ICON LX F

Here is Icon's LX F for SEMA 2008.

Most of my automotive design work has centered around trucks. So I guess I am known as mostly a "truck guy". Most of the time I am driving the latest ICON to come off the line, as I guess I am the "test drive guy" also, responsible with making sure each rattle and hum is settled in and fine tuned. For a while I drove an Ariel Atom to balance my automotive diet. That often ended up in conflict, as it is strictly a two seater and my two young sons would almost always end up fighting about who got to go. The Ariel and ICON set my performance benchmarks pretty high, but when I started to hear tidbits about the IS F from friends in the press and at Toyota, is seemed like a great solution.

I grabbed one as soon as they came out. What a blast! Super fun ride, and nothing can catch it. But... like I said, we are truck people at ICON, so after we did some early work on the new Land Cruiser and Lexus LX570, we began to lust for F performance values in the LX truck platform. Our LX_F "what if"? Lucky for us, the fine people at Lexus found the potential combination interesting enough to give us the go ahead on this project.

So now we are hard at work making it all happen in time to be shown at SEMA in Vegas. We started with this fine stock 2008 pre-production LX 570, which I think had been part of the press fleet at launch.

I have long been a fan of matte, stealth and monochromatic finishes. Easier to care for and longer lasting (when done right...). The anti-bling! I am sick of the usual "bling bling" and prefer a little restraint and style in a fine bespoke ride. ICON is all matte powder coated, so we plan to add a bit of the stealth IS F style complimented by some ICON surface coatings. On the performance side, we are full of ideas. Since this is a newly launched model in a segment not often modified... we will have to fabricate and prototype many of the components and systems we hope to include in our design. Join us as we go through the process, we may need your opinions.

Here is the short list of planned modifications...

- Matte two tone gray exterior.

- Black chrome trim and emblems.

- Side trim removed, roof rack deleted.

- TRD six piston front big brake kit (we hope to add custom StopTech rears brakes to match if there is time!).

- Large diameter (22-24") satin- matte or Teflon powder coated rims and Pirelli's showing off the brakes.

- F_Sport style custom intake. (Everyone loves the sound of the IS F and credit the exhaust, but most of the glorious sound is made by the dual stage intake!).

- F_Sport-TRD style stainless steel exhaust.

- Custom TRD based supercharger :).

- Rover Sport dominating ride height....

- All wood panels in the interior deleted and replaced with Carbon Fiber surface effect coatings.

- Window tint with mild chromatic effect.

You see where we are going with this? Enjoy the ride! - Jonathan Ward

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3153842