It was a Douglas DC-4-based air ferry conversion developed by Freddie Laker's Aviation Traders (Engineering) Limited (ATL), with a capacity generally of 22 passengers in a rear cabin, and five cars loaded in at the front.

Freddie Laker's idea to convert surplus examples of the Douglas DC-4 and its military counterpart the C-54 Skymaster to carry cars was a relatively inexpensive solution to develop a successor to the rapidly aging and increasingly inadequate Bristol 170 Freighter, the car ferry airlines' mainstay since the late 1940s.

Moreover, repeated takeoffs and landings on short cross-Channel flights, in turbulent air at lower altitudes with tight turnarounds of as little as 20 minutes, made the aircraft prone to structural fatigue problems, necessitating rigorous and costly modification programmes, further increasing the type's operating costs on low-yield routes.

Freddie Laker's cardboard model of a converted DC-4 featuring a door in the nose and a flight deck raised above the fuselage had shown that its payload was superior to the Bristol Freighter/Superfreighter.

[2] In addition, the DC-4's lack of pressurisation was suitable for low-altitude cross-Channel flights, making the proposed structural conversion straightforward.

[4] The conversion of the original DC-4 entailed replacing the forward fuselage with one 8 feet 8 inches (2.64 m) longer, with a flight deck raised into a bulbous "hump" like the later Boeing 747 jet, to allow a sideways-hinged nose door.

In the 1967 TV series The Prisoner in the episode "The Chimes of Big Ben", the plane is seen being loaded through the nose, then taking off and landing again.