B absolutely worth your investment.
