Driving Icon's Million-Dollar Suburban

“Holy Schlitzer dude,” recalls Tom Nelson upon encountering this 1970 Chevrolet Suburban obsessively, excessively, and impressively rebuilt at Icon 4x4, “you look in the rear-view and that thing goes waaaaay baaack. It’s a huge-ass box.”

“Schlitzers,” holy or unholy, aren’t easily defined. But this thing? It’s Schlitzer from the bottom of its massive tires to the top of the sheet steel par five fairway that is its roof. There’s more than 1000-horsepower available from its twin-turbocharged V-8 (built by Tom Nelson’s Nelson Racing Engines), the chassis is the longest one Art Morrison Enterprises has ever built, and it’s finished with all the care and precision GM didn’t bother with back in 1970. It has also taken six years and about $1.1 million to construct.

“This is, I believe, the sixth Icon that we’ve built for this client,” says Jonathan Ward, the dude behind the dude fantasyland that is Icon. “And every time we build something for him, he pushes me out of my comfort zone in a new way. Which I’ve learned not to resist but engage. Because its fricking fun.” Yeah, okay, he didn’t really say “fricking.”

This isn’t a series production vehicle like Icon’s rubbed-on Ford Broncos and Toyota FJ Land Cruisers, but a one-off. It's a blow-out custom that Icon could duplicate for anyone, but why would anyone want to copy someone else’s fantasy? This is a truck that reflects the owner’s ambitions and passions. If this were an oil painting he’d be a “patron of the arts." Bring Ward a pile of currency, and his company will turn your notions and whimsy into something drivable.

This patron is Brett, an entrepreneur, who maintains a collection of about 30 vehicles around his home base outside Boston. He prefers keeping his last name out of print.

“I have an affinity for Group B stuff,” he explains, “and I’m not fond of the new stuff.” So once this 1000-horsey Sub is buttoned up and shipped to Massachusetts it will reside along such morsels as a Peugeot 205 T16 and an Audi Sport Quattro. That’s good company to keep.

It also won’t be Brett’s only Sub. He has one of the Suburbans built by the late John Lingenfelter back in the Nineties powered by a 9.9-liter Mercury Marine V-8 rated at 550-horsepower. That’s back when 550-horses seemed like a lot. Now? Not so much. Still, awesome.

The 1970 Suburban is a member of the “Action Line” of GM trucks introduced for the 1967 model year and sold as both a Chevrolet and GMC. Compared to previous Suburbans, this generation was significantly longer and featured, for the first time, a third door on the right side for access to the second row of seats. Long as in a 127-inch wheelbase compared to the previous generation’s 115-inches. Don’t bother with the math, that’s a full foot.

And yes, this one has had a fourth door added to the left side. So, no, you’re not hallucinating. At least not about this. “The door was a cake walk,” Ward reports. “But the fricking B-pillar, we have probably 200 to 250 hours just in the pillar. To get all the gaps and hinge points to work well.” No, he didn’t actually say “fricking.”

Riding low over its all-independent suspension (A-arms in front and Morrison’s own multi-link system in back), it has a startling and massive presence. Some of that presence comes from the fact that each body panel fits perfectly and tightly, and the paint looks deep enough to float swans upon. The original GM styling is amazing, but these things were originally thrown together with loose fit panel gaps and paint that oxidized almost immediately.

Ward and company didn’t screw with the styling. At least not much.

“For the vibe he wanted, I like to play revisionist history sometimes,” explains Ward. “To me, in that time, home audio, architecture especially, interior design, they were doing a brutalist post Bauhaus stuff. So, I decided to put myself in the shoes of Mies van der Rohe.”

Van der Rohe is the architect most associated with the structural minimalist modernism (some would contend brutalism) of mid-century glass and steel buildings. The guy who comes to mind first with the phrase “less is more.” He passed away in 1969, near the time when the raw material that become this truck came off the assembly line at GM.

That strict architectural style is most evident in the grille, which is a solid piece of machined billet aluminum. The design of the grille itself is inspired by the GM original, but different in detail. The crossing bar continues into each headlight bucket while there are 20 rectangles above and another 20 below it. Naturally, the CHEVROLET lettering has been replaced by ICON. More subtly, the area surrounding the grille has been painted body color, so much of the mass is reduced.

“The bumpers are stock, except for the carriage bolt design,” adds Ward. “And the windshield wipers are stock.”

Ward was smart enough to not screw with what is right about the original design. No flared fenders, no ducts in the hood, no flames in the paint. It’s understated … almost to the point of not making a statement at all. Until it starts.

This is not a loud truck. It doesn’t so much bark to life as it does thrum. It's like the opening chord on an Apple computer that’s been converted to internal combustion. Then it settles into a sonorous gargle of an idle.