Designed by the legendary Brooks Stevens, who along with Raymond Loewy, was a founding member of The Industrial Designers Society of America. A wonderfully useful body style with great lines and proportions that end themselves to modern use with ease. Our client had childhood memories related to this model, and decided to reward himself with an ICON Derelict version as an adult. We found this vehicle in West Virginia, where it had been used (since new) at a boy’s summer camp. It ferried kids to and fro the train, and to the doctor’s office in town when required. The camp closed in the 1980’s, and the Willys was stored inside ever since. With amazing all original paint and interior, this lightly patina-ed two door wagon was a perfect candidate for our work. We engineered a modern GM Erod emissions certified 5.3 fuel injected V8 with a five speed transmission. Art Morrison chassis with independent front suspension, and four link rear. Hydroboost four wheel disc brakes, rack & pinion steering, modern A/C, Bluetooth audio system, removable powered refrigerator and more. What a great vehicle!
While it may not look like we did anything, this vehicle has been revolutionized! Now a comfortable and capable daily driver that incites smiles wherever it goes!
The inside of the vehicle has been coated in Dynamat. That includes the doors, roof, firewall and quarter panels. Then the front floors, and underside of the entire body (prior to reassembly) has been treated and coated in polyurea. This reduces heat transfer, road noise, and corrosion potential.
The nose is a familiar design because the vehicle was developed after the war, to take advantage of the Willys Jeep popularity during the war, to give the returning servicemen something to buy when they got back to civilian life.
We designed and CNC'ed the wheels to accept the stock hub caps and still appear stock, although they are aluminum, larger and lighter. White powder coat finish.
Since the spare took up most of the cargo space, we fit two Fix-A-Flat cans on a custom rack. This left room for the powered ARB fridge, and more room for cargo.
Here you see how we added subtle A/C vents, and re-purposed the original heater controls to run the modern climate control system. Two more ducts are fit on the outer edges of the lower dash.
It's a smart phone dock! We designed and CNC'ed this in aluminum, then painted it to match the original paint on the other dash panels. It is a sub-module, so when the phone evolves, it is easy to update. This gives you Bluetooth, charging, voice to text and music management without some ugly traditional stereo head unit.
Next we integrated four speakers. Two went into the kick panels, and two in the cargo panels. The grills were painted to blend in with the interior design.
While the stock gauge still appears stock, it has improved functionality with all modern electronic innards, plus check engine light indicator. Note the lovely screen printed wicker dash panel.
What a great horn button and wheel design! We kept the original wheel and column, then altered it to have a break-away section for added safety. In doing so, we lost the functionality of this cool horn button.
So we decided to improve with original turn signal switch stalk, designing this one with the horn button added on the tip. We crafted it in stainless steel. Since our client is a trombone player, we used that as the graphic, instead of the generic bugle you usually see.
