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.