In 2012 we decided that we should replace our faithful Ford Transit ready for the 2013 season.

Having looked at various options, we decided on another Transit, this time a front wheel drive one.

Our choice of vehicle is constrained by several things.

The overall vehicle weight is a major factor as many of the crew do not have class C1 driving licences to enable them to drive vehicles over 3.5 Tons.

The vehicle has to be high enough to enable a doctor or paramedic to work on a casualty in the back of the ambulance but not so high that it would be unable to negotiate a forest track with overhanging tree branches.

Of course price is another big factor. Buying a vehicle is only part of the cost of setting up a rescue unit.

Much as we would have liked a four wheel drive vehicle, it was thought that the extra weight of such a vehicle would restrict its fitting out as a rescue unit whilst keeping under our 3.5 Ton maximum. In fact we settled on a front wheel drive van - saving more weight compared to the existing rear wheel drive one.

With the vehicle decided upon, how were we to convert it to be a rescue ambulance. The existing one we had done ourselves. In fact most of that was done by two of us and one of those two is no longer a part of the team. The only practical thing to do was to have the conversion done professionally.

The contract to do the conversion was given to Bott Ltd of Ashby de La Zouch.

The overall design of our existing rescue unit had been proven to be very satisfactory and for the new unit we specified the same basic design, similar sign writing (with some minor changes to meet the current Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations), LED emergency lights and modern internal LED lighting.

The only preliminary work that we had to do ourselves was to fit the radio aerials before the conversion so that the roof lining could be installed as part of the work by Bott Ltd..

When the conversion was complete we installed the radios in the vehicle and made the fine adjustments to the lengths of the aerial whips and fitted some power connections for the onboard medical kit. All that was then required was to move all of the kit from the old vehicle to the new one and to deal with a mass of paperwork ( Re-registering the vehicle as an ambulance, swapping to a personal registration number, advising the motorsport authorities of the vehicle change and applying for some help with finance). We are most grateful to The Motorsport Development Fund which granted us some funds towards our expenses.

In fact the new vehicle was ready for our first event in 2013 and is now in regular use. Our older vehicle was sold to Rockingham Motor Speedway who subsequently sold it on again for use as a motorsport ambulance.

Many people – even many of those in the motorsport community do not realise the expense of setting up a rescue unit.

Our new rescue unit cost us very nearly £34,000. That being the cost of buying the vehicle and having it converted. Of course, we already owned the medical and rescue kit in the old vehicle so we could just transfer the kit with no extra expense.

The pictures above show the new vehicle as it was delivered from Ford and after its conversion by Bott Ltd.