Back in the early 1970s, Ford create a series of what it called Supervans as promotional vehicles to help boost the popularity of its (already popular at the time) Transit van. Now Ford reportedly wants to bring back the Supervan as a modern electric showcase vehicle, probably similar in style to the Mustang Mach-E 1400.
The original Supervan wasn’t really related to the production Transit that your milk was delivered in. Ford engineers actually put a modified Transit body on a GT40 chassis, retaining its 400 horsepower V8 and thus giving the Supervan a top speed as high as 150 mph (240 km/h) according to the manufacturer.
Ford posted a video on Twitter this Thursday, which announced “something electrifying” was going to make its debut at this year’s edition of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, on June 23, the venue’s second day. The video mostly focused on a racing helmet with Ford Performance prominently displayed on the visor, but it also showed the blurry outline of what looked like a van; Ford Pro, the company’s commercial vehicles division, is also present in the teaser.
We say it’s most likely a highly modified version of either the E-Transit or the smaller E-Tourneo, which will probably have a widebody kit, some excessive aero components and power comparable to the aforementioned Mach-E 1400 (which has 1,400 horsepower). We can’t make out which of these vehicles it’s based on, since all we see in the video is its front light bar and a Ford Performance logo.
It’s understandable why Ford is bringing a bonkers van-based super EV to Goodwood. The Blue Oval is far from a leader when it comes to passenger EVs, where it’s lagging behind many mainstream rivals like Volkswagen (whose platform it’s actually going to use) or Hyundai and Kia. It is, however, in a much better position when it comes to electric commercial vehicles.
Besides, it’s already done a Mach-E based project like this and it’s currently the only passenger EV it has on sale, so it actually didn’t have any other option than to revive the Supervan.