How Icon CEO Jonathan Ward builds Broncos, Land Cruisers, FJs and Derelicts
The TLC side of things. Photo by Blake Z. Rong.
The
first thing you notice when you step into Icon's sprawling,
120,000-square-foot shop in Chatsworth, Calif. -- past the fenced-in
yard of Broncos of every size and Land Cruisers of every generation,
past the 1952 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon with the DeSoto
front end and a massaged patina of greens, browns, and ochres resembling
a Cezanne painting -- is the smell. It smells old
in here. Intoxicating and nostalgic, the lingering scent of worn
leather and burnished metal mixed with sweat and oil. Old and musty like
a church library. Old and unpretentious like your grandpa's cologne.
Icon CEO Jonathan Ward likes it this way. He talks a million miles a minute, so fast that I can barely keep up with my notes. In a single train of thought he will spout technical details, craftsman minutiae, French-bodied cars, and the supplier of his bison upholstery with a certain boredom in his voice; one gets the impression that he's explained this to his wife and business partner Jamie in his sleep. He is one of those no-bulls**t kind of guys who we all thought didn't exist anymore, a 6-foot tall combination of laid back California beach bum and East Coast neurotic -- born in Maryland, and grew up in New York -- which is a trait that manifests whenever he latches onto a new project, or a design element that piques his interest, anything for him to dive into headfirst.
Painting, woodworking, architecture; military and aerospace and marine influences all dance around his head. He has no formal design training, but taught himself CAD -- everything from SolidWorks to CATIA to SketchUp, "which is a joke, but my favorite -- " and now does all the design work himself. Folders on his iMac swell with pictures of magnetos, gauges and machine-turned dashboards, culled from sources as diverse as Pebble Beach and SEMA, the latter of which he has been attending since 1997.
"I once brought 15 vehicles to SEMA," he said. "Only did that 15 clusterf**k once. Never doing that again."
A few times, Ward told me, with an air of secrecy, "I was in the entertainment industry." He never elaborated beyond this. It was a phrase that framed Ward as a business-suited executive or a producer who burned out. But in fact, Ward began acting when he was 12 and retired when he was 28, a career spurred from a chance encounter with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He starred in TV, Broadway, and feature films as a child star who remained remarkably grounded -- someone who presumably resents the phrase "child star" and the burdens and entitlement it connotes.
That's all in the past. A few years ago, Ward and his wife were in South Africa, sitting in a wine bar somewhere overlooking the ocean -- very romantic, you know. Ward had seen his fair share of Land Cruisers when he traveled overseas, and had fallen in love with the ubiquitous, indestructible, go-anywhere machines. All those meticulously restored Mustangs and Camaros everywhere? Nobody was doing that to Land Cruisers. He explained all of this to Jamie, who seemed to understand. And with "no business plan, and no intelligent forethought," the two decided to quit their jobs on the spot.
Blake Z. Rong
Jonathan Ward is the Pied Piper through a forest of Broncos.
Into
the shop now, from which emerge custom Broncos and beautiful Land
Cruisers that sell to the tune of six figures; the vast square footage
is divided by a towering rack of parts. On one side is the TLC
operation, where they're currently showing a Land Cruiser some Tender
Loving Care by stuffing a small-block Chevy in it. On the other, an
early Bronco in original faded olive paint is getting a full Mustang GT
drivetrain, its body panels piled in a corner against the wall; across
the aisle two Icon FJ44s
are being finished, a bald and bespectacled shopworker hand-installing a
ragtop frame. He's squinting as he does so, arms above his head,
working a screw into the metal roll hoop. Reggae music plays over a
boombox, drowned out by the raw whirr of power tools.
In the corner, past another employee grinding a bracket, were the Derelicts.
"Freaky one-offs," said Ward, who considers them the most fun part of the Icon business. At SEMA last year, he brought a 1946 Lincoln Club Coupe with curved fenders that exhibited a burnished brown like a well-rubbed statue. It just so happened to have an Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, and a 5.0-liter Ford Coyote engine. Two SEMAs earlier, Ward built a 1952 Chevrolet Styline Deluxe Coupe with, uh, an Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, and a 6.2-liter LS3 V8. Next to it was a 1948 Buick Super Eight with an "Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, LS9 from a CTS-V," rattles Ward with an air of blas.
"4L85E, paddle shifted, iPod controls…"
We went outside. He lit a cigarette, an American Spirit, offered another one. "No? Well, you're smart." We stared at the shop lot, along the fence opposite the building. Trucks and SUVs were parked two, three rows deep. A 1951 Packard Patrician sat in dull oxidized beige that was probably once a very nice shade of brown, a color that a patriarch could be proud of, unusual portholes lining the rear pontoon fender. Ward is planning to gut it and build a Carrera Panamerica racer out of it. "Know anyone that needs Packard parts?" he asked. As a matter of fact, we here at Autoweek do. "I'll donate parts," he said with the utmost of seriousness. "Just let me know."
Plenty of Broncos, of course -- it's what got Icon its notoriety. "Broncos are on fire right now!" he lamented. "I'm paying triple for Broncos today than before we went public, before I opened my big mouth." He'll donate Bronco parts to restoration shops for free -- "the good ones, anyway." Icon has 41 Broncos on backorder, spurred by GQ's nomination as its Car of the Year. ("A reincarnated Bronco with the original's f**k-you ruggedness ratcheted so high," wrote the men's magazine, "You're not sure if you should drive it to the beach or the front lines.") Ward delivered just nine Broncos last year. If you call him up for one right now, be prepared to wait at least two years. If you want an FJ, however, Ward promises that you'll get yours by Christmas.
The beauty of the Derelict program is that it allows Ward to expand outside his comfort zone, with cars he normally wouldn't consider. "I really want to find a Series II Bentley Drophead," he smiled, "really piss everyone off -- but no one lets them go derelict. It's a hard car to find." A 1964 Volkswagen Microbus is coming in for a Porsche drivetrain, a 3.2-liter engine out of a late-'80s Carrera. There's a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300D Adenauer, a rare breed, a beautiful battleship of a car: full-length Webasto sunroof, no B-pillars. Ward and AMG were originally supposed to collaborate on a Derelict project, but AMG proved difficult to work with -- hence, in will go a Corvette powertrain, and GM flacks want him to mention "reliable GM power" when Ward finishes it.
Ward took in a 1951 Mercury from a client who told him, "Give me at least 600 hp and an interior that resembles a 1940s Atlantic City steakhouse."
Yeah, he can do that.
That aforementioned Chrysler with the DeSoto nose? That's Ward's daily driver, with its patina practically glowing. It is built atop an Art Morrison chassis. A 6.1-liter HEMI underneath the hood produces 521 hp. "Leave the window down, sideways down a f**kin' dirt road, valet park it -- no preconceived notions of wealth or crap you get with typical cars. Just fun as all hell." The Derelict side of his business is the most fun. How could it not be? The attitude that comes with the honesty of preservation is priceless; it cannot be fabricated from any CNC machine.
It's also the money-losing side of business -- every car a one-off, every rusty fender irreproducible. The supply of barn-find Lincoln Zephyrs and Buick Roadmasters is unstable, to say the least. Is Ward willing to venture into the back roads of Ellsworth County, Kansas? The spirit of Icon means that even if he wasn't backlogged with years' worth of orders, he very well would.
Maybe that's where he found the 1939 Nash wagon with "a kickass nose," a car once designed for traveling salesmen -- the seats could fold down. It is soon for the Derelict treatment, and will be getting independent suspension, disc brakes, a 6.2-liter LS3 V8, an Art Morrison chassis…
Blake Z. Rong
Ward's office could be the setting for a low-stakes Verbal Kint.
If
you write Ward a check for around $300,000 he will grab a Dodge D200
from the yard and immediately set to giving it the Icon treatment.
First, the body comes off for a full metal restoration. Then it is
plopped atop a modern Ram 3500 chassis, complete with modern diesel
power: a 5.9-liter Cummins is what seems to be working so far. It will
produce at least 550 hp, but more importantly, it will produce 975 lb-ft of torque. "Gale Banks is a buddy," he said, with giggly self-deprecation, "so Banks f**ked with it. It's a freight train…heh heh. It's so f**king stupid."
Underneath, "everything's all balls-out, polished…" Ward's voice trails off as he invites me to check it out. The truck is lifted 4.5 inches and supported by a Fox suspension. The mirrors are CNC machined by friends at Nike, whose CEO Mark Parker became intrigued by Ward's work in 2011 and enlisted an army of Nike designers, engineers and machinists to provide technical assistance. The windows are skyscraper glass, waterjet cut and heat tempered. The seats are cut from Tempur-Pedic foam and wrapped in bison hide, supplied by one of Ward's friends. The instruments are reshaped to use Dodge's CAN bus interface. The tailgate latches were redesigned so the gate doesn't simply crash down and eventually sag when you unlatch it, "which is just bats**t," Ward swears, "but it's part of the fun."
Ward's design philosophy is simple, and this is how he puts it: to celebrate what the original designers had in mind "before the pencil pushers f**ked it up." Unlimited budget. No parts sharing. No sacrifices. The original Bronco used mirrors from a Falcon, a truck speedometer, Ford F-100 axles and brakes. The Icon Bronco's upright one-piece mirrors are CNC-machined, its speedometer bezel carved from one piece of aluminum and inspired by the watch case of a Bell & Ross Tourbillon.
This is luxury nostalgia at its finest: the car that could have been all those years ago, unrestrained in a way no factory could produce. "Transportation designs of the past," said Ward, "but in a modern context." Toyota had that in mind when it approached TLC for input on what would become the FJ Cruiser.
Blake Z. Rong
The Meisturwerk Machinen is just one of Ward's wacky watch collection.
Ward
mentioned wanting to start a watch company: "I've been chomping at the
bit." Then he launched into an unfocused, stream-of-consciousness
discussion about retrogrades, jump hours, coaxial movements,
tourbillions, power reserves, his Jacques Cousteau watch, just one piece
in his "totally out of control watch collection," an out of control
business idea from a man who operates best when he's seen as out of
control, reveling in the sublime and the ridiculous, the rational and
the bizarre...
Yeah, Icon Watches would be a fitting proposition. Watches, like the high-end Reformers, are all about stressing the details. "We're having fun, for better or worse," he said. "Hopefully, the market will tolerate our price point, but fortunately there's enough people who understand. It's a company founded on my lunacy."
Stay tuned tomorrow when we bring you part two, a deeper dive into the Icon Thriftmaster.
Icon CEO Jonathan Ward likes it this way. He talks a million miles a minute, so fast that I can barely keep up with my notes. In a single train of thought he will spout technical details, craftsman minutiae, French-bodied cars, and the supplier of his bison upholstery with a certain boredom in his voice; one gets the impression that he's explained this to his wife and business partner Jamie in his sleep. He is one of those no-bulls**t kind of guys who we all thought didn't exist anymore, a 6-foot tall combination of laid back California beach bum and East Coast neurotic -- born in Maryland, and grew up in New York -- which is a trait that manifests whenever he latches onto a new project, or a design element that piques his interest, anything for him to dive into headfirst.
Painting, woodworking, architecture; military and aerospace and marine influences all dance around his head. He has no formal design training, but taught himself CAD -- everything from SolidWorks to CATIA to SketchUp, "which is a joke, but my favorite -- " and now does all the design work himself. Folders on his iMac swell with pictures of magnetos, gauges and machine-turned dashboards, culled from sources as diverse as Pebble Beach and SEMA, the latter of which he has been attending since 1997.
"I once brought 15 vehicles to SEMA," he said. "Only did that 15 clusterf**k once. Never doing that again."
A few times, Ward told me, with an air of secrecy, "I was in the entertainment industry." He never elaborated beyond this. It was a phrase that framed Ward as a business-suited executive or a producer who burned out. But in fact, Ward began acting when he was 12 and retired when he was 28, a career spurred from a chance encounter with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He starred in TV, Broadway, and feature films as a child star who remained remarkably grounded -- someone who presumably resents the phrase "child star" and the burdens and entitlement it connotes.
That's all in the past. A few years ago, Ward and his wife were in South Africa, sitting in a wine bar somewhere overlooking the ocean -- very romantic, you know. Ward had seen his fair share of Land Cruisers when he traveled overseas, and had fallen in love with the ubiquitous, indestructible, go-anywhere machines. All those meticulously restored Mustangs and Camaros everywhere? Nobody was doing that to Land Cruisers. He explained all of this to Jamie, who seemed to understand. And with "no business plan, and no intelligent forethought," the two decided to quit their jobs on the spot.
Blake Z. RongJonathan Ward is the Pied Piper through a forest of Broncos.
In the corner, past another employee grinding a bracket, were the Derelicts.
"Freaky one-offs," said Ward, who considers them the most fun part of the Icon business. At SEMA last year, he brought a 1946 Lincoln Club Coupe with curved fenders that exhibited a burnished brown like a well-rubbed statue. It just so happened to have an Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, and a 5.0-liter Ford Coyote engine. Two SEMAs earlier, Ward built a 1952 Chevrolet Styline Deluxe Coupe with, uh, an Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, and a 6.2-liter LS3 V8. Next to it was a 1948 Buick Super Eight with an "Art Morrison chassis, independent suspension, disc brakes, LS9 from a CTS-V," rattles Ward with an air of blas.
"4L85E, paddle shifted, iPod controls…"
We went outside. He lit a cigarette, an American Spirit, offered another one. "No? Well, you're smart." We stared at the shop lot, along the fence opposite the building. Trucks and SUVs were parked two, three rows deep. A 1951 Packard Patrician sat in dull oxidized beige that was probably once a very nice shade of brown, a color that a patriarch could be proud of, unusual portholes lining the rear pontoon fender. Ward is planning to gut it and build a Carrera Panamerica racer out of it. "Know anyone that needs Packard parts?" he asked. As a matter of fact, we here at Autoweek do. "I'll donate parts," he said with the utmost of seriousness. "Just let me know."
Plenty of Broncos, of course -- it's what got Icon its notoriety. "Broncos are on fire right now!" he lamented. "I'm paying triple for Broncos today than before we went public, before I opened my big mouth." He'll donate Bronco parts to restoration shops for free -- "the good ones, anyway." Icon has 41 Broncos on backorder, spurred by GQ's nomination as its Car of the Year. ("A reincarnated Bronco with the original's f**k-you ruggedness ratcheted so high," wrote the men's magazine, "You're not sure if you should drive it to the beach or the front lines.") Ward delivered just nine Broncos last year. If you call him up for one right now, be prepared to wait at least two years. If you want an FJ, however, Ward promises that you'll get yours by Christmas.
The beauty of the Derelict program is that it allows Ward to expand outside his comfort zone, with cars he normally wouldn't consider. "I really want to find a Series II Bentley Drophead," he smiled, "really piss everyone off -- but no one lets them go derelict. It's a hard car to find." A 1964 Volkswagen Microbus is coming in for a Porsche drivetrain, a 3.2-liter engine out of a late-'80s Carrera. There's a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300D Adenauer, a rare breed, a beautiful battleship of a car: full-length Webasto sunroof, no B-pillars. Ward and AMG were originally supposed to collaborate on a Derelict project, but AMG proved difficult to work with -- hence, in will go a Corvette powertrain, and GM flacks want him to mention "reliable GM power" when Ward finishes it.
Ward took in a 1951 Mercury from a client who told him, "Give me at least 600 hp and an interior that resembles a 1940s Atlantic City steakhouse."
Yeah, he can do that.
That aforementioned Chrysler with the DeSoto nose? That's Ward's daily driver, with its patina practically glowing. It is built atop an Art Morrison chassis. A 6.1-liter HEMI underneath the hood produces 521 hp. "Leave the window down, sideways down a f**kin' dirt road, valet park it -- no preconceived notions of wealth or crap you get with typical cars. Just fun as all hell." The Derelict side of his business is the most fun. How could it not be? The attitude that comes with the honesty of preservation is priceless; it cannot be fabricated from any CNC machine.
It's also the money-losing side of business -- every car a one-off, every rusty fender irreproducible. The supply of barn-find Lincoln Zephyrs and Buick Roadmasters is unstable, to say the least. Is Ward willing to venture into the back roads of Ellsworth County, Kansas? The spirit of Icon means that even if he wasn't backlogged with years' worth of orders, he very well would.
Maybe that's where he found the 1939 Nash wagon with "a kickass nose," a car once designed for traveling salesmen -- the seats could fold down. It is soon for the Derelict treatment, and will be getting independent suspension, disc brakes, a 6.2-liter LS3 V8, an Art Morrison chassis…
Blake Z. RongWard's office could be the setting for a low-stakes Verbal Kint.
Underneath, "everything's all balls-out, polished…" Ward's voice trails off as he invites me to check it out. The truck is lifted 4.5 inches and supported by a Fox suspension. The mirrors are CNC machined by friends at Nike, whose CEO Mark Parker became intrigued by Ward's work in 2011 and enlisted an army of Nike designers, engineers and machinists to provide technical assistance. The windows are skyscraper glass, waterjet cut and heat tempered. The seats are cut from Tempur-Pedic foam and wrapped in bison hide, supplied by one of Ward's friends. The instruments are reshaped to use Dodge's CAN bus interface. The tailgate latches were redesigned so the gate doesn't simply crash down and eventually sag when you unlatch it, "which is just bats**t," Ward swears, "but it's part of the fun."
Ward's design philosophy is simple, and this is how he puts it: to celebrate what the original designers had in mind "before the pencil pushers f**ked it up." Unlimited budget. No parts sharing. No sacrifices. The original Bronco used mirrors from a Falcon, a truck speedometer, Ford F-100 axles and brakes. The Icon Bronco's upright one-piece mirrors are CNC-machined, its speedometer bezel carved from one piece of aluminum and inspired by the watch case of a Bell & Ross Tourbillon.
This is luxury nostalgia at its finest: the car that could have been all those years ago, unrestrained in a way no factory could produce. "Transportation designs of the past," said Ward, "but in a modern context." Toyota had that in mind when it approached TLC for input on what would become the FJ Cruiser.
Blake Z. RongThe Meisturwerk Machinen is just one of Ward's wacky watch collection.
Yeah, Icon Watches would be a fitting proposition. Watches, like the high-end Reformers, are all about stressing the details. "We're having fun, for better or worse," he said. "Hopefully, the market will tolerate our price point, but fortunately there's enough people who understand. It's a company founded on my lunacy."
Stay tuned tomorrow when we bring you part two, a deeper dive into the Icon Thriftmaster.
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