Ford's turned their Transit SportVan into an enticing piece of vanning kit, complete with a six-speed manual transmission, Le Mans-style graphics, twin exhausts, and new wheels. But it's going to need more than a 140-hp turbodiesel to be a Supervan.
A turbodiesel van with a manual transmission already sounds like an autojourno's wet dream. Something we'd beg for and never buy. And while there's nothing wrong with the SportVan, it just makes us pine for something more. Something like a halo van. Something like a Supervan.
There have been three generations of Supervan. The first was a tiny Transit powered by no less than a 400-hp 302 V8 sourced from a GT40 mounted in the cargo space. Supervan 2 debuted in 1984 and sported a Ford-Cosworth DFL capable of 174 mph at Silverstone. This was rebuilt and rebodied as Supervan 3 in 1995 with power up to a ridiculous 730 hp at 13,500 RPM.
So the SportVan is great, but it would be even greater if someone took to make a Supervan 4. Please. Someone. Think of the children and how warped all of us are because of the original Supervans.
More on the Supervans can be found here.