What do you think holds the closed-wheel track record at the Mount Panorama circuit that hosts the Bathurst 500 every year? Probably something that looks a bit like Aston Martin’s new GT3 racer, right? Wrong, it’s actually an electric panel van from those clever folks at Ford Performance.
The new record was set by Ford’s SuperVan 4.2, which will be a familiar name for fast vans out there as it also set a blistering time at Pikes Peak last year.
For its latest entry into the record books, the all-electric SuperVan set the track alight with its time of 1:56.3247. This puts it faster than the official lap record of 1:59.2910, which was set by Christopher Mies in an unrestricted Audi R8 LMS.
With Romain Dumas at the wheel, the SuperVan 4.2 now holds the record for the quickest closed-wheel vehicle, electric vehicle and commercial vehicle to lap the Australian circuit.
“The effort and expertise it took to reset the benchmark lap time for a closed-wheel vehicle around Mount Panorama cannot be understated,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports.
“Romain Dumas worked alongside our team to innovate, learn, adapt, and the result is a time that exceeded our own expectations. There is a reason why we chose to bring SuperVan 4.2 to Mount Panorama after Pikes Peak – there is nowhere quite like it in the world.”
While from a distance, the SuperVan does look a lot like Ford’s regular Transit Custom van, which itself is quite super. The wizards over at Ford performance have made a lot of changes to this SuperVan to get it race ready.
Under the hood, the electric van is powered by three STARD UHP six-phase electric motors, meaning that it now produces 1,400 horsepower. The bodywork is also much lighter than a regular van, after it underwent some serious weight saving ahead of its appearance at Pikes Peak.
Another big change ahead of the SuperVan’s run up the mountain was the new aero kit you see here, which includes a massive front splitter and a gaping rear wing on the van’s roof. This setup, Ford says, produces over 4,400 pounds of downforce at 150 miles per hour.
Now that the van has proven its worth at Mount Panorama, it won’t be put on some enormous shelf to gather dust, oh no. Instead, Ford will take it back to its workshop in Australia and prep it for its next outing at the Australian Grand Prix. After that, who know what lap records are safe from the SuperVan.