Treatment of P 6 C 4 t Bu 4 with the Lewis acid AlI 3 in toluene at room temperature unexpectedly results in a structural rearrangement affording the ionic complex [P 6 C 4 t Bu 4 H][AlI 4 ] which was fully characterized by multinuclear NMR spectroscopy and a single crystal X-ray diffraction study. Supportive evidence that the reaction might involve a simple intermediate Lewis acid–base adduct [AlI 3 (η 1 -P 6 C 4 t Bu 4 )] came from the isolation on one occasion of small number of crystals of the bis-Al adduct [{AlI 3 }μ-{P 6 C 4 t Bu 4 }{AlI 3 }], whose molecular structure was also confirmed by a single crystal X-ray diffraction study.