If you don't like the design, here's the guys to complain to, George Gardner (G.A. Precision) is taking credit for the input he gave to T/C for the Icon design:

Ive Been given Permission to talk, The Icon above was an entire years work starting at last Years Shot show, Greg Ritz President of Thompson Center wanted to do a new rifle that had everything a Tactical Rifle should have. His Idea was that if it was good enough for us guys then it would be a cinch in the hunting world. They took advise from alot of people. I spent hours on the phone with engineers and Greg, and his 2 top guys came to the shop and we round tabled the prototype into what it is now. GA precision is doing the Tactical Version and it will be at our booth at shot.

It has an Extended Bolt handle, Will have 20 MOA built in. Its been Inletted into a Manners MSC GAT . Thompson has started to produce 5R barrels as well and the ones we have recieved were scary accurate. Thompson is very Serious to see this through as the Top Dog in Tactical Rifles and G.A. Precision will help it get there. We will be producing our own rifles on their action as well as helping them produce a factory Tactical for next Year.
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Mark Laney was the engineer at TC that drew up the design. Our input as well as several others was the detail, operation and features. I have seen about every action out there and this one is different than them all. You might scan the image you are talking about. The only action that resembles it is the CZ700 which is out of production. (And it isnt even close inturnaly)

Bolt Diameter is .850"

The short 30 cal is the new 30TC cartridge. Its impressive but is mainly due to the special compressed nitro powders Hornady is using to load it. It will be hard to reload and get the same performance. For guys buying the factory hunting ammo and not reloading it will be very nice and perform very well.
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It cams on unlocking Via a Radius in the reciever against the Top portion of the bolthandle. It opens on fired cases effortlesly.

Only some features are like the AI Rifles, the bolt is totally different. The bolt comes apart without tools, different extractor. The AI is not a fat bolt design.

Lefties: Unsure of that. I would say as long as its a huge success that will latter be addresed, I really dont know but I assume so.

GAP will be obtain actions durring this calendar year, It is my understanding that actions will be available as long as there is a demand.
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George what is the purpose of the openings on the sides of the bolt shroud?

JB hit it, To reroute gas on a poped primer, It also looks cool.
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Price: Its still in Pre-Production mode. June July will be D-Day and their target on a Complete Hunting rifle is $750 -$800 Actions should be a fair bit less than that. Just a guess.

WSM Boltface, Not currently but their is enough room, so Im sure that will be an option when production starts.

Guys, I dont have all the answers, I can make an Educated guess on some things, We will have to wait and see what happens after initial production is compleated and new ideas pop up for new products/features.

GAP will be building SA std boltface righthanded rifles to start, we will add to that when TC adopts more features latter.
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Regards.