Founder, CEO & Lead Designer — ICON 4x4 — Los Angeles, California

Jonathan Ward's Omega Soccer Timer: The Restomod King Wears the Right Vintage Watch

Jonathan Ward takes classic vehicles — FJ Land Cruisers, Ford Broncos, Chevy pickups — and rebuilds them into something better than original while preserving everything that made them worth preserving. On his wrist: an Omega Seamaster Soccer Timer, reference 145.019 — a 1969 vintage chronograph that was purpose-built, is now deeply collectible, and has never once needed to be modernized to justify itself.

Jonathan Ward. Source: YouTube / ICON 4x4

Omega Seamaster Soccer Timer, ref. 145.019, c. 1969–1971.

▶ Source: YouTube

Jonathan Ward founded ICON 4x4 in Los Angeles with a philosophy that is simple to state and extraordinarily difficult to execute: take a classic vehicle that was great in its original form, understand precisely why it was great, and rebuild it to a standard that honors that original intent while bringing every system up to the level of what modern engineering can achieve. An ICON FJ Land Cruiser is not a restoration — it is not returned to factory specification, because factory specification in 1964 was limited by what was available in 1964. It is a restomod: the bones and soul of the original, rebuilt with modern suspension, modern powertrains, modern electronics, and materials sourced and finished to a standard that the original manufacturers could not have imagined. The result costs significantly more than the original and is significantly better in almost every measurable way, while remaining recognizably, fundamentally itself. ICON's work is respected by the kind of people who know the difference between restoration, modification, and the harder thing Ward actually does.

Ward is, by the logic of his own business, someone who understands the specific value of things that were designed with a clear purpose, built with care, and have aged into something more interesting than they were when new. That sensibility is visible in the Omega Seamaster Soccer Timer on his wrist — a watch produced around 1969 to 1971 for the specific purpose of timing soccer matches, that has become one of the most quietly coveted vintage Omega references in the collector market, and that is worn by someone who clearly understood what it was before most people had heard of it.

Take something built with a clear purpose. Understand why it worked. Make it better without losing what it was. — The ICON 4x4 philosophy. Also, coincidentally, a description of the Omega Soccer Timer's collector appeal.

The Restomod Principle Applied to the Wrist

An ICON FJ Land Cruiser and an Omega Soccer Timer share the same foundational argument: the original design was correct. The FJ's proportions, its approach angles, its basic mechanical philosophy — Ward preserves all of it precisely because it was right, and his job is to make it more right, not different. The Soccer Timer's dial architecture — the large "45" marking, the logical placement of the subsidiary dials for a referee's specific use case, the additional crown that makes the internal bezel function possible — was right in 1969 and is still right now. Neither object has been superseded by its successors. Neither required a ground-up reinvention. They required someone who understood what they were looking at well enough to know that the original decisions were worth respecting.

Ward wearing a 145.019 is not an accident of taste. It is a coherent expression of the same philosophy that built ICON. He is a man who looks at an object and sees past the surface condition to the underlying design intent — who asks not "how old is this" but "what was this trying to do, and did it do it?" The Soccer Timer was trying to give soccer referees precise, legible, functionally specific timing in a single wrist instrument. It did it. Ward recognized that. He put it on his wrist. The ICON vehicle parked outside his workshop represents the same recognition applied to four wheels.

The Most Interesting Watch Most People Have Never Heard Of

The Omega Seamaster Soccer Timer ref. 145.019 is not a watch that announces itself. It does not carry the Speedmaster's Apollo provenance or the Seamaster's James Bond association. It was made for referees, in small numbers, for a specific sporting event, and it has been accumulating collector interest quietly ever since — the kind of watch that serious enthusiasts recognize immediately and everyone else walks past. The Cal. 861 movement inside it went to the moon in the Speedmaster; the Soccer Timer was on a pitch in Mexico. Both missions were completed successfully. Jonathan Ward builds vehicles that most people who see them on the road cannot immediately identify, that prompt the knowledgeable observer to stop and look more carefully, and that reveal their quality to anyone willing to pay attention. The 145.019 on his wrist operates on exactly the same terms. At spot.watch, that is precisely worth noticing.

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• James Franklin — Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch
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• Jeff Fujimoto — Omega Aqua Terra

And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.