There are few feelings more nerve-wracking than driving away in someone else’s pride and joy as they watch on. Particularly so if it’s a delicate classic. Now imagine that feeling, only the “someone else” is the man who drew the McLaren F1.
Yet, to describe Peter Stevens as that feels a disservice to a CV that is quite frankly mind-boggling. Before heading into a vast, empty and quite chilly hangar in the town of Bicester, I knew Stevens for his work on the GC8 Subaru Impreza, the Jaguar XJR-15 and a personal demented favourite of mine, the MG XPower SV.
It wasn’t until sitting down with the man himself and seeing a scale models of the Toyota GT-One and BMW V12 LMR Le Mans-competing prototypes perched upon a table that I’d realise just how vast his portfolio really is. But would he go back and revisit any of it now?
“Probably not”, Stevens is quick to say. “It’s almost like if you’ve run out of ideas, it’s probably time to stop.
“I have this cynical phrase that some people like being designers, and some like doing design. And I like doing design.”
It’s that point that leads us today to being sat alongside this 1975 Ford Transit, restored in collaboration with eBay as a camper van using parts bought solely from the auction site and with Stevens taking ownership of the interior design – a far tangent from penning the world’s fastest car, but a neat link between the two.
The story behind the van itself is one that’s almost as fascinating as Stevens himself. It started life in Germany as a left-hand drive fire brigade service vehicle.
Between its retirement and before Envisage, the firm behind its restoration, Stevens and eBay set to work on it, it somehow found its way to Norwich. It was Peter who went to pick it up in the first place.
“It was a really strange story because in the advertisement, it said ‘left-hand drive’ in the first line’, and the last line was in capitals: ‘LEFT-HAND DRIVE’. I phoned the bloke and he was a real Norfolk fellow.”
Stevens, a Suffolk man, then launches into his best Norfolk accent: “‘Now you do know it’s left-hand drive?’ he said. ‘Yeah, I saw in the ad.’ He said ‘I’m gonna ask you again, you do know it’s left-hand drive?’ ‘Yes I do.’ ‘Well in that case you can come and have a look’”.
“In fact, he said to me ‘It has done 90,000 miles you know’, suggesting miles. Of course, it’s left-hand drive [implying kilometres] so it had done about 50,000 miles. I didn’t tell him until we’d shaken hands on a ludicrously low price”
With the Transit in possession, Stevens was able to set to work designing the interior of this resto-modded camper van. Unsurprisingly, the result is a very neatly-packed thing, with the ‘75 Transit now playing host to well integrated kitchen utilities, its own fridge, a coffee machine and even its own power source. Pop the roof up, and there’s still space for myself and Peter to stand up with plenty of space to chat – and without any modifications taking away from the classic look of the Transit.
“The whole idea was that anybody could take an old Transit van. There are passionate enthusiasts of early Transits, they’d have been mortified if we did a 19-inch wheel restmod so I thought that it really had to respect the vehicle.”
Sadly, my 90 minute window with Peter and the van means I don’t get to truly experience all of his touches. However, it gives me an opportunity to appreciate the work undertaken by Envisage to get the van running sweetly.
You may have noticed that this isn’t left-hand drive, despite Stevens’ story. Well, it was, until Envisage took on the task of converting everything to right-hand drive – something you never could’ve guessed without being told.
It’s all true to its original form as well, the only modern addition a radio head unit sourced from Jaguar Land Rover’s Classic division, of all things, through the eBay connection.
The Transit retains the original 1.7-litre V4 engine, rebuilt from the ground up. It’s my first time experiencing that configuration and despite the age, feels surprisingly sweet. My main fear of crunching the gearbox is alleviated quickly, effortless in its engagement and power surprisingly available low in the revs.
It sounds pretty good too, perhaps a side effect of growing so used to most engines I encounter muted as a result of extra sound deadening, emissions equipment and manufacturers doing so much to isolate the actual experience of driving a car these days.
Beyond that, it’s all classic Transit as expected. Handling is akin to helming a cargo boat, and the brake pedal is more of a suggestion than a surefire way to slow the van down.
A sweet experience though, and one that shows a light restmod doesn’t have to detract from the source material. If only more could take note from Peter Stevens.
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