Vanwall was founded by Tony Vandervell, who derived the name by combining his own surname with that of his Thinwall bearings business, manufactured at the Vandervell Products factory in Acton, London. Vandervell had originally entered modified Ferraris in Formule Libre races under the "Thinwall Special" banner before commissioning genuinely new cars for the 1954 Formula One regulations. The original Vanwall Specials used a chassis designed by Owen Maddock and built by the Cooper Car Company. Their four-cylinder engine, designed by Norton engineer Leo Kuzmicki, was essentially four Manx single-cylinder 498 cc units sharing a common water jacket, cylinder head, and valvetrain, with four AMAL motorcycle carburettors providing induction. The crankcase was copied in aluminium from a Rolls-Royce B40 military unit.
The VW 55 represented the culmination of a systematic engine enlargement programme. A first capacity increase to 2,237 cc was used by Peter Collins at the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix. The engine was subsequently enlarged to the full permitted Formula One displacement of 2,489 cc. Fuel injection was a significant step; Vandervell reportedly secured access to Bosch fuel injection by persuading Daimler-Benz — a major Bosch customer — to permit it, though AMAL throttle bodies were retained and throttle linkage vibration from the large four-cylinder remained a persistent problem.
Braking was handled by Goodyear disc brakes built in-house by Vanwall, which proved effective. Front suspension and the fuel and cooling systems were less reliable and required continued development attention during the 1955 season.
The 1955 season did not yield championship race victories for Vanwall, as was expected of a team mid-development against established works outfits. The car demonstrated potential but its Ferrari-derived chassis concept was recognised as an area needing fundamental redesign. By the season's end, it was acknowledged internally that while the engine package was sound, the chassis required a fresh approach.
This conclusion led Vandervell to engage Colin Chapman, then a young but highly regarded designer, to rework the car for 1956. Chapman, working alongside aerodynamicist Frank Costin, produced a new space-frame Vanwall with reduced unsprung weight at the rear, a revised front torsion bar arrangement, and bodywork Costin shaped to make the car substantially faster in a straight line than its rivals.
The VW 55 sits at the foundation of Vanwall's rise to championship contention. Its establishment of the full 2.5-litre engine with fuel injection and disc brakes provided the mechanical core that, carried forward through subsequent development, became the basis for one of the most successful racing engines of the late 1950s. Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks each won three championship races for Vanwall in 1958 using the evolved version of that engine, and the team became the first winner of the Formula One Constructors' Championship that season.
The season of the VW 55 was in this sense the proof-of-concept phase: a year in which the technical direction was confirmed sound even as the package as a whole was not yet capable of winning. It was followed by the decisive Chapman redesign that turned Vanwall from a competitive also-ran into a championship constructor within two further seasons.
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