After extensive research, he took his findings and ideas for a culturally correct pattern to Cherokee experts to be sure. The result is inspired by an eagle feather, something Cherokee people traditionally carry for protection on long trips and replicate in artwork on sleeping pads and water bags used for such journeys. Ward’s team created a template for the painter to work with, but being an old hand, the artist chose to freehand it. If no one said anything, you’d never know. It’s that good. It’s also under so many layers of clearcoat you can’t even feel the edges of the paint. Then there was the matter of the badge. Cherokee members don’t wear big, elaborate feather headdresses, like what is featured on the original badge. Ward elected to do away with the whole hullabaloo and recast the badges entirely with his signature lizard logo circled by an authentic pattern. The exterior sorted, Ward then applied the eagle feather motif liberally across the interior. It appears most prominently on the stainless steel “spears,” trim pieces Icon created that run the length of the interior just below the windows. Each hides LED ambient lighting, as do the new door armrests. You’ll also find the pattern laser-etched on the stainless-steel bezel around the instrument cluster—which, along with the rest of the dashboard, was taken from an earlier 1965 truck because Ward liked those gauges better. As always, they’ve been carefully gutted and reworked with electric stepper motors run off the engine computer. It’s also engraved on the passenger dash plaque, rear window pop-out levers, and coat hooks on the B-pillars. Even more intricate are the patterns hand-carved into the Moore and Giles leather, itself vegetable-tanned by Wicket and Craig. Yes, carved, not embossed, by master craftsman Trajan Vieira, owner of Mercury Leather Works. Look for the hidden Icon lizard in the bottom left corner of the carvings on the driver door card. Above it all, a custom Alcantara headliner replaces the flimsy, cardboard original and is punctuated by a custom-made dome light.
1975 Icon Reformer Jeep Cherokee First Drive: Making Things Right
Icon’s creativity and craftmanship were fully unleashed for this one-off, culturally respectful Jeep.Scott EvansWriterDarren MartinPhotographer
Nov 18, 2024
It’s not subtle. That’s what strikes you first. Usually, when Jonathan Ward and his merry band of master craftspeople get their hands on a classic, it takes an expert or superfan’s eye to spot the changes. Not this time. Given the chance to work his design magic on the 1975 Icon Reformer Jeep Cherokee, Ward set about correcting the glaring cultural inaccuracies in the original design. Making the Cherokee, Cherokee
It goes without saying, but the original Jeep Cherokee’s supposedly Native American motifs were neither culturally accurate nor sensitive. The designer who came up with it was “probably some white guy in an office in Detroit thinking of ‘Injuns,’” Icon founder Ward joked. Case in point: The optional stripe package’s repeating geometric pattern doesn’t correspond to any actual Native American art, and the C-pillar badge features a headdress used not by the Cherokee people but an entirely different tribe. Ward made it his mission to set things right.
After extensive research, he took his findings and ideas for a culturally correct pattern to Cherokee experts to be sure. The result is inspired by an eagle feather, something Cherokee people traditionally carry for protection on long trips and replicate in artwork on sleeping pads and water bags used for such journeys. Ward’s team created a template for the painter to work with, but being an old hand, the artist chose to freehand it. If no one said anything, you’d never know. It’s that good. It’s also under so many layers of clearcoat you can’t even feel the edges of the paint. Then there was the matter of the badge. Cherokee members don’t wear big, elaborate feather headdresses, like what is featured on the original badge. Ward elected to do away with the whole hullabaloo and recast the badges entirely with his signature lizard logo circled by an authentic pattern. The exterior sorted, Ward then applied the eagle feather motif liberally across the interior. It appears most prominently on the stainless steel “spears,” trim pieces Icon created that run the length of the interior just below the windows. Each hides LED ambient lighting, as do the new door armrests. You’ll also find the pattern laser-etched on the stainless-steel bezel around the instrument cluster—which, along with the rest of the dashboard, was taken from an earlier 1965 truck because Ward liked those gauges better. As always, they’ve been carefully gutted and reworked with electric stepper motors run off the engine computer. It’s also engraved on the passenger dash plaque, rear window pop-out levers, and coat hooks on the B-pillars. Even more intricate are the patterns hand-carved into the Moore and Giles leather, itself vegetable-tanned by Wicket and Craig. Yes, carved, not embossed, by master craftsman Trajan Vieira, owner of Mercury Leather Works. Look for the hidden Icon lizard in the bottom left corner of the carvings on the driver door card. Above it all, a custom Alcantara headliner replaces the flimsy, cardboard original and is punctuated by a custom-made dome light.
Hidden In Plain Sight
As with most Icon vehicles, a majority of the custom design details hide in plain sight. The steering wheel has been completely refurbished and the horn button replaced with the same lizard badge as on the exterior C-pillars. The air vents are little replicas of the pre-1966 grille, and below the dash, the original dual-lamp warning light pod was recreated in stainless steel and expanded to four lights. The seats were restuffed with Tempur-Pedic foam for better comfort and support, and visible hardware was replaced with stainless steel. Below them, the carpet was replaced with German wool covering a thick layer of Dynamat for heat and noise insulation. The center console between the seats is the most obvious addition, redesigned by Icon in metal with new cupholders, a fold-down armrest, and a hidden USB charging port. Then there’s the practical. The power door locks can be operated by a key fob. The steering column is an aftermarket collapsable unit that tilts, but its stalks have been dressed up with knurled stainless steel knobs to match the rest of the hardware, including the HVAC controls that actuate a hidden Vintage Air system. The window cranks have been redone in stainless steel, but unlike other Icons, they don’t actuate power windows. The owner, a repeat customer seeking to outdo his other Icon, wanted to keep them manual, so Icon rebuilt the hardware to make them roll up and down like butter. Servicing them is easier than ever, as all the interior panels and door cards are held on with strong magnets rather than the factory clips. (Ward hates the clips, as does anyone who’s worked with them.) There is one power window, though: Wagoneers and Cherokees came from the factory with a power rear window that must be rolled down before you open the tailgate. All its hardware has been replaced, and it can now be opened from a switch in the cab or by key on the tailgate. As is often the case, there’s no stereo head unit. A Bluetooth-enabled unit is hidden behind the dash, and all music is streamed from a phone. It drives an Alpine amp connected to five Focal Utopia speakers and a 10-inch sub, each mounted to look as factory as possible.
Positive Body Image
Not only are the HVAC vents modeled off the early grille, but Icon also remastered it in stainless steel up front. In fact, the whole front end came from a ’65 model. The rest of the body, meanwhile, is from a ’79. As with all Icons, the body was stripped, electroplated, and polyurethane coated underneath for maximum rust protection. If you know your Wagoneers and Cherokees and go poking around this, you’ll start to find other subtle enhancements. Door mirrors and exterior handles are re-created in stainless steel, as are the “dog dish” covers flanking the grille. The driver-side one, though, is no longer a block-out plate. It’s been carefully opened up and now serves as the engine air intake. (Kaiser originally planned to do four headlights then changed its mind after the tooling was done and filled the extra holes with decorative covers.) Keep circling the truck, and you’ll eventually realize there’s no gas cap. The original near the driver-side rear wheel was, in Ward’s opinion, ugly. The original fuel filler was also prone to backing up and overflowing, so the whole thing was tossed and the panel patched. Now, the modern fuel filler and cap are hidden behind the driver-side taillight, which articulates gracefully out of the way. Its (and its twin’s) housing has been redone in—what else—stainless steel and its innards replaced with LEDs. The headlights, too, are now LEDs behind vintage-style lenses. The rest is even harder to spot. The fender flares are new, meticulously reworked to look original but fit the different front and rear bodies, and provide plenty of clearance for the Icon vintage-look, custom-hubcapped forged aluminum wheels wrapped in BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO2s. The custom dual-exit exhaust poking out sideways behind either rear wheel is painted black for a subtler look. Powered side steps retract fully up on the body when the doors are closed; you’ll never see them without crawling under the truck. The only stock pieces left, according to Ward, are the bumpers.
The Meat and Potatoes
Like all Icon builds to date, the Cherokee rides on a custom Art Morrison chassis. Ward went with a radius arm front suspension and four-link rear, each articulating custom Currie axles managed by Fox Racing shocks. Moving up the chain, the axles are driven from a manually shifted Atlas two-speed transfer case designed for GM trucks, which makes sense given the GM 4L85E four-speed automatic transmission it’s bolted to. What’s unusual in this setup—but makes total sense given the truck it’s driving—is the Mopar 392 6.4-liter V-8 crate engine under the hood. Ward has had bad luck with Mopar transmissions, so everything gets a 4L85E with build-specific tuning now. It’s not actually sacrilegious, either, because Cherokees used the GM TH400 three-speed automatic all the way up to 1979.
Drive Like It’s 1975
Fired up and dropped in drive, the Cherokee sounds like a modern Ram pickup with a mild aftermarket exhaust. The rumble of the big Mopar pushrod is immediately identifiable and is neither too loud nor too quiet for this application. No, it doesn’t sound like an old carbureted AMC 360 or 401, but it also makes more than double the horsepower (especially when you consider net versus SAE ratings). This truck gets up and goes just fine, thanks. Between its quickness and exhaust note, you might even confuse it for a modern truck if not for all the road noise. Icon looked into that, but there’s just no fixing 1960s aerodynamics without completely redesigning the body, and what’s the point of that? This rig strikes a perfect balance between modern power and reliability with vintage swagger. And let’s be real, the less-old four-speed shifts quicker than the even-older three-speed slushbox. Noise level aside, the steering is what really takes you back. Recirculating ball technology has come a long way, but it still feels vague compared to modern rack-and-pinion. There are 10 degrees of play in either direction off-center when you turn the wheel, and because of that you’ll constantly be making little corrections. This is the reason people in old movies are constantly sawing at the wheel as they drive. To someone stepping out of a modern car, it’s jarring, but you get used to it after 15 minutes or so. Loose as the steering feels going straight, everything tightens up in a corner. We’ve yet to drive an Icon that handles poorly, as the folks at Art Morrison know what they’re doing. Yeah, it handles like a truck, but a fairly modern truck and not one that’s 50 years old. The fancy seat foam works as advertised, proving a lot more lateral support than you’d expect from vintage-looking seats like this, so you’re not sliding out of them as you would back in the day. Everything about the Cherokee feels easy. It accelerates and brakes like a newer vehicle, it handles like a newer vehicle with an old steering box, and it even rides well. The only thing difficult is pulling those T-case levers when you want to hit the dirt. And while it has the clearance to do some pretty decent off-roading, it’s also great for just cruising, tunes bumping and A/C blowing cold.
