Michael Satterfield
by Michael Satterfield -01/20/2010
ICON is known for its rugged hand-built off-road vehicles inspired by the original Toyota Land Cruiser, the California based company just released a new model is inspired by the old Willys flat fendered CJ3B. Designed from scratch, with a dedicated coil suspension chassis, production Rubicon axle assemblies, Jeep application AX15 five-speed and New Process 231 transfer case.
Target weight of 2400 lbs, 260 HP. We will build a dozen or so as to full turnkey vehicles, thus refining the process to allow for clients to purchase it in engineered component vehicle “kit form”, all the old Popular Mechanics back page ads of the 1960s. A modern take on the classic, CAD designed the simple fun project, using simple hand tools (no welding). The Icon CJ3B will launch with an Ecotec 4 cylinder gasoline engine, however, the company is developing a pure EV variant with four in-wheel hub motors and a driver-controlled variable crawl ratio for off-road versatility. For now, they are offering a “beta batch” of ten units, with a special high level of content and equipment, all built by hand by the designer, Jonathan Ward. They will be sequence data tagged and price fixe. These original ten will help Icon fine-tune and perfect the CJ3B, so that they can offer a full range of versions from component vehicle sales all the way through to full turnkey vehicles in the near future, all at the lowest price point good business practices will allow.
[Source: Icon]
