Vandervell was the son of Charles Vandervell, founder of CAV (later Lucas CAV). He built his own fortune through Vandervell Products, which manufactured Babbitt Thin-Wall bearings under licence from the American Cleveland Graphite Bronze Company. The product — and the "Thinwall" name — would become synonymous with his motorsport ambitions. Publicly described as a "tough nut ... spoiling for a fight" by Rolls-Royce's W. A. Robotham, who first met him around 1934, Vandervell was simultaneously regarded as a loyal friend and reliable supporter to those who worked with him.
Shortly after World War II, Vandervell acquired a Ferrari 125, which his mechanics modified and campaigned as the Thinwall Special — initially intended as a rolling test-bed for his bearings within the British Racing Motors programme. He provided Enzo Ferrari with a detailed critique of the car's shortcomings. Between 1949 and 1953 there were four successive Thinwall Specials, each further developed.
Despite being among BRM's first financial backers, Vandervell grew rapidly disillusioned with Raymond Mays's management of that project. In 1951, after evaluating the second Ferrari-based Thinwall, he resolved to go his own way. Working from his factory in Acton, he began assembling the team and technical resources needed to field a purpose-built 2.5-litre Formula One entry. He engaged Norton and Rolls-Royce as engine consultants. The initial chassis was commissioned from the Cooper Car Company and designed by Owen Maddock; fitted with Vandervell's new engine, it became the Vanwall Special — a portmanteau of his surname and his bearing product — and made its first World Championship appearance at the 1954 British Grand Prix, driven by Peter Collins.
The 1956 season brought key reinforcements on the engineering and aerodynamic side: Colin Chapman, Frank Costin, and Harry Weslake joined the team. Stirling Moss took Vanwall's first major victory at the International Trophy early that year in a car now built entirely in-house. For 1957 Tony Brooks joined Moss, and the pair shared Vanwall's first World Championship race victory at the British Grand Prix at Aintree — Moss taking over Brooks's car after his own retired with mechanical trouble.
The team's zenith came in 1958. Moss and Brooks each won three of the season's eleven rounds between them, with Stuart Lewis-Evans completing the driver lineup. The six victories gave Vanwall the Constructors' Championship, beating BRM to that distinction by four years and vindicating Vandervell's split from Raymond Mays's organisation. The achievement was shadowed by tragedy: Lewis-Evans suffered fatal burns in an accident at the Moroccan Grand Prix, and Vandervell was profoundly affected by his death.
Simultaneously, despite Vanwall's Constructors' title, Hawthorn's Ferrari edged Moss for the Drivers' Championship by a single point — a result that frustrated Vandervell, who had set his sights on both crowns.
In January 1959 Vandervell announced that he would not continue with the team. His health had deteriorated from the strains of running a high-profile operation, and the loss of Lewis-Evans had removed much of the emotional motivation that had sustained the project. Without his personal drive and financial backing, Vanwall struggled; the team never again won a World Championship race. A new car ran in 1959 and the name continued intermittently into the early 1960s, including an Intercontinental Formula car built for John Surtees in 1962, before Vanwall folded permanently.
Tony Vandervell withdrew from public life entirely after leaving the team. He died on 10 March 1967; just seven weeks earlier he had married his personal secretary, Marian Moore.
His legacy is substantial. The Vanwall team demonstrated that a private British industrialist with clear vision and the willingness to engage top engineering talent could outperform the established continental manufacturers on their own ground. Their 1958 Constructors' Championship served as a benchmark and an inspiration for the generation of British constructors — Cooper, Lotus, BRM, Brabham — who would come to dominate Formula One across the following decade.