The car's origins lie with ByKolles Racing, which announced its intention to compete under the newly established Le Mans Hypercar regulations as early as June 2019, making it one of the first teams to commit to the new class. ByKolles confirmed use of the 4.5-litre Gibson GL458 naturally aspirated V8 engine — previously used in their CLM P1/01 LMP1 car — and unveiled renderings of the project in September 2020 under the provisional name PMC Project LMH.
The programme suffered repeated delays. Having originally targeted the 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship season, ByKolles pulled out of entry lists and was subsequently rejected by the FIA and ACO in 2022 after failing to complete the homologation process on schedule. A running prototype was nonetheless revealed and conducted shakedown testing at Zweibrücken Airport in Germany, by which point the car carried Vanwall branding.
The use of the Vanwall name was contested. A separate British continuity project, Vanwall 1958, had planned to build competition cars under the original Vanwall marque, but the name had already been registered by Colin Kolles' agents at PMC before they could act. In February 2023, Vanwall lost a European Union Intellectual Property Office case brought by the Vanwall 1958 project, adding legal uncertainty to the programme. Nevertheless, on 12 January 2023 both the FIA and ACO approved the Vanwall Vandervell 680 to race in the 2023 World Endurance Championship.
The Vandervell 680 was powered by the Gibson GL458 naturally aspirated V8, carried over from the ByKolles LMP1 programme. The car was built to comply with Le Mans Hypercar regulations, which mandate a maximum power output of 500 kW and a minimum weight of 1,030 kg. Following the 2023 season, Vanwall struck a deal with Pipo Moteurs to replace the Gibson unit with a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V8 for future competition, though this revised specification did not race in the WEC.
The Vandervell 680's race debut came at the 2023 1000 Miles of Sebring, the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship season. Jacques Villeneuve — the 1997 Formula One World Champion — joined Tom Dillmann and Esteban Guerrieri in the car. Despite starting last in the Hypercar class, Vanwall took advantage of attrition among rivals to finish eighth in class at Sebring.
The team's subsequent results proved difficult. At the 6 Hours of Portimao, a suspected brake failure sent Villeneuve into a barrier and caused the car's retirement. At the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, a spin from Guerrieri triggered a full-course yellow before Villeneuve collided with a Ferrari in a second retirement. After these incidents, Villeneuve was dropped from the team and replaced by Tristan Vautier; the driver later stated he had received no communication about his dismissal and believed himself still under contract for Le Mans.
At the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Vandervell 680 suffered a loss of power related to track conditions, then encountered successive problems with suspension, clutch, and ultimately engine failure — its third consecutive retirement from an event. Tom Dillmann left the programme following Le Mans and was replaced by Joao Paulo de Oliveira. The car completed the remaining two rounds at Monza, Fuji, and Bahrain without achieving a top-ten class result, finishing the season well outside the points.
Following the 2023 campaign, the Vandervell 680 was excluded from the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship on grounds of insufficient competitiveness. Team founder Colin Kolles indicated the company would redirect effort toward developing two all-electric sports cars — the Vanwall Vandervell S and Vanwall Vandervell S Plus — while continuing development of the 680 with an aim toward a future WEC return. In December 2025, Vanwall announced plans to enter the Hypercar class of the 2026-27 Asian Le Mans Series using a reworked version of the car.
The Vandervell 680 programme represented one of the more turbulent Hypercar debuts of the 2023 season, combining name recognition drawn from one of Britain's most storied Formula One eras with persistent reliability problems and legal disputes over the marque itself. The revival of the Vanwall name — connecting a 2023 Le Mans prototype to the team that gave Britain its first Constructors' Championship title — carried considerable symbolic weight, even as the car's on-track results fell well short of competitive expectations.