First Drive: ICON Builds A Tesla-Powered 1949 James Dean Mercury Coupe

When I mentioned my early morning 30-minute stint behind the wheel of a Tesla-powered 1949 Mercury coupe built by Jon Ward of ICON, Achim Anschiedt, head of design at Bugatti, paused and redirected our interview about the process of designing a Bugatti using VR goggles. Recorders off, we organized a meeting of Achim and Jon from our comfortable chairs at Maison Bugatti Pebble Beach.

Five hours before, Ward and I had met curbside at the Clement Intercontinental, favored dormitory for journalists during Monterey Car Week.

“I looked at all the ways people do EV conversions in the aftermarket,” says Ward as we whir up the hill from Cannery Row toward the parking area next to the Gooding auction tent at Pebble. “Then I made our punch list for the project, a list of all the things I’d like to see as part of a conversion,” says Ward while adjusting his porkpie hat. “No one is bothering to do true thermal management. They might run coolant through a 12-volt pump, but that’s it. More critical, there is about an 18- to 20-degree window of happiness for Tesla cells that gives the best performance and longevity.” To achieve that high level of performance and efficiency, to deliver a car that fulfills the promise made 22 years ago in the Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman movie “Gattaca,” Ward and his long-time client who commissioned this engineering adventure walked into the unknown.

“Jonathan’s network of hunters found our specimen in late 2014,” says the client, who wishes to remain anonymous, but who fully intends to drive this car often in California, and also take it on tours of America. “Once the Mercury had been delivered to ICON in 2015, I lobbed out the idea of making it electric because Tesla had started to grab the public’s attention. Jonathan’s series of Derelict cars are the ultimate ‘sleepers,’ and a battery-electric Mercury seemed the truest distillation. This idea held even more significance to me when paired with the Mercury’s role in the hot rod community—knowing it could potentially be disruptive, even if most people dismissed it as an abomination.”

“At the time Jonathan told me the aftermarket network really did not exist, and it wouldn’t be worth the time and resources to forge that path on our own,” the client continues. “But later when we were ready to build the car with a gasoline powertrain, Jonathan said he had found a group of guys in Southern California he believed could provide the needed support [writing the script]. But Jonathan warned that much was still unknown.”

“We wrote our own CAN-Bus software [Controller Area Network] with a Motech controller,” says Ward. “So, we have more OEM-style double-stop safety for scenario one, scenario two, scenario three. Dual controllers…dual motors in series that go down to a huge Kevlar driveshaft. So, no tranny, no shift point, 150 to 200 miles of range and an hour and a half for a 90-percent charge.” The battery is a full Tesla Performance 85kWh, 96 cells in series, 400v and 225 ah capacity. The motors are AM Racing Permanent Magnet with 235 lb. ft. of torque each, which equates to about 470 lb. ft. total, or approximately 400 horsepower when translated into that measurable.

Ward’s Mercury can very nearly match the recharging speed of a Tesla Model S. Fifty percent charge can be achieved in about 20 minutes, enough to get the car home under most conceivable circumstances. “I have regen, but I’m running gnarly Brembo 6-piston calipers all the way around through a large-bore master cylinder. But no power assist. We did not do an electric brake boost because it just feels like $&^% to me.” But because the driving position is upright, it’s easy to bring enough force to bear on the brake pedal even without boost, and modulate braking with precision. Impressive, considering this is a two and a half ton car.

“I had brake boost at first, but it was just one step too electric car feel. I also tuned down the regen points because we have full control over it…because we were dumb enough to write our own code. It’s that urge to not leave good enough alone. The trend in the industry, the direction, is exciting, but I think thus far people are doing what’s easiest and most adaptable. Meaning a bell housing, throw the batteries in. That’s a little…Radio Shack,” says Ward.

“The idea was to stay with the tradition of these 1949 to ’51 ‘lead sled’ hot rod Mercury coupes. Stromberg 97 carburetors, finned heads. I wanted to do a modern exaggerated V8 form to keep that older generation engaged and keep that style and spirit.” If you don’t know the Mercury coupe, rent “Rebel Without A Cause” on iTunes. James Dean drove a customized Mercury coupe in the movie.

A bold, adventurous thinker, Ward does not engineer or design to low standards. Though still evolving, this vehicle is not an effort to dismiss, a misplaced story from “Hot Rod” or “Rodder’s Journal.” Ward’s company, ICON, is on the cusp of becoming a low-volume car manufacturer. If President Trump would demand that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao kick a few NHTSA bureaucrats to complete the registration system required in the low-volume vehicle manufacturer’s legislation as part of the FAST Act that Congress passed and Obama signed into law in 2015, Ward could immediately step up to produce 5000 of his off-roading vehicles a year, exporting most of them at a goodly profit and creating skilled labor jobs in the U.S. ICON’s remanufactured and reimagined vintage Toyota Land Cruisers and first-generation Ford Broncos are that good, that well executed. Like the owner of this Mercury, most of Ward’s clients prefer to remain anonymous. But many of the world’s most storied industrial designers—people who are household names, people who have changed how we live—own ICON vehicles.

As extension of the same engineering process applied to his Land Cruisers and Broncos, which sell for $200,000 and up, Ward developed his “Derelicts” line, mostly vintage American cars that are refreshed with completely new and potent chassis and powertrain under their perfectly aged skin. He has also updated European luxury and sports cars of impeccable provenance.

ICON Derelicts have the sort of half-century patina currently much prized among collectors of vintage sports cars. With nearly silent Tesla power and typically strong electric-car acceleration off the line, this Mercury is a further extension of the Derelicts concept and the “sleeper” genre. Even on 17-Mile Drive, people turned to stare at the ghostly Mercury wishing along with nary a sound.

After pausing to snap photos of the car under moss-covered trees a short walk from the lollapalooza that is Pebble Beach on concours weekend, I immediately experienced the one system of the Mercury that Ward has not sussed: the steering. I had to cut the car up an extremely steep hairpin turn near Congress Avenue in the forest. Because virtually everything in the car is new except for the outer bodywork and much of the interior, it managed without issue. Not quite a London taxi turning on its own axis, but definitely wieldy in a tight spot, primarily a gift of carefully considered inner bodywork affording wheel clearance, and excellent front suspension.

Missing from my drive but likely cured as I type is steering precision, but it’s a mechanical issue, not BEV-related, with a fairly simple fix that is being installed this week. To work around the vee-shaped battery array, the steering shaft cuts a hard angle. “I’m fighting that angle,” says Ward. “See at the tail of the shaft?” Work the wheel back and forth to find engagement, channeling one’s best Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart driving a 1940s car in a film noir B-movie. Yet the suspension itself is flawless, the car tracking beautifully—better than some contemporary performance cars—even over Carmel’s rolling 1.5-lane roads, and the bumpy, heaved surface of David Avenue up and over the hill to Pebble. As the long-time owner of a 1949 Cadillac, I know the sensations well, the need for a gentle hand. With the custom-fabricated steering joint installed, the Mercury should perform very well in slaloms and other tests of low-speed handling and standing-start acceleration. Ward has built gas-powered Derelicts that have utterly and completely whipped contemporary supercars in slalom competitions.

It will be interesting to see if any of the major carmakers turn up at ICON in scenic Chatsworth, California. They should. It may only be a quirky niche to supply BEV skateboards to Ward, but the marketing and communications value of the cars would be significant, money well invested. So, BMW, VW, Toyota, maybe Nissan, maybe you should send a few engineers and marketing people for visits. Ward has been meticulous and thoughtful.

“After discovering Jonathan and understanding the ethos of his company, it was difficult not to instantly begin looking for opportunities to build something,” says the Mercury’s owner, a younger man with a professional background. “My hope pretty much since inception was to start with a car special to me, and with resonance among other enthusiasts. I wanted to bring an idea that would really trigger Jonathan’s interest in a new way.” A hard path, but Ward has delivered a battery-electric vintage car worthy of the legend wrought in “Gattaca.”