20
ETHOS
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FJ UNDERPINNINGS
In several months, this rolling
chassis will look like the
Toyota FJ44 behind it—with
new peculiarities, of course.40 percent of Icon’s business, allow him
to freely envisage their finished vehicles.
Ward’s treatments can be inspired by
anything: the original designer’s intent,
a souvenir from travels abroad, or the
people and places he emulates. Ward
admires Nike and its secret skunkworks
“innovation kitchen,” and he can talk
for hours about Charles and Ray Eames
and how they sparked a generation of
furniture design using simple materials
in novel ways. Even Argentine Marxist
revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara
speaks to Ward: “He saw the world in
the right structure, in his own way, and
had the balls to pursue it. I’m not here
to say in the right ways or the wrong
ways, but in his ways ... respect your
perspective.”
Eight years ago TLC 4x4 and Icon
moved into a spacious 44,000-square-
foot garage in Chatsworth, where 3-D
printers, plasma cutting tables, and a
five-axis CNC mill look hilariously so-
phisticated next to a lathe from 1890.
As Icon’s in-house prototyping and
engineering abilities matured, Ward
added two new model lines: one for
the Ford Bronco, and the other for ’47
to ’53 Chevy pickups called “Thrift-
masters.” He then started pushing
one-off builds called “Derelicts” and
“Reformers,” which use the carcasses
of whatever oddities he finds in the
classifieds; the most intensive builds
cost more than a million bucks. Most
recently Icon released an all-electric
’49 Mercury coupe with twin motors
and an 85-kW-hr Tesla battery pack,
and a soon-to-debut project is the
“Hellion,” a ’70 Plymouth Superbird
with Hellcat running gear and four-
wheel independent suspension.
Ward aims to add a fourth Icon
vehicle line: perhaps a rear-wheel-
drive European coupe from the ’60s,
subtly restyled and mated with its
contemporaries’ mechanicals. He also
wants to start a “napkin sketch” divi-
sion that develops yet-to-exist vehicles
based on hypothetical revisionist history questions he asks
himself after too many fingers of whiskey; the curvaceous
Helios concept, drawn by a drunken Ward, is the riveted
aluminum streamliner that billionaire Howard Hughes
would’ve created had he not built the DC-1 experimental
aircraft. Ward daydreams of Icon micro-factories in differ-
ent cities across America, each focused on a single vehicleline, but worries build quality would suffer in his absence.
Additionally, he aspires to collaborate with automotive
manufacturers as an “independent, brand-agnostic devel-
opment partner” that produces continuation, special edi-
tion, or limited edition vehicles, and he also wants to pro-
duce Icon-branded watches—that is, if Jamie allows it. His
wife of 25 years demands he must first sell any remaining
Dueseys, an $11,500 watch he unveiled two years ago.
“I’ve made the mistake of some false starts,” Ward admits.
“I want to ‘do this next,’ I want to ‘try this out,’ I want to ‘come
out with this’ to a fault, and I own that fault. Businesswise,
it’s stupid. I should keep selling FJs, make them better and
better, more efficiently and quicker, and keep doing these
things that there’s an unfilled demand for. Perhaps a more
prudent business owner would focus on solely scaling the
current products, but this brand is progressive and based on
my dreams, so I feel a responsibility also to keep researching,
developing, and progressing.”
As a CEO, he also has to consider the wellbeing of his 50
employees, who are all well versed in his eccentricities andTHE HELIOS
CONCEPT IS
THE ALUMINUM
STREAMLINER
THAT HOWARD
HUGHES WOULD’VE
CREATED HAD HE
NOT BUILT THE
DC-1 AIRCRAFT.