Introducing Ford Pro’s ‘E-Sauna’ Van for Wild Swimmers

Apr 10, 2025
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DAGENHAM, UK – Ford Pro’s Special Vehicle Team has delivered some weird and wonderful conversions over the years, but this E-Transit Sauna Van created especially for wild swimmers is truly unique.

It’s an all-electric Ford E-Transit panel van with a cargo area fully converted to a custom in-built sauna by Ford Pro’s Special Vehicle Team at Dagenham in Essex.

The sauna is powered by the E-Transit’s built-in power supply, Pro Power Onboard, and with a range of up to 196 miles, it can easily travel to a beach and back from anywhere in the UK without needing to recharge.

Ford Pro recently took it to Longside Lake in Surrey, UK, to see what wild swimmers there thought of it.

Georgia Milgrave has been a Longside regular for the last few years. Doing a lot of weightlifting, she finds the recovery benefits of the cold water helpful but also takes advantage of saunas wherever possible at swimming venue.

Seeing the sauna van for the first time, she said: “Sometimes you go somewhere and it would be really nice to have that paired up with it. The mobile element would be really helpful.”

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    Sauna Van for Wild Swimmers
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Triathlon enthusiast, Alison Beck, enjoys the benefits of a post-swim sauna. “I suffered a knee injury, but after a session in the cold water and the sauna I saw an immediate improvement. You can see significant benefits as well to your blood pressure, cardiovascular system, and general health and wellbeing.”

Waterskier Dush Lukic also saw the advantages. “I think it is a great idea and if you can get it to the lakes where they don’t have a natural facility, I think it will be a ‘wow’.”

Ellie Mullins who runs the Longside Lake said: “It’s a really cool idea. Somebody said it would be cool to have it at a festival or something, or even just rock up to more remote beaches.”

Simon Robinson is chief engineer in the Special Vehicles team, based in the UK. He explained: “We get some strange requests, but turning a Transit van into a mobile sauna is definitely one of the most unusual…we weren’t even sure if it was possible.

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“But in Ford Pro Special Vehicles we love using our engineering ability to come up with solutions for customers and got together to figure out how we might do it and if it was even feasible.”

He added: “Although I didn’t get to be hands-on with the actual fabrication of the interior I did offer as much support as I could, and the end result is really great. Not only does it look good, the guys did a great job on that, but it performed even better than we hoped.

“A major concern was insulating the van to make sure the heat from the infrared sauna we planned to install wouldn’t escape and make the whole thing inefficient. The team ran numerous tests on this to see how long it would be until the system needed a boost from the battery until we were happy.

“Our calculations show that for every one hour the sauna is in use, the E-Transit only loses about four miles of range, so you could run it for eight hours and still be able to drive for 180 miles.”