Since then it is fair to say there have been a few attempts to bring the name back to prominence. Vandervell died in 1967 and his company sold to GKN. And while there were rumours of a Vanwall road car in the early 1990s, in 1995 there was a lot of chat about Vanwall coming back into racing with Nigel Mansell being mentioned in connection the project and Ford V10 racing engines. But nothing ever came of it.
There was a further attempt in 1997 to bring Vanwall back to Formula 1 for 1999. Led by a company called VF One, at the time its John Minet told MotorSport magazine ‘our philosophy has been that it will be done properly, or not at all’ but despite ‘very advanced discussions with serious financial players’ not at all it turned out to be.
Now spool forward to 2004 and a chap called Arthur Wolstenholme – founder of Ronart Cars – licenced the named from its then owners Dana International and created a thing called the Vanwall GPR 12, a single seater powered by a Jaguar V12 motor whose look was very much that of the 1950s racers, though the new car was designed for use on road and track and as such came with wings over the wheels and headlights. As a result it was perhaps a somewhat curious looking device which I never drove, but I’d driven a Ronart before – which was a very similar kind of car – and been struck by how well engineered it had been.
And now comes the link to the present day: in 2008 Wolstenholme was joined by Iain Sanderson who in turn bought the rights to the Vanwall name in 2013 and, according to his LinkedIn biography, is the man behind the 2020 Vanwall project, whatever it is.