I’m so conflicted about this. On the one hand, I love the idea of taking a brand-new, modern vehicle, packed as it is with the latest technology, performance, efficiency, safety features, and, yes, all of that new-ness (which brings with it the promise of trips taken without long periods of lingering by roadsides when something inevitably breaks) and skinning it with the charm and character of an old car’s body. I feel like I mention the ancient Aztec god Xipe Totec the flayed god every time I talk about a retro-modded car like this because of how the practice was to wear the skin of a sacrificial victim, but I promise I won’t do so this time. While these have existed for a while, it’s very possible that ICON 4×4’s C Modern Retro Series is the best example of this new-car-wearing-an-older-car’s-skin ever.
I mean, it better be, since it ranges in price between $450,000 to $550,000.
Go ahead and take a moment to wipe whatever beverage/chowder/chili you ejected at your screen when you read that price, because that’s a healthy reaction. If it helps, that price does include the donor brand-new Chevy Silverado that lurks under the surface, but not the 1967 to 1972 Chevy C10 or C20 pickup truck that will become the new body for this retro-mod.
Here’s how ICON 4×4’s press release describes it:
ICON 4×4 proudly announces the launch of its newest vehicle program: the Chevrolet C Modern Retro Series, a limited production series that seamlessly blends the iconic styling of the 1967 – 1972 Chevrolet C10 and C20 pickup with the engineering, performance, and everyday usability of a brand new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 4×4 V8.
Developed from the ground up by ICON founder Jonathan Ward and his team of engineers, designers, and craftsmen, the C Modern Retro Series is neither a restoration nor a conventional C10 Chevy build . Instead, it represents a comprehensive reengineering effort that preserves the complete functionality of a modern Silverado while clothing it in one of the most beloved classic Chevrolet trucks ever produced.
As you can see, this half-a-million-dollar Silverado looks, as far as anyone can tell, like a well-loved and worn old C10, something that may be worth, oh, between $8,000 and $10,000 if it’s just a nice original and running truck. A really nicely restored C10 can go for between, oh, $40,000 and $100,000, depending on just how nice, but it’s worth remembering that this is not a restored old truck. It’s brand new truck, very carefully re-engineered to look like an old truck, because it’s wearing the old truck’s entire body. And that’s not cheap or easy to do.
From a distance, you’d never realize this, of course. But start looking up close, and you get some hints:
Like under the hood; that’s the 6.2-liter Ecotec3 V8 engine, I think. It’s definitely not what originally came in any C10. Just like how this fusebox is clearly not from an old C10: 
Where are the pennies jammed in to replace missing fuses? That’s some prime old-truck character right there. They should have engineered modern fuses that look like pennies. When I order mine, I’ll demand that.
Another big tell is the dashboard:
I have to hand it to ICON here; they do a good job of integrating all these modern controls into a very old-school looking dash. However, for $500,000 freaking dollaritos I sort of want custom, retro-looking button faces for everything. The F, V, and T knobs look great (Flush, Vamoose, and Tsuris, I assume) but why don’t we get an old-school looking knob for the lights or parking brake or mirrors?
It looks like the lighting has been upgraded to LEDs, which make sense. And the patina on the paint is impeccable, too.
The interior materials look interesting, the way they ride the line between luxurious and retro. That’s not an easy line to walk, and I suspect here the goal was to keep retro look while upgrading to modern luxury tactility. I haven’t touched it, so I’m guessing, but that’s what it looks like to me.
Oh, and that window crank is just a switch for a power window, before you get too excited about rolling down your own window manually.
It sure looks like an old truck inside; I’m curious about how ICON handled sound deadening and rattle-resistance, which I suspect must be priorities in this price range. It seems like extensive work is done in that arena, with modern methods and materials.
If you like patina, you can get the Derelict style, which preserves old paint and patina, as this example does. Or, you can get it in Old School style, which seeks to make a sort of time capsule like-new version of the old truck.
“The 1967 through 1972 Chevrolet truck is one of the purest automotive designs ever produced,”
… ICON founder Jonathan Ward said to whomever was writing this press release, and I can’t necessarily argue with him there. These old trucks were remarkably clean and uncluttered designs, confident and not needing any superfluous ornamentation to look just right. They are fantastic old trucks.
Only five trucks in this series will be made, and I suspect that may be the right number. Because who is the target market for these? God’s dad’s boss?
I don’t know what to think. I love the idea of these, and I think these may be the best-executed versions of the modern-vehicle-reskinned-as-an-old-one ever. I’ve driven some similar sorts of things, like that Dodge Power Wagon retromod I drove a couple years ago, and that thing, while cool, was one of the most dangerous, difficult vehicles I’ve tested and it cost almost $400,000. I think the processes required to make vehicles like these simply isn’t cheap.
As usual, I have no doubt ICON will do an amazing job on these. But does that even matter to most of us? There’s going to be five made, all sold to people who pay professionals to keep people like me away from them. Far away, ideally.
Just to be clear, the chassis is a stock 2025 CK1500 Silverado, shortened a bit to fit the C10 body, which is all original C10, painstakingly made to fit and, even more impressively, not freak out the CAN-BUS, which remains gleefully unaware of what has been done to it. I was told by Jonathan Ward himself that the wheels are specially forged just for this application, too, to give the “perfect offset for a proper stance.” That man sweats the details.
Is the experience of owning and driving one of these that much better than owning and driving a $40-$50,000 competently restored old C10? Isn’t some of the charm of these old trucks the noise and smells and vibrations? I have similar questions about that Kindred EV-converted VW Microbus I just drove (and will have a review of soon). I don’t really know how to process these things in my head; I waver between appreciation and contempt, interest and irrelevance. I don’t really know what to do with these.
I’m open to hearing what you think. Maybe I just need to embrace the conflict.
This is a vehicle for rich people that really, really suck.
I can’t afford it, but I’m glad it exists.
Nope, this is a bridge too far. This is millionaire cosplay of actual working class people. This is peak excess, to look poor and rural. Absolutely disgusting.
I’d take a decently maintained GMT400 over this and use the leftover money for something smarter. Anything. Even a rental property.
I really liked the GMT400 pickups and Tahoes’ looks back then and still today. That was before Dodge went all butch and try to look like something from PACCAR.
There are a near infinite number of better ways to spend 500k. So many, in fact, that this seems pointless. It’s cool, but not 500k cool.
I like Jonathan, very nice guy and very genuine, and his company does great work. What a gig to be able to have clients with this kind of discretionary income.
I’m sure dealing with those clients can also be a curse.
The ultimate “all hat-no cattle” truck.
Yup.
ND/Crackpipe! What a total ripoff. Wow, what a joke. The classic C10 isn’t even included?! WTF? Why not? It should be. I really like the 2nd gen C10’s since they are such an iconic design, but for some reason I like the 3rd gen C10 body style better. I’d go w/ one of those and just restore it and upgrade the brakes, etc. For $500K, I’d rather buy hundreds of awesome rusty junky classics!
“window crank is just a switch for a power window”
Total fail!
There’s only a half million worth of truck here if they give you both halves of the conversion.
So you get the old c10 body with new truck bits underneath but you also get the new silverado with the old truck bits underneath.
A cosplay farm truck that costs as much as a house? Hmm, just fucking no. Who the hell is this even for? The neo-right techie set that just bought a mansion in Texas? Ok, I think I just answered my question, but this is still completely absurd.
There’s a whole ridiculous set of massive faux ranches that have popped up in MT and WY, I could see 1 or 2 of these going there. A buddy who does pipeline discovery in MT sent me a photo from the middle of nowhere on someone’s “ranch” that had a vaguely medieval castle styled stone gatehouse built around a small bridge on their property-that person would think this is cool.
If you have the hobby vineyard LLC purchase the truck, it’s just another write off.
The rich are different than you and me. They don’t pay for their cars, and often they don’t drive them either.
If it helps, that price does include the donor brand-new Chevy Silverado that lurks under the surface, but not the 1967 to 1972 Chevy C10 or C20 pickup truck that will become the new body for this retro-mod.
Wait, so for $500k you still don’t even get a truck?
An ICON with the mechanicals of a MY25 Silverado is a bit like forcing a lab-grown clone of Gordon Ramsey to make a Beef Wellington with only the ingredients available in the back of a Taco Bell. Sure, it’ll look better than anything on the regular menu, but he will be rightly ashamed of it anyway.
The plastic infotainment switches tacked on without a care are just the Dorito dust on top in case you forgot you were sitting in a rolling insult to your intelligence, without CarPlay.
Again with the CarPlay…..
“It’s RAW! You cook like a donkey!”
-Gordon Ramsay
This is my argument for the slate. Sure it looks 480k cheaper, but if I close my eyes and use my imagination, its basically the same, or close enough for saving 480k.
And the Slate has real crank windows
Half a million bucks and it still looks worse than something that rolled out of your local Maaco.
Catch me another day and I might feel differently, but I’m feelin’ a little ornery today. At $100,000 you can almost justify something like this as being in the ballpark of a high end truck (which is still ridiculous money for something to take me where I want to go). At $500,00 you can just fuck off. We should be taxing the hell out of people who consider buying things like this to the point that they aren’t considering buying things like this for the betterment of society. It is kind of cool, though.
Almost wrote this comment on the main board, but the stupid thing about this is even if you take it seriously, I am pretty sure you could get a fully restored and LS swapped (including a modern transmission) C10 for under $100K (maybe not by much) but that leaves you a lot of headroom vs the ICON.
There are so many things I would do if I had $100,000 for just vehicles, probably starting with a half dozen two-wheeled contraptions of various shapes, a Miata (has to make the list, right?), a cool old beat up truck, maybe a Corolla for commuting and parts runs for the rest of the fleet, and something comfy with a little luxury for date night. All used, this list still doesn’t crack $100,000.
Oh yeh even if I had it you wouldn’t catch me spending $100k on a resto mod pickup. I truly don’t understand expensive trucks, in my mind trucks are work or off roading. Both uses where they get beat up and dirty. I’d much rather have an honest old scruffy around the edges truck if I was getting a third vehicle to do house projects and whatnot.
Oh look, the emperor got new clothes.
Financially speaking, buying this is significantly more embarrassing than buying a brand-new Silverado dually to drive from the suburbs to your office job.
If the new Silverado is cosplaying, then this rehashed billionaire’s toy is 20 times as pathetic.
I do not like this company, Icon. The Ferrari of fake blue-collar aesthetics. And those console buttons are truly hideous. For $500,000. Ha!
If I had $500,000 to spend on something like this I’d put smaller wheels on it.
The dash is just a mishmash of old and TEMU
I had a ’72 C10 shortbed that I swapped a 283 into, when I had to replace the Saginaw three speed I went ahead and chopped the floor and put in a Hurst shifter to replace the worn loose shift on the steering column and dropped in a junkyard replacement tranny. Great truck, except with the three speed and 4.10 rear end it topped out about 60 for comfort, but it ran like a cat with it’s ass on fire to get there at least. Ran that sucker all over until an uncle needed a ride and I had the extra, so I sent it out to him and I’m pretty sure the burnt out husk of it is out there in there desert somewhere near Golden Valley, AZ.
All that said, I had the full experience already, so good luck to whoever wants to drop half a million for some nostalgia to cosplay in.
I love the look, but I think I would rather have a resto-mod with my own choice of components. I don’t think the new GM trucks are that impressive to use as a base. I do not want the ten-speed trans, nor do I want a ticking time bomb 6.2.
I’d rather have the original body and interior controls over a custom frame with a GM crate motor with the 6 or 8 speed trans. I don’t need a screen, just a bluetooth stereo hidden in the glovebox.
As far as the price, we’re in a K shaped economy. The top 10% of earners does 50% of the spending. For a lot of people, this is less to them (percentage-wise) than a new base 4-cyl Silverado would be to one of us.
For Elon, this is less of a percentage of net worth than my morning med Dunks iced was for me.
I saw the topshot and assumed this was one of the “regular” ICON Derelict builds, which I think are really great and worth the $500k even though I could never afford one. Those ones take some modern hardware like a crate motor and aftermarket brakes, put it on a new custom chassis, then drape the old body on with some excellent custom pieces for trim, controls, etc. They are one of the best examples of a “restomod” I’ve ever seen, and seem to maintain the soul of the original while just making it go, stop, and turn a lot better and more reliably than the original.
This version looks nice on the outside, but is far less appealing to me. The interior carrying over the modern, mass production plastic buttons is a huge miss. And it seems like the execution here pulls out all of the tactile experiences of the old truck and replaces it with the driving experience of a new Silverado, which isn’t anything special at all.
Not the target customer for this, by like a lot.
However, if I were, for 500k I would expect every knob and button to be custom cut from billets of unobtanium. The use of parts bin GM controls, and what looks to be a stock motor seems like they are mailing it in a bit?
This could also be on purpose for this build, but to me their much less expensive Bronco work looks way more put together.
I expect every switch to be made of woolly mammoth ivory and hand-carved by Anish Kapoor (in person, so I can call him a wanker to his face) for any car worth half a million dollars.
Charging that much for a 10-speed Silverado, I better be adjusting my massaging seats by tweaking the toe bones of Saint Procopius of Sázava.
100%
We live on an earth with trillionaires and folks are surprised that there’s a market for this? A half-million bucks just isn’t that much money for a shocking amount of people.
I remember shopping at Tower Records in Seattle back in 1995 and standing next to Bill Gates flipping through the LPs. I didn’t harass him, but we walked out at the same time and he got into his LS 400 and I into my ’84 Tercel 4×4 SR5 wagon.
I was impressed that he a) drove himself without a security detail and b) he was driving not a brand-new LS 400. I mean, sure, I’d like to have seen his 959, but that would have been ostentatious in mid-90s Seattle.
Anyway, driving to my not $50M compound in Medina, but a far less expensive but still expensive home for us in Shoreline (hence the Tercel) thinking that his Lexus was pocket change for him while we were just scraping by. Our $180K home then is now $800K+. Had peaked higher a couple of years ago.
Melinda, if you’re reading this, I wouldn’t cheat on you.
Was this a subtle brag to say that you owned a Tercel 4×4 SR5 wagon? I love those things.
I did! It was a car not many people would brag about, but it was such a great little beast. It would have hated the six years I spent in Texas since then but was perfect for Seattle.
I get a little wistful when I see one these days.
As I’ve mentioned in some thread, I sold a V6 ’90 Toyota SR5 Xtracab to come up with the down payment for our home and was happy to be rid of it. It was reliable, but thirsty and felt lacking in power compared to how bad the mileage was.
I sold the Tercel and bought a used ’88 Saab 9000 Turbo that treated me pretty well. Then sold that and bought a 2001 Jetta TDI. All three were really fun quirky cars. The Jetta wasn’t really happy in Texas. It needed a 6th gear.
I’m back in Washington and now I drive a ’17 Accord V6 which is nice, but not quirky. Who knows what’s next.