Imagine, if you will, that Torquemada and his mates were still alive.
Imagine that they'd lived some Highlander style existence, living many
secret lives, struggling to reach the time when they could enter the
cut-throat world of minibus design, when the few who remain battle to
the last. Now imagine that they learned some tricks along the way.
Old Torq and his mates ended up working for LDV, that unholy cross-breed
of the last working remnants of Leyland (all 3 of them) and DAF. And
they were tasked to prolong the life of a vehicle that only ever
approach being cool once, and that was when Roger Moore drove it in a
Bond film, sometime in the long-long ago.
So, after many minutes of design and testing, they gave us the LDV
Convoy. A vehicle based on the Sherpa. I'll reiterate that. A vehicle
based on the Sherpa. And again... A vehicle based on the Sherpa.
Here we have a van, or indeed as the one i drove, a minibus, which is so
bad.... oh no I have to point this out again... A vehicle based on the
Sherpa.
Right, I thing its out of my system now..... oh hang on..... A vehicle
based on the Sherpa.
Okay....no... A vehicle based on the Sherpa.
Happy people, not in the van
Damn it.
Anyway. The LDV Convoy is a masterstroke of engineering. The 2.5
normally aspirated Ford diesel engine is married to the most imaginative
suspension arrangement ever erm... imagined.
No other large vehicle can quite match the pitching like a tea clipper
in a gale feeling you get in a Convoy, whilst also transmitting every
tiny bump in the road straight into the base of the driver's spine. Ford
would never make something so strange (and it has been pointed out by my
mates that I'm such a Ford fan that if you cut me I'd bleed Blue Ovals
rather than corpuscles).
But then again, neither Ford, nor VW or Mercedes ever tried to re-make a
vehicle which is, lest you forget.......A vehicle based on the Sherpa.
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