ICON 4×4 Marks Milestone With One-Off Bronco Build
Custom vehicle designer ICON 4×4 (ICON) and its founder and CEO, Jonathan Ward, are celebrating his 100th custom Bronco build with a special one-off New School Edition Bronco, the company announced.
“It’s pretty incredible to think about how far we’ve come over the last 100 Bronco builds. Passion for the Bronco has not waned in the slightest, and ICON takes great pride in the challenge presented by constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with each project for our clients,” said ICON 4×4 Founder and CEO Jonathan Ward. “The ICON Bronco 100 is a unique blending of new and old, a balance between safety and refinement with capability while presenting an analog responsibility for the driver. If you want to have an authentic, real driving experience, new vehicles just don’t offer the same feeling. The ICON Bronco 100 allows drivers to be in control. That’s a rare, beautiful feeling.”
The donor vehicle for the ICON Bronco 100 is a 1974 6-cylinder Bronco. For the build, ICON 4×4 implemented the company’s New School design package alongside several other upgrades. Amongst the noteworthy additions are a current-generation Coyote 5.0 Mustang GT aluminum fuel-injected V8 engine offering 430 horsepower, the company said. The engine is mated to an automatic 4-speed overdrive transmission which in turn sends power to an Atlas twin-stick shifter via a two-speed transfer case.
Other upgrades include ICON hydroboosted sport brakes by Brembo, a ceramic-coated stainless-steel exhaust system, a sport coilover suspension with Fox racing shocks, Eibach coil springs and tunable sway bars, ARB air locking differentials with a dedicated air compressor, Dana differentials, and ICON’s custom New School wheels.
For the exterior paint, ICON 4×4 selected the same Cactus Gray color used on new Broncos. ICON also applied its special Volcanic Black coating on a majority of the exterior trim, including the front grill, rear-view mirrors, custom ICON door handles, and the gas cap, ICON said.
On the interior, ICON teamed with upholstery provider Spinneybeck to integrate a durable, low maintenance leather on all seating surfaces points of contact such as the upper sections of the door and cargo panels. Ward then joined the leather with a new silicon material that looks like a traditional weave fabric, the company said.
For the Bronco 100 custom, the front dashboard incorporates stainless laser-cut machined black aluminum dash details throughout, while custom ICON sport pedals and leather-wrapped arm rests and steering wheel complete the build.
The ICON 4×4 Bronco 100 also features a Dakota digital gauge cluster, an in-dash HVAC unit from Vintage Air, power windows with vintage hand-crank window handles, optional seat heaters for the front two seats, a removable, two-passenger bench in the rear, a Volcanic Black detail theme with a custom roll bar and headliner in the same colorway, and an Elevated Audio system that allows for navigation and full Bluetooth compatibility.
“Our appreciation for the Bronco continues to grow, but I’ve also seen trends where many builders are trying to build new cars out of old cars. The reality is that what ICON does is far more nuanced. Preserving the original integrity of the Bronco while giving these rigs new life is a much finer art than that and not nearly as simplistic. If we made new cars out of old cars, there would be no reason to buy them because they would be inefficient, soulless vehicles,” Ward added. “In order to succeed at what we do, ICON has to respect the original vehicle. An example of that is keeping the original utility focus there but evolving and adapting the vintage Bronco to the modern world. Our happy place is building vintage vehicles that are viable for modern roads and modern drivers but aren’t trying to be new cars. It’s still a very visceral driver and machine relationship that isn’t trying to isolate drivers from the experience behind the wheel. In fact, part of the point of ICON 4×4 is to reconnect people back to the mechanical.”
