Anderson would later claim that the whole point of having a series based on a vehicle was to minimise having to show the marionettes walking, an action which he felt never looked convincing.

[9] The star of the series was Supercar, a multi-environment craft invented by Professor Rudolph Popkiss and Doctor Horatio Beaker, and piloted by Mike Mercury.

With the exception of The Secret Service, all of his series until Terrahawks included these – in Supercar's case, the charging and firing of port and starboard engines, the activation of an interlock, the opening of (overhead) hangar doors, and finally the vertical take-off.

After Granada Television declined to order a second series of Four Feather Falls, its creator Gerry Anderson approached Lew Grade of ATV with the idea for Supercar.

[12] Scriptwriter brothers Hugh and Martin Woodhouse devised supporting characters Dr Beaker, Masterspy and Zarin to expand on Anderson's original concept, which featured only Mike Mercury, Jimmy and Mitch.

[14][15] Canadian actor Graydon Gould (The Forest Rangers), who voiced Mike Mercury despite never auditioning for the part, was offered it whilst doing a stage production that was shown on television.

In an interview Gould recalls that, without owning a car, getting to Slough was difficult because "Sunday transport is about half of what it normally is" but because he had a wife, a two-year-old child and a three-bedroom apartment, he was grateful for the money.

He had previously worked for AP Films when playing the character Diamond in the low-budget B-Movie Crossroads to Crime alongside David Graham.

[23][24] The series' scale model aerial photography effects were created by filming the miniatures in front of rear-projected footage of a cloud-filled sky, shot from an Airspeed Oxford flying at 16,000 feet (4,900 m).

[39] According to Robert Sellers, while 21st-century audiences may find the series "tame and a little infantile" compared to APF's later work, Supercar is sustained by good writing, characterisation and production design.

[35] Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping regard Mike Mercury as the template for later protagonists, writing that his "square-jawed, mid-Atlantic" bearing made him the "prototypical" Gerry Anderson hero.

[41] In a review for DVD Talk, Glenn Erickson gave the series the highest rating of "Excellent", praising its puppet sets, scale model work, special effects and "razor-sharp" cinematography.

He wrote that the production values were of a kind which "simply weren't seen in 1960 [sic] children's programming, which made this peppy half-hour programme a sure bet for syndication."

He also commented that the inclusion of Mitch the Monkey as an anthropomorphic character was a welcome departure from other children's shows, which typically focused on "Lassie-like genius animals".

[42] By contrast, Matt Hinrichs of DVD Talk rated the series two out of five, describing it as a "primitive precursor to Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet", and best skipped.

Calling the production standards "modest", he wrote that much of the series was "repetitive, snail-paced and unimaginative", also arguing that it had "too many awkward components [...] to meld into a satisfying whole".

[43] Noting aspects such as the lack of female regular characters, Marcus Hearn describes Supercar as being "squarely aimed at little boys of the Meccano era".

Hearn also writes that the series' over-arching "rescue theme", as well as its "fetishisation" of technology, make it comparable to APF's later science fiction productions.

[44] Jonathan Bignell writes that as in Thunderbirds, the villains appear to operate "outside geopolitical conflict", although Masterspy and Zarin and the plot of the episode "Island Incident" carry echoes of the Cold War.

Supercar was the first Gerry Anderson series to be adapted as a comic book in America, with the Gold Key company releasing four issues between November 1962 and August 1963.

[47][46] Misc!Mayhem Productions in the U.S. planned to release a five-issue Supercar licensed comic book mini-series "picking up where the classic Gerry Anderson TV series left off".