Former LEGO designer says Ford Model T uses ‘illegal building technique’

A former LEGO designer says the new LEGO Icons 11376 Ford Model T uses an illegal building technique that ‘should never have passed through final approvals’.

Tiago Catarino has his hands on the March 2026 addition to the LEGO Icons garage ahead of its release, and has detailed how one of the model’s building techniques doesn’t quite meet the company’s typical standards. “The assembly on step 167 have us putting headlight bricks in front of more headlight bricks and then interlocking everything afterwards,” he explained.

“The issue is that the side stud of the headlight brick extends further than the normal width of a regular brick and so a collision occurs, which is very noticeable when you look closer at the example I built with different colours for illustration purposes. When you finally interlock everything, you need to push really hard for the connection to happen.”

As Tiago points out, this technique leaves the pieces ‘under incredible stress’, potentially leading to permanent damage. “From my time of working for LEGO as a model designer, this was a big red flag that should never have passed through the model quality meetings and final approvals required for the go ahead on the set’s production,” he added.

This is essentially the textbook definition of an ‘illegal build technique’, so-called because they risk damaging LEGO elements, lead to unstable builds or can break the geometry of the LEGO system. You can find more examples of illegal build techniques in this presentation from LEGO Design Master Jamie Berard, which also explains the processes to which Tiago referred.

“All models… must go through the Design Department,” Jamie said. “This ensures that nothing gets released without first being approved by a Model Committee. Sometimes lasting up to two or three days, this review allows representatives from building instructions, senior designers, engineers and the designer to sit down together and build the model. The goal is to maintain an ‘only the best is good enough’ approach to our design process.”

Fellow former LEGO designer Marcos Bessa also weighed in on 11376 Ford Model T’s compromised technique, calling it ‘such an easily avoidable mistake’. We’ve seen plenty of errors in graphic design in LEGO sets in recent years, from misprinted boxes to typos on sticker sheets, but it’s not often that a physical design error slips through to production.

We may see this technique amended in future versions of 11376 Ford Model T, but it could really go either way. The LEGO Group issued a revised version of the original LEGO Ideas WALL-E set in 2015 to reinforce its fragile neck, but the design flaw in 75313 AT-AT that made it extremely difficult to disassemble was left unchanged. For now, anyone picking up this vintage Icons car day one will have to contend with a potentially damaging build.

11376 Ford Model T debuts March 1 for £119.99 / $129.99 / €129.99.

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