How To Build The Perfect 4x4 - Icon 4X4 Road 2 SEMA - Presented by CTEK

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GT Channel spoke with Jonathan Ward from Icon 4x4 on his philosophy of car building and the up coming SEMA Show.

The concept for ICON was born in response to the direction of where the collector market was heading. As demands and expectations on classic cars grew so did the desire for modern performance married to classic styling.
In 1996 Jonathan and his wife Jamie started TLC, now the nations leading Land Cruiser Service center, to provide sales, service, parts and restoration services to the Land Cruiser community.

The actualized results of a strong commitment to tradition, obsession with modern design, and unrelenting need to achieve performance excellence is what today is known as the ICON. This vehicle without peers, is built for a journey without boundaries.

Starting with the FJ series, then the BR and TR, Jamie and Jonathan have continued expanding and exploring innovative designs on a wide variety of vehicles, and have found an audience that has not only appreciated their work but demanded more. Today the majority of their custom builds are two wheel drive vehicles, again with classic styling, modern performance, and timeless utility.

- See more at: http://www.icon4x4.com/about-icon/our...


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Closed Caption:

so the whole point of icon is simply
revisiting classic transportation in a
modern context always been a design week
engineering key card geek whatever
and to me transportation is the perfect
storm and that it's an extroverted
platform where I can pick and draw
inspiration from so many different
designs and industries into one very
communicable high-functioning piece of
art it's really look at it as their
functioning sculptures so i can draw
inspiration from aerospace marine
military architecture
vintage modern everything down to
surface coating technologies and and
it's it's just really been kind of green
and being able to do what I love and
protect that at all costs
so the process with the FJ icon was
probably one of my favorites because
it's been a vehicle that's been in my
heart for decades so travels overseas
really understand people rely on them to
the extent of life and death and they
have such an affinity with them because
they were genius
my idea was simply again I wanted to
keep that aesthetic and utilitarian
principles of it but we engineer it for
modern glide off panel so we started
with the really prime example 1970 fj40
the blue lasers candidates so we had it
in cad because obviously cab didn't
exist on it and then we just had added
and re-engineered every last detail from
economics attention engineering and
powertrain so we got it where we really
felt it was transcending what had been
done in the past
then we worked into all the details and
the touch points it
getting rid of the plastic and machining
it an aluminum teflon polyester powder
coating the body instead of painting it
and just trying to take a novel approach
but without anything being superfluous
everything focused on utility longevity
quality and and that tactile man machine
probably the most progressive thing that
I think we're novel and applying in this
industry is reverse engineering
capabilities such as Pharaoh tracking
and blue laser or try to scan because
you know works sometimes dealing with
vehicles all the way back to the 1930s
and there is no and to take the
engineering where we wanted to be in the
final experience of the product you have
to have that level of control
getting out of the plastic leaf spring
suspension which seriously 1700
technology horse and buggy stuff to ride
sucks and manufacturers made the chassis
is purposefully loose to get that final
bit of articulation out of that design
what if you look at contemporary
coil-over suspension it's a completely
different engineering perspective you
want the chassis as rigid as possible
and then the linkage in the shocks and
such allow the articulation and give you
more control over the right
so jobs like that oftentimes we need
partners are we going to be better with
parts proud to work with eibach and fox
racing getting that suspension just
right and then powertrains is like watch
movements it's one thing to design and
manufacture watch the whole another
thing to make the boot
so we certainly work with them require
enjoy the support of the OEM when it
comes to mechanical engineering
everything from you know cad support to
be able to model that in our cad models
as we're designing all the way through
to technical because a lot of times
we're putting these motors where no one
was dumb enough to put them there before
playing with the new or novel plan
requires a lot of engineering
this year it seemed i were trying to be
more conservative we've brought as many
as 10 vehicles to seem over the year
this year we're going to bring two
distinct vehicles are planning to bring
a Nikon FG is 44 which is our six
passenger four-door version of the FJ
line and we're also bringing a vehicle
from are one-offs division we call
derelict some reformers were bringing in
nineteen fifty buick roadmaster
convertible Darrell E
you know it's interesting because of a
lot of our vehicles some of them are
daily drivers but a lot of times they're
put in a specific property when the
client wants to enjoy that locale and
get in that head space so the more
vintage and under the radar of our
aesthetic
you know I compliments their experience
in that environment at the the ranch
house or in the island or wherever it
might be
so that means these vehicles often are
stored for extensive periods of time
it's stupid simple but a customer
experience when they get there and they
want to fire it up
click dead nothing is a bad thing for us
even though it's an accepted north
so we learned very early on to integrate
to see tech product so that our client
has a solution and their enjoyment of
the vehicle is an interrupted by the
houses of yet another dead battery
lucky for us we've been able to keep all
manufacturer in America we now hired
over 40 people full-time over 50,000
square-foot shop
we're splitting at the seams are looking
to a really good bright future further
growth and now we've expanded our lying
to four models and of the FJ series
another one the icon be are inspired by
the old port Broncos and then the trip
master which is the 1950s oh shit and
pick up and this crazy line of one-offs
to call derelict some flowers
so it's really been a fun ride