The public debut of the latest Ford ‘Supervan’ at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed adds another chapter to a fine tradition of Ford publicising its commercial vehicles with ‘extreme’ one-off examples showcasing motorsport tech.
The 2022 Supervan, an all electric beast with a potential c.2000hp on tap (though was likely using ‘only’ 1500 hp at the Festival of Speed). Dubbed the Ford Pro Electric SuperVan, it was driven, as it will be for it’s future outings, by two-time Le Mans winner and multiple EV record holder Romain Dumas.
The van, built to publicise the Ford Pro line of vehicles and services, is built with a lightweight composite body featuring some wild aero, over a bespoke spaceframe.
Underneath the skin it is packing very serious punch with a bespoke a 50kWh liquid-cooled battery pack and four electric motors, and hence four-wheel drive (another SuperVan first!)
In-vehicle electronics allow the driver to select from Road, Track, Drift, Drag and Rally driving modes. It’s a beast!
But the Supervan 4 has quite the family history!!
Supervan
The SuperVan story started back in 1971 with a standard steel Mk1 Transit body shell housing, effectively, the underpinnings of a Ford GT40 with a mid-mounted 400 bhp V8.
The van, prepped by Terry Drury Racing, debuted at the Easter 1971 meeting at Brands Hatch in Ford’s racing livery of white with low horizontal triple blue stripes.
The vehicle looked good, sounded better but was reportedly something of a wild ride with a high mounted heavy body shell.
Supervan 2
1984 saw a brand new Supervan, dubbed Supervan 2, this was an altogether more serious bit of kit albeit built by Auto Racing Technology and modelled on the now ageing Mk 2 Transit with the body shell no longer steel but a full fibreglass replica.
The whole vehicle was lowered, with dramatic aero including a front air dam, rear spoiler and huge side air inlets and a high-mounted rear spoiler.
The ‘van’ was mounted on the chassis of a Ford C100 Group C car, powered by a Cosworth DFL engine.
The vehicle proved capable of impressive performance, publicly capable of 170 mph plus, in private there was more still to come!
The project’s active lifespan was very short with the Mark 3 Transit launched just over a year after Supervan 2 was launched.
Supervan 3
After several years in storage Supervan 2 was revived, in 1994, and completely reworked by DFL Engineering to promote the facelift of the Mark 3 Transit Facelift.
The same chassis was utilised but with the DFL replaced by a detuned Cosworth HB F1 engine and topped by a seven-eighths scale bodyshell was fitted. The van remained part of the promotional fleet into the 21st century!
XJ220 Mule
There’s one more ‘Supervan’ worthy of mention here, and it wasn’t a promotional tool, but rather an engineering mule, and it wasn’t for ford either, but for Jaguar, and the amazing XJ220.
The long wheelbase, pre-facelift Mark 3 van was used by TWR as an engineering test mule, on public roads to prove the chassis and powertrain of the then forthcoming XJ220.
After that task was complete the van stayed around, and reportedly did further service with the Benetton F1 team as a parts haulier.
It is now in the care of Don Law Engineering, fully refurbished with well north of 500 BHP, the turbocharged 6-cylinder engine still mounted in the middle, fully enclosed in the middle of the load bay.
The van has been a popular feature more than once at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, dressed to look the ‘White van Man’ part with a flashing orange light and roof rack, copies of the Sun and fast food wrappers atop the dashboard, all before Justin Law habitually demolished the Hill! It reappeared at the Festival more recently dressed to look like an Ice Cream Van!
An astonishing piece of kit and an astounding survivor!
