Marv’s Garage: Ford’s Supervan was a GT40 with a boot

Back in 1971 Ford UK dropped off one of their first-gen Transit vans off to the fellas at Terry Drury Racing, and had them (basically) graft a GT40 underneath it. And so, the first Ford Supervan was born!

The flared guards almost hid the fat rubber and independent suspension at each corner, while a 289ci (4.7L) Gurney-Weslake small-block Ford V8 lived in a cutout in the load area. As you can see in the pics, performance was limited by incredible frontal lift, perhaps because a mk1 Transit normally had 75hp, not 435hp.

Supervan debuted at a Brands Hatch race meeting where it did tyre-smoking starts and wobbled around the corners, probably due to GT40 chassis not being desiged to have a 6ft tall van body with the aerodynamics of an apartment block plonked on top of them. It was claimed the Supervan could hit 150mph, though that frontal lift was always a problem.

Ford embarked on this merry endeavour to promote the flagging sales of the Mk1 Transit, by then 6 years old and nearing replacement. I have to say their strategy still works today as it makes me want to go get a Transit and stuff a sports car racing drivetrain in it!

The original Supervan was quietly shelved with the launch of the 2nd-gen Transit, and was - tragically - lost in the meaty stew of time… until 2024. It has been undergoing a thorough restoration with many of the Supervan’s original hardware lost decades ago. However, theintention is for it to come back in full operational form.

A whole new Supervan 2, built on a Ford C100 Group C chassis, was built later on, as was the 3rd-gen F1-powered Supervan 3 in the late 90s. A couple of years ago Ford built a new EV Supervan which has shredded lap records all over the planet and displayed the devastating performance prowess of electrons… but it doesn’t sound awesome like a Gurney-Weslake 302 at full strop.