#HTE

An Interview with Jonathan Ward, Founder of Icon (Part 2)

[If you missed Part 1 of this interview, it’s here.]

Jonathan Ward is talking about old-school custom car styling shops. “If you were a baller in the 1920s, ‘30s or '40s,” he explains, “you didn’t go buy a Cadillac. You bought a Cadillac, and you sent it to one of the boys, and they built a custom vehicle just for you on that platform.”

Ward is, in the modern day, one of the boys. He’s got the same unerring sense of aesthetic as a Giuseppe Figoni or either of the Bertones–but he’s also got access to 21st-century manufacturing technology and materials sciences, and the benefits of learning from the past hundred years’ worth of engineering advancements. He can create vehicles far tougher than anything that came out of a 20th-century factory, which is important given the company’s 4x4 roots; Icon’s vehicles are not meant to be shown off at car shows (though that may happen). They are meant for you to beat the hell out of them.

Another thing that informs Ward’s designs is that he’s thought the user experience through very carefully: What happens if my client throws a connecting rod in Bahrain? What happens when some funky new engine technology comes out in ten years, and the brand-new powertrain I’m dropping in today becomes a relic? How do I keep this vehicle from eventually becoming outmoded or worthless? How do I make this thing last?

Here in Part 2 of our interview with Ward, we discuss durability, longevity, future-proofing, on-the-job headaches and pay-offs, what the current auto industry’s missing, what Icon’s working on next and more.

Core77: One of your end goals, which you discussed in one of your shop tour videos on your YouTube channel, is product longevity. Can you talk about that?

Jonathan Ward: We’re trying to evolve products, and put more passion and longevity into a product. Versus the big-box whorehouse [disposable mentality]. We all have enough shit. Now people are starting to realize instead of buying a big-box $20 piece of shit backpack that their kid destroys in three months, start thinking a little more before the next consumption transition and find a product that someone gave a shit about designing. And, yeah, maybe you’re going to blow 200 on that bag, but you’ll have it for decades.

What concrete steps does Icon take in terms of both longevity and future-proofing?

Modularity is key. For example in all of our vehicles, the powertrain and powertrain management system are built as a sub-module, in essence, that can be isolated and removed in the future. Whereas our chassis, suspension, mechanical system, surface coatings, et cetera, are built to a very high standard. That ensures longevity of the platform but acknowledges the fact that that state-of-the-art [continues to evolve], that whatever motor we’re running might be useless or outmoded over time.

I’m inspired by the fact that a lot of these vehicles we’re working with are perceived to have been beyond the end of their viable life cycle. So, in essence, we’re recycling them. By doing that, from a cradle-to-cradle mentality, the up-front industrial waste from the diesel by the tankers, and the packaging, and all that bullshit is already accounted for and more efficient. And the quality of that platform makes it viable decades into the future.

If we respect and stick to that quality in the core of our platform, and assume the [potential] irrelevance of aspects of it, and allow for the deletion and evolution of it moving forward, it can evolve and stay relevant in the future.

Though I do sometimes go against that.

How so?

I’m a big leather geek. My Instagram feed on the weekends is usually all my leather projects, and then during the week is this. I really like the organic, oil-tanned or veg-tanned, heavy natural character. But that, traditionally, is not going to be stable. On a Derelict, I’ll communicate that to the client–“You’re going to want to put sunblock on it, and conditioner.” It’s going to have a dynamic relationship with the patina on the outside, and it wouldn’t last as long as some of the aircraft-rate leathers that we’ll use on Reformers or a Bronco, or something, but it’s part of the charm.

I also try and stay out of cul-de-sac mechanicals. Sometimes if I do go to a very niche, small supplier or a one-off design, it’s because it’s important to the final quality. But at the same time, I try and respect SOTS–“Standard Off The Shelf”– military protocol.

There’s this little keychain apparatus called a “keyport” that every vehicle comes with, and has an 8-gig integrated memory stick [containing] all the PDF manuals from all the sub-component suppliers, the owner’s manual, care and feeding notes, photos documenting the build from start to finish, as well as an unencrypted build sheet itemizing every single component used in the vehicle so that the client’s service resource has way more clarity on what the hell is going on. So they’re not left with the [situation where] you don’t know where the hell to get [replacement parts], which really sucks.

Now we’re even doing CAD model wiring schematics, which is a huge pain in our ass, but it’s a really good long-term tool for people.

We’ve touched on this a bit, but how does ICON reconcile custom manufacturing with ease of repair?

By that SOTS approach. So, same with my watch design efforts. I’m not going to do my own complication, my own freaky little one-off movement. I’m not going to do an engine of our own design and manufacture, partially because I think there’s an arrogance which, at least in that category, I don’t possess. But it also goes back to that cul-de-sac design thinking, which is something I always want to avoid–

Sorry, what do you mean by “cul-de-sac” in this context?

I call them “cul-de-sacs”, like there’s only one way in and one way out, which greatly limits the serviceability and the reach of a product.

So I’ll switch it between different manufacturers. GM seems to be my greatly preferred power train partner, because everyone knows how the hell to service it, and where to get the parts, and how to maintain it. That all exists in the community. They’re efficient, or lightweight, and very well distributed. I think considerations like that really help us, and it’s worked well. We have vehicles in crazy places. The bulk of our business is domestic, but we have one or two trucks in all sorts of varied countries [and they can all get service]. It’s pretty wild.

What parts of the job give you the most headaches, and what are the best parts?

Headaches are generally, the constant variables based on the ills of time. The conditional variants of the vintage vehicles that we start with are impossible, generally, to anticipate beyond a point, and to time-manage. Everything else we’ve worked hard on to streamline and engineer the process, but the variables of that initial process can sometimes represent three or four hundred extra hours. So it makes the rest of it quite a production juggling act, and you have to stay very fluid.

Other headaches: Partners, part supply, content, both consistency of quality and product, changes that a supplier may make [without letting us know] because I’m a peanut client compared to their large corporate vendors. So I’ll get no [alert] that a widget has evolved until suddenly the evolutionary change of that widget [causes] a chain reaction, going through a bunch of other things. So that’s always a bitch.

The rewarding part is to drag in an old vehicle, then eventually see our very small team of experts drive it out so revolutionized. That never ceases to make me giggle. Especially with the one-offs. That’s real cool.

And the most rewarding across all of the different product segments that we offer, is if the customer owned the vehicle that we built for them, and had significant ass-ometer time in it, in its original state. Or if someone owned that model for a long period of time in their youth and are revisiting it. Because nothing can compare to their perspective and depth of understanding of how significantly we transition and evolve these vehicles than that past experience. They just always get it at a deeper level.

What would you say the current auto industry doesn’t get right?

[Over the years there’s been] a very purposeful change across the industry to now make things have a shelf life, either by quality or content.

Also, starting with the Edsel, Ford’s project–that was the first car built with focus groups, and look how that went. I think between pencil pushers and focus groups, these large corporate entities [are] no longer executing design-driven projects. They’re not design firms, where the product is all about the design and the engineering; that’s literally become an afterthought due to a variety of factors.

It’s just become people saying, “We’re going to release more of these next year, and more the year after.” And it’s part of this whole American treadmill of capitalism and it’s bullshit. Past a point, it’s flatly not sustainable. And the question is, when does that occur? What is that transition?

What are your thoughts on autonomous cars?

I hate them. I understand why, with all the different powers that be, it is important to them, and could have significant representations for improving safety and infrastructure.

But I’m just not that guy. I’m about the visceral connection between human and machine. So I used to be somewhat concerned about, long term, the viability of my brand because of that potential change. And let’s face it, right? There are kids today 17, 18, 19, they haven’t even gotten their license yet. Because there’s definitely a disassociation en masse, where it’s an app, it’s not a relationship with a machine.

So I do see that having a considerable impact on the large, high-volume manufacturers, that they’re barely addressing by thinking autonomous. [There is a problem with their] efforts towards constant scalability to appease shareholders, we already know that can’t work any longer. Well, compound that. Wait until the impact is furthered by car co-op and autonomous shares where people realize they don’t need their own car. You’re going to see a massive downtick in volume and manufacture. So that makes me quite curious. But, for me, my little world? I think it’s going to make my market even stronger.

I was going to say it doesn’t seem like it would impact Icon, as your target market are people that love the automotive experience.

Yeah. And even if a guy goes “Shit, I don’t even need a vehicle anymore” and joins a co-op autonomous neighborhood ride share, now he has an empty garage. He’s going to yearn, I’d argue, even more, for the visceral connection that his M5 or whatever kept alive for him in his daily. And there’s a hole in the garage. So I think it’ll actually [grow] my community, and I’m curious to see where that goes.

Beyond the cars you’ve got on the floor now, what’s up next for Icon?

I’ve been very deeply into engineering my next production model. [Editor’s Note: That model is still a secret, but we caught a glimpse of it, and it’s going to be a socks-knocker.] In the past, we’ve always done that within our customer community, where I just produce a sexy rendering or two, and reach out to my existing clients and say, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do next, X number of vehicles for X number of clients. Who’s game?” and basically, fund that from that small group of clients.

But that approach has its shortcomings, as you can imagine. So this time I seem to be financially in a position to develop it quietly, internally, with my own team and my own capital. And trying to up my own approach. I’m trying to evolve even the process of what we do and how we do it, by going very far into the future in the technology and techniques used.

[This approach] adds immense complexity and a bunch of unknowns that are downright scary. We’re in the middle of trying to sort our way through some very tough engineering challenges. I’m about eight months into it, and hemorrhaging money. And I still can’t tell you that I see a light at the end of the tunnel versus a freight train heading my way. So it’s inspiring, but it’s scary.

How long until you can assess if the new approach is viable?

If all goes well, I’m about a year out from debuting. And this time when I debut, instead of having one vehicle done and tested, I’m going to have a vehicle fully mapped and engineered, and finite analyzed, and track tested, and the engineering manual of how we’re going to repeat it, and the repeatable parts on the shelf, and really have my shit together. I have to scale the employee training, so we’ll probably be sold out for two or three years at launch because of that singular limitation. But at least we’ll know exactly what the deliverables are.

The bigger we get, the bigger the gambles, I suppose. I’m already six digits deep, and could end up at seven just to find out if it’s going to be doable. I refuse to accept that it won’t be, but the price point might be so fucked up that there’s only five or six people a year who can tolerate it.

But again, going back to my founding principles, if that’s what it [takes] to execute the vision I initially had, then so be it. If the price point limits it to five or six units a year, I’ll build out the team and manage it at that very limited scale. Either way it needs to be done, and I’m happy to have the challenge.

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Follow Jonathan Ward and Icon’s work on Instagram.