Proclaiming that “The Vanwall name is too important to consign to history,” Iain Sanderson, managing director of Vanwall Group, announced that six continuation cars based on the 1958 Vanwall Formula One car will be produced in partnership with British vintage racing restoration workshop Hall and Hall.
“The Vanwall story is untold to many, but it is a great British tale of innovation and achievement and shows what happens when the right team come together and push themselves fearlessly to reach a clearly defined goal,” added Sanderson, a former world champion of powerboat racing who in 2008 commissioned construction of the Lightning GT electric-powered supercar.
“On this anniversary (the British team won the F1 constructors championship 62 years to the day before Sanderson’s announcement), we think the time is right to celebrate this great British story of success. Faithfully recreating the iconic 1958 championship-winning car with six 100 percent accurate and authentic continuation cars is a fitting tribute to their historic success.
“The DNA that made those cars so successful also serves as an inspiring foundation for the future of the Vanwall marque, which I look forward to sharing in due course.”
“The 1958 Vanwall is arguably the most important Formula One racing car ever built in Britain,” Vanwall Group said in its announcement, “with its six victories giving Vanwall the first Formula One World Constructors Trophy, and Vanwall remaining the first of only two Formula One teams ever to have recorded a maximum points score in a championship season.”
While the Vanwall Historic Racing Team will retain one of the six continuation cars for its vintage racing program, the other five will be offered for sale. Cars will be powered by a 270-horsepower, 2,489cc engine produced using 1950s blueprints.
British industrialist Tony Vandervell’s racers were designed by Colin Chapman and Frank Costin and pioneered the use of disc rather than drum brakes in F1, which gave the cars and their drivers — Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks and Stuart Lewis-Evans — an advantage over the Ferraris.
The continuation cars will be priced at £1.65 million ($2.145 million) each.
“I can still remember watching the Vanwalls at Aintree in ’57 when I was a boy and had the pleasure of sitting in one at Goodwood,” said Andrw Garner, chairman of Vanwall Group and former chairman of the HIstoric Grand Prix Cars Association.
“I drove at all the major circuits in a Cooper T51 for many wonderful years but the Vanwall is the car I coveted. These cars will be fully race eligible and in the right hands will be unbeatable, repeating Tony Vandervell’s mission to beat the red cars.”
For more information, visit the Vanwall Group website.
