Tony Vandervell

Guy Anthony "Tony" Vandervell (8 September 1898 – 10 March 1967) was an English industrialist, motor racing financier, and founder of the Vanwall Formula One racing team.

Vandervell was the son of Charles Vandervell, founder of CAV, later Lucas CAV. He made his fortune from the production of Thin-Wall bearings, under licence from the American inventor, by his company Vandervell Products. Having raced both motorcycles and cars a number of times in his younger days, soon after the end of World War II he acquired a Ferrari 125, powered by a 1.5-litre Colombo engine, which was altered by his mechanics and competed as the Thinwall Special, reflecting Vandervell's business empire. This was initially intended to be run as an evaluation of the Thinwall bearing, to be used as a research exercise by British Racing Motors (BRM). To that end, the car was a success, and Vandervell even provided a detailed critique of the car's flaws back to Enzo Ferrari himself.

Between 1949 and 1953, there were four different Thinwall Specials. Though one of the first financial backers of BRM, Vandervell rapidly became disenchanted at the way in which Raymond Mays was running the team and in 1951, after the second Ferrari-based Thinwall Special had been evaluated, he decided to go his own way. He started to build a team, based in his Acton factory, that would be capable of designing and running its own 2.5L Formula One entry in 1954. Vandervell was nothing if not ambitious and brought in both Norton (of which he was a director) and Rolls-Royce as engine consultants. In the intervening years two more Ferraris found themselves transformed into Thinwall machines, often acting as rolling test-beds for innovative components such as Dunlop disc brakes.

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