If there is something we never expected to see, it is to see how a van beats a Corvette ZR1. And no, we are not making it up, a van has done a lap at the Nürburgring faster than a Corvette ZR1. And the winner of this competition was the Ford SuperVan 4.2… an electric one! A beast with 2,000 horsepower that just made it among the fastest cars in the history of the Green Hell.
At the wheel, the driver Romain Dumas, who is not exactly new to this. He set a time of 6 minutes and 48.393 seconds, leaving behind cars like the ZR1 and, at the same time, more than one Chevrolet engineer with a face of “is this for real?”.
The day a van ate a supercar
It is not the first time this van has made headlines. Not long ago, at Goodwood, it had already embarrassed more than one supercar, surpassing machines with more than 1,400 horsepower. But what it has done at the Nürburgring goes several steps further: it got into the top ten fastest cars in the history of the circuit. It is not any special category. It is not “for being electric” or “for being a van”. It is one of the fastest, period.
An old acquaintance of the ‘Ring’
The choice of Romain Dumas is not random either. The man knows every curve of the Nordschleife as if it were the hallway of his house. He won the 24 Hours of Nürburgring in 2007 and still holds the absolute record with an electric car: he achieved it in 2019 with the Volkswagen ID.R, setting a 6:05.336 that remains unbeaten. So if anyone could get the best out of this madness on wheels, it was him.
The SuperVan 4.2 is not what it seems
Although it looks like a Transit and has space to load pallets (in theory), this SuperVan is anything but conventional. It was developed by Ford Performance and is packed with technology: 2,000 electric horsepower, a racing chassis, aerodynamics that look like Le Mans… This is not a van. It is a camouflaged hypercar that wants to make clear that electric cars are no longer here just to be friendly and only eco-friendly, they are also here to smash the lap times.
Chevrolet did not see it coming
And speaking of lap times… the blow for Chevrolet has been big. They had been bragging about their record with the ZR1 and the Mustang GTD, and suddenly an electric Transit shows up and steals the show. Not only in times, but also in headlines, social networks and every conversation about Nürburgring this week.
Ford, meanwhile, rubs its hands, finally some good news this year! These demonstrations are pure marketing, in this case, the message is clear: electric cars are not the future. They are the present and they can also be brutal.
And now what, Ford?
Ford has not yet said what the next challenge for the SuperVan will be. But after what we have seen, the most likely is that they will keep breaking records. Because they want to show that electric cars can be exciting, surprising, and that, if necessary, they can humiliate gasoline giants on their own turf.
The question is no longer if an electric can beat a supercar. The question now is: who dares to challenge this van?