I Had To Get This Terrible Idea About A Rush-Job Ford V10 Viper-Fighter Out Of My Head

You know how sometimes you get a stupid idea in your head, and you can’t get free of it unless you do something to, you know, purge it? That happened to me last night. There’s different ways to purge these ideas: booze, a vigorous and punishing round of onanism, a 2×4 to the forehead, and so on, but sometimes you have to do something more. Sometimes you have to just draw them damn thing, quickly, and let its inane energy escape the confines of your mind, where it can go on to pollute the internet. And that’s what I did, with this ridiculous idea about a Ford V10 sports car based on the Econoline!

Here’s what the thinking was, in more detail: it’s the year 1991. Ford’s industrial spies have learned that Chrysler is planning to release a radical new roadster based on a V10 engine, with dramatic proportions – the car we’d come to know as the Dodge Viper. As you know, Bob Lutz was in charge of Chrysler/Dodge when the Viper was born, and was in a large way his baby. At the time, Ford was headed by Harold Arthur “Red” Poling, who considered Lutz to be his rival.

Poling – who was a former Navy fighter pilot while Lutz was a former Marine fighter pilot, causing many to use dogfight metaphors in their interactions – decided that there was no way Lutz was going to beat Ford to market with a V10-powered roadster. So, he gave his engineers a directive from on high: make a two-seat V10-powered roadster before Lutz’ V10 roadster could hit the market.

Now, Ford’s engineers had almost no time to pull this off – using the Mustang as a starting point would have made sense, but there was no V10 designed to fit in it, and that was the key requirement. The only V10 in development (and I’m taking a few liberties with the timeline here) was the Triton V10 designed for the Econoline series of vans.

So, desperate, Ford’s engineers had to work with what they had: the Econoline. It already was being designed to use this new V10 engine, so Ford sequestered a bunch of engineers and designers in a rented house in Saginaw and had them come up with a V10 Econoline-based roadster in, let’s say, two weeks. And this was the result:

The Triton V10! They just named it after the engine, because, screw it, Triton is a good name. They had no time to design a new roadster body, so they just cut down an Econoline cargo van, threw in some better seats from the Mustang, gave it a manual five-speed, some headers (5 pipes per side, hot but reinforced to act as a step, at least) and a removable roof panel.

The rear of the van was fully carpeted and sealed with a plastic cover, making a colossal trunk area that could be accessed from cut-down doors on the sides and rear. Suitcases would slide around in this thing like drunk kids on a roller rink. I hope the roof panel had some kind of secure holder in there.

They knew the Viper would have dramatic proportions, but they did, too! Just, you know, reversed. So, Ford did it, beating the Viper to market by a matter of weeks, and at the same time becoming the two-seat roadster with the largest trunk in all of automotive history.

See? I told you it was a stupid idea! I think the actual Triton V10 didn’t end up in any Econolines until 1997 or so, but it’s possible it would have been in development that much earlier? Maybe?

Still, I maintain that if Ford had an incredibly short amount of time to release a V10 roadster, in that era, it could have been this. Of course, this is all just the product of my feverish mind, and it never actually happened. Maybe the world is a little poorer for it?

Maybe not.