The original GT40-powered Ford Supervan has been restored
The story of the Ford Supervan is legend. It’s perhaps the ultimate skunkworks project. Over 50 years on from the debut of the first, the fourth-generation Supervan is an all-electric hillclimb monster. Quite different from the GT40-powered original, which has now been restored by Ford as part of celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Transit.
Just as the current one is effectively a bespoke composite race car with a vaguely Transit-esque body draped across it, so too the original was far from the load-lugger you could buy in a dealer. Rather, it was the bones of a Cooper Monaco sports racer, with a GT40’s 4.7-litre V8 mounted amidships and a transit body plonked on top. The whole project originally took less than four months.
The rebuild has been undertaken by Andy Browne, an ex-Ford apprentice who bought the van after its original term of service in the 1970s. After issues rebuilding, registering and insuring it, he moved it on. Now, 50 years later, he’s bought it back and rebuilt it.
“Originally, I wanted to build a replica,” Browne said.
“Then one day I got a call and somebody said to me they thought they knew where the remains of the Supervan were. I’ve lost count, but this must have been at least the twentieth time, easily. I went to see these remains, ran my hand under the sills and knew that it was the van that I’d owned. It wasn’t even a van at all – just a floor pan and a bit of bulkhead, and some parts of a chassis that had been cut.”
As you’d expect, Browne bought it and undertook a sympathetic rebuild to bring the Supervan back to life. What a spectacular thing. “The billboard of all billboards,” as Browne describes it, is just about perfect. Hopefully we’ll see it at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard one day…
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