Tony Blews

LDV Convoy

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.