Classic cars

Icon Derelict cars are the automotive trend nobody expected

Call it the ultimate breakdown service: we meet the California re-mod studio making new icons of individuality from husks of American mass-production
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Scott Dukes

By mixing unrestored body panels with the very latest technology, Derelict cars have become their own trend that's still hot from the oven, bubbling with interest from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and some of the most influential minds in fashion. They're the antithesis of cars as an investment class and are, hands down, the most contrarily rewarding vehicle you can own in the world right now.

They're made by Icon, a company based in Chatsworth, Los Angeles - a neighbourhood that's home to a cul-de-sac of mortician-grey low rises and LA's adult entertainment industry. The brand built its reputation here by recycling and reimagining vintage Toyota Landcruisers with modern mechanicals and upgraded interiors, but its owner and CEO, Jonathan Ward, found that the concept of "restomods" had its limitations: "I dreaded the first scratch." The Derelicts are his response - cars with 21st-century driveability and a vintage aesthetic that gets better as it gets worse.

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Scott Dukes

It sounds simple enough: find a car in a barn and stuff in a new engine. But underestimate their complexity at your peril - Icon's engineering team goes to extraordinary lengths to make it look like it did nothing. Like every Derelict that passes through Icon, the 1946 Oldsmobile Business Coupe was sent straight to a laser scanner before a single spanner was turned. That data was used to create a 3-D wireframe, then all of the modern elements - performance mechanicals, digital audio, climate control - were slotted into vacant nooks to optimise everything from connectivity to weight distribution. Clever stuff.

The depth of consideration goes well beyond the packaging and into the minutiae, so everything you can touch is high-functioning sculpture. The owner of the '46, a senior engineer at Apple, had a very specific vision for the final texture of his car that went right down to the knobs of the air-conditioning switch - it had to click when you turned it, a problem that took $6,000 of R&D to solve. "Business-wise, [this work] is the dumbest thing we do, but it's also why we get noticed," says Ward.

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Scott Dukes

The first ever Derelict, a 1952 Chrysler Town And Country estate Ward built "for a joke", won a California ArtCenter College Of Design award and the attention of Nike, which routinely seeks out new classics to inform product development. Another car from the Icon stable was requested to appear at the brand's design show, where exceptional things are presented on the basis that they apply a unique approach to industrial design. "One of the Nike guys now drives a Derelict," says Ward. "Our client list is wonderfully diverse."

Icon lists one of J Crew's lead designers, Wall Street's money management community, foreign royalty and "at least two" heads of state among its customers. Whatever they do for a living, they'll need to do it well because Derelicts don't come cheap. Prices start at $250,000 (£200,500), but the 1946 car set its owner back $350,000 (£280,000) and Ward says they can "comfortably" hit $1 million (£800,000). "We get celebrities and ball players too, but they're still buying Ferraris and Lambos for the most part."

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Scott Dukes

Yet, for the tastemakers, these cars don't so much stimulate an erogenous zone as define it. They're exemplars of postmodern luxury, prizing integrity and individuality above anything else. In the same way that a Rolex Submariner with a faded bezel is worth more than a restored original, each of these cars' individual patina can't be replicated, which gives it a value comfortably beyond the sum of its parts. Buy a supercar and it says precisely nothing about you, apart from the size of your wallet. The Derelicts are more reflective; more emotionally subtle.

Not any old rusting hulk makes the cut, though. "The client almost never supplies the car," says Ward. Mostly, they come to Icon with a concept, from something relatively straightforward, such as matching a car to an art-deco home, to more abstract briefs. "One client asked me to build a car that reminded them of their grandparents at Christmas time." Once the idea's locked in, Ward uses a nationwide network of hunters - who variously include architects, petrol station technicians, farmers and UPS drivers - to find the right car. "It could be anything, but I have to get excited by it, and it's the individual vehicle that mandates the vision of the build."

Read more: Why the best classic cars are sometimes the worst

Despite dealing in old things, Ward is fiercely progressive. "We avoid building younger [post 1965], more clichéd cars like a Ford Mustang. We'd much rather create something that's already visually exciting and then let people pull back the layers to find more surprises." His next project, for example, is a barn-found 1949 Mercury Eight that's had its oily, mechanical guts replaced with Tesla long-range batteries, regenerative brakes and a pair of electric motors that'll give it 800bhp - 110bhp more than the Model S it borrows parts from. "It'll still look like a '49 Mercury inside and out when it's parked," says Ward.

Regardless of the tech and practicality, the Derelicts make no objective sense - you could buy a supercar and an interesting classic for the price. But your very own cutting-edge antique that's impossible to re-create? That's every expression of luxury stitched into the same thing. No wonder they're selling faster than Icon can pull cars out of barns.