Nissan still didn't know what it was to change engines from one model to another – as in the case of the Juke GT-R – and Ford already did its own, with a Transit.
After having introduced you to one of the best cars of the 60s, the unlikely Ford Transit. Today is the day to introduce you to an even more unusual Ford Transit: the SuperVan. If you are standing then get a chair, because what you are about to read will forever alter your conception of exaggeration, madness and daydreaming.
"All of this together made flying this 'beast of the trade' almost as demanding as going to the moon on a skateboard."
We are talking about a Ford Transit equipped with the chassis, suspension and engine of a Ford GT-40. In other words, parts of a car that in 1966 gave a colossal beating to the Ferrari fleet, a brand that dominated the competition for decades. In a nutshell, the Americans arrived, saw and won. As simple as this: Mission accomplished!
How it was decided to build the Ford Transit SuperVan we don't know, perhaps heartbreaking boredom descended on the engineering team after their landslide victory at Le Mans. What to do then? And how about taking a Ford Transit and putting in there the parts of a car with a “pedigree” of a competition car?! Sounds good doesn't it? We'll never know if that's how things turned out, but it can't have gone very far from this.
Speaking of numbers. The engine that equips the SuperVan, in addition to being a “pure-bred”, was just a 5.4 liter V8, equipped with a super-compressor – known in the US as a “blower” – which developed the nice figure of 558 hp and 69.2 kgfm of torque at 4,500 rpm. A propeller that when mounted on the GT-40 reached 330 km/h and took just 3.8 seconds to complete the sprint from 0-100 km/h. Of course, on a Ford Transit chassis the numbers weren't all that impressive. After all, we are talking about a body as aerodynamic as the facade of a building, but when it comes to accelerations, Ford engineers say that up to 150 km/h things were not very unbalanced.
NOT TO BE MISSED: Ford Transit: one of the best sports cars of the 60s (PART1)
From then on, the pilot was at his own risk. The side winds took over the bodywork and things got even scarier. In addition to all this, the suspensions originally developed to deal with the “body” of a high competition athlete, did not adequately support the mass transfers from the heavy chassis. With every acceleration, curve or braking, the poor Ford Transit sweated to accompany the impetus of an engine that was not meant to be chained in the silhouette of a “whale”. All of this added up, making piloting this “beast of the trade” almost as demanding as going to the moon on a skateboard.The project was the success you can see from the photos. For years, Ford made this “monster” one of its standard bearers, so much so that since then whenever a new version of Transit is released, it is accompanied by a similar project. Yes it's true, in addition to this Ford Transit SuperVan there is more. Some with a Formula 1 engine! But we'll talk about those at another time.
Take this promotional video for the Ford Transit SuperVan dated 1967:
UPDATE: Ford Transit SuperVan 3: for grocers in a hurry (Part 3)