Where does your passion for building cars come from?
Why did you decide to start TLC?
While on vacation and with zero intelligent forethought or planning, my wife and I said, ‘You know, when we get home, [screw] it. Let's quit.’ We were younger, weren’t married [at the time] and had no kids, and we wanted to do something we really enjoyed that would also set us up to do the things we enjoy outside of work, like travel and adventure.
How have you seen the automotive landscape change?
Over time, we saw the market shifting. More and more people had the affinity for the aesthetic and the utilitarian roots of the truck, but also more and more people had no attachment to the vintage archaic mechanical realities of those trucks and were asking for mods.
How did ICON come to be?
“Car designs that really resonate with people do so because they're tied to enabling other things in life that we appreciate and like to do.”
What’s your favorite part of the building process?
I just love that design phase. That's my sweet spot: the sketching, the geeking out, finding the materials and the covers and the metals.
Tell us more about ICON’s Derelicts and Reformers.
I built the first Derelict—an old DeSoto wagon—just to meet my need for something with style, heart, and soul; that hauls ass and is reliable; and has all the perversions of modern cars in it. Essentially, for any Derelicts, it’s already beat-to-hell, so just drive the damn thing. Then we began offering Reformers as the bespoke option for people looking for quality finishing.
What’s your biggest takeaway after years of building?
Frequently asked questions
BFGoodrich answers your most asked questions.
FAQ
Proportion that still reads as correct decades later, a silhouette recognizable in outline alone, and cultural timing that placed it in front of the right audience at the right moment. Technical excellence alone rarely produces icon status, and plenty of brilliant cars never achieve it.
Rarely. Deliberate attempts at instant icon status usually read as trying too hard, because the status is conferred by an audience over time rather than claimed by a manufacturer at launch. The vehicles that achieve it are often the ones that were simply designed honestly for a purpose.