Presently the on-the-road transportation sector is responsible of the 21% of the whole CO2 amount emitted into atmosphere. This pushes the International Governments and Organizations to provide strict limitations in terms of ICEs emissions, also introducing fees payment for the car manufacturers. The vehicle electrification allows certainly to meet these requirements, but the higher cost and the need of a green electricity still limit a widespread diffusion among all social classes. Thus, the technological improvement of internal combustion engine plays a key role in the transition period. Among these technologies, the engine thermal management allows to achieve a good compromise between the CO2 emission reduction and related costs. It was demonstrated that replacing the conventional centrifugal pump of engine cooling system with a sliding vane rotary pump (SVRP), important benefits in terms of CO2 emission reduction can be achieved as centrifugal pump efficiency decreases significantly when the engine works far from the maximum load (i.e. design point of the pump). Nevertheless, the complex thermo-fluid-dynamic phenomena taking place inside a SVRP make its design not immediate, particularly if heavy duty ICE cooling systems are considered. These applications indeed are challenging due to the wide operating range and the huge flow rates which pump must deliver. These operating requirements make difficult the choice of the main design parameters: among the different ones, the pump revolution speed and displaced volume. In the present paper a design strategy is developed for this type of pumps based on a comprehensive mathematical model of the processes occurring, predicting volumetric, indicated and mechanical efficiencies. The model was validated with a wide experimental activity so acting as virtual development platform. The results show how the best global efficiency (0.59) is achieved adopting a dual axial intake port configuration, with a suitable choice result of a trade-off between displaced volume and revolution speed. The analysis also show that the pump keeps its efficiency close to the design one for a wide operating range which is particularly suitable for the cooling of an ICE.