DON’T CHANCE IT, TRANSIT!
Steve Walker takes a look at the latest version of Ford’s business workhorse…
Ford might be about as British as ten-gallon hats, pancakes for breakfast and the right to bear arms but the British people still feel a certain kinship with the blue oval’s products. The Transit van is a prime example. Preferred transport for van drivers - traditionally one of the most patriotic, flag waving sections of society - Ford’s panel van has been firmly adopted as an honorary Brit. Naturally, this has had a far from detrimental effect on Transit sales over the years and it’s a situation that has been royally milked by Ford’s ‘Backbone of Britain’ advertising but there’s also more than a grain of truth to it. The latest Transit was designed in Essex, is assembled in Southampton and uses transmissions built on Merseyside. Has it got the qualities to do us proud?
This Ford Transit arrived on the scene 41 years after the very first Transits appeared on British roads. The model would be well and truly over the hill were it not for a whole series of major revisions, facelifts and completely new designs that Ford have trooped out incrementally over that period to keep things fresh. Today’s Transit is the latest in that line, substantially different from its predecessor in most key areas but, Ford hope, retaining that core Transit appeal.
The smaller Transit Connect van has provided the inspiration for its bigger brother’s front-end. There’s one seriously chunky grille dominating proceedings from the Transit’s nose, bordered on either side by large clear-lens headlight clusters that reach up to a point high above the bonnet line. The characteristic wing mirrors that sprout from black plastic triangles at the lower front edge of the side windows are carried over from the previous generation model, as is almost all the bodywork rearward of the cab. Panel van loadbays don’t offer a lot of scope for vehicle stylists to apply their art and Ford have chosen to leave the Transit’s largely alone. Overall, it’s a good look for the Transit, modern and distinctive without going overboard and risking the alienation of the sector’s largely conservative buyers. Volkswagen’s Crafter mirrors some of the themes seen on the Transit’s front end but takes them to an unorthodox extreme which sits less easily on the eye.
"The Transit range, you’ll be happy to learn, is as big and complicated as ever"
The stated aim of most commercial vehicle manufacturers over the past few years has been to nudge their products closer to passenger cars in terms of quality, refinement and driving experience. Not an easy task, given the panel van’s parallel requirements for toughness, durability and reliability. Ford were nevertheless, keen to soften the Transit’s rougher edges on this model.
Particular attention was paid to cutting noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), something which they claim to have achieved to the tune of 20%. The engine block and head are stiffer, while rear axel whine has been cut and there’s a marked improvement on something called the articulation index. This sounds complicated but actually refers to the ability of driver and passenger to hold a civilised conversation above the sound of the engine, without bawling their heads off at each other.
The interior of this Transit has definitely made a step in a car-like direction. Mock-aluminium detailing is not something I’d previously encountered in a panel van but there it is, glinting back at you from the Transit’s gear lever, steering wheel spokes and stereo controls. More important than the cosmetics of it all is the sturdiness that’s common to the switches, dials and other controls. There’s a slightly modular feel to the dash with the dark grey plastic of the stereo console not quite tallying with the lower grade black material that constitutes the rest of the facia. Anyone who’s driven Ford passenger cars will quickly form the suspicion that the Transit interior has been made more car-like by the liberal inclusion of bits of cars within it. That stereo, the stubby gear shifter and the steering wheel all look like they’ve seen service elsewhere in the Ford range. Of course, this is no bad thing.
The designers have included some tidy storage solutions around the cabin with specific slots for 2-litre drinks containers and one for your mobile phone. There are cup holders in abundance and even a flip-up table on top of the facia to help drivers scale that mountain of paperwork. The dash mounted gear lever is a first for the Transit but it’s one of the last panel vans to get with the programme in this respect. Long floor-mounted shifters are so 1990s with operators having taken a particular liking to their drivers being able to clamber across the cab and emerge on the pavement side of their vehicle rather than running the gauntlet of on-coming traffic. It makes some sense but the pencil-thin shaft and bauble end of the old-style gear levers never presented a serious obstacle to a committed van driver in any case. Luckily, on top of this perceived practical advantage, the dash-mounted shift in the Transit has a neat, direct feel while its cable-actuated configuration means there’s less vibration than with a floor-mounted lever connected directly to the gearbox.
The Transit range, you’ll be happy to learn, is as big and complicated as ever. The body variations alone offer over 60 different choices to businesses. Then you must look at the engine range which is comprised of advanced 2.2-litre, 2.4-litre and 3.2-litre Duratorq TDCi common-rail diesels with various power ratings. It’s not even as straightforward as that, however, because the 2.2-litre powerplants are exclusively offered with the front wheel drive Transit models, meaning that the 2.4s and 3.2s take on the heavier-duty work in the rear-wheel drive variants.
Whether it’s businesses looking to restock their van fleet or private buyers who’ll be at the wheel themselves, safety will be a top priority for most Transit customers. Ford have endowed this model with a whole array of features including ABS, electronic brakeforce distribution, a brake traction control system and their electronic stability programme. Perhaps more important than any of these, however, is the inclusion of disc brakes all round instead of the rear drum brakes that did the stopping on the previous Transit. Ford’s panel van has always been very strong on security and measures like a Thatcham alarm, hood lock and the PATS Passive Anti-Theft System mean nothing has changed. The Transit remains a real turn-off for the criminal element.
Ford were never about to drop a major clanger where the Transit was concerned. Updating Britain’s favourite panel van in a manner that rendered it singularly repugnant to the entire van buying community would have been an astonishing feat. As it is, today’s Transit looks to be merely more of the same - the same being pretty darn good.
Facts At A Glance
CAR: Ford Transit range
ENGINES: 2.2-litre TDCi (front wheel drive) / 2.4-litre and 3.2-litre TDCi (rear wheel drive)
SAFETY: ABS, EBD, BTCS, ESP, Driver’s airbag.
- There is currently no review for this van
- Select the model range below to read a review.
- Ford Transit Sportvan
- Ford Transit Range
THE COMMERCIALISATION OF SPORT
White van man is about to get a whole lot easier to spot. The Ford Transit Sportvan is here. Steve Walker reports…
As concepts, sport and vans don’t appear to go together particularly well. Of course, there are plenty of van drivers who think differently and are quite happy to launch their commercial vehicle about as though they were Stirling Moss and it were a single-seater racer but for the most part, vans just aren’t all that sporty. None of this seems to have registered with Ford. The boys at the Blue Oval obviously saw no reason why turning a full-sized panel van into what amounts to the world’s largest hot hatchback would be anything other than a great idea. The result is the Transit Sportvan.
It’s standard practice in the car sector. Take a rather ordinary supermini and pile on the styling accessories until it looks like a road-going racecar. It helps if you also drop in a big engine and tweak the suspension to sharpen-up the driving experience but that’s far from essential. Many buyers are happy to have the aggressive looks and generous equipment quota without the punitive insurance costs and voracious appetite for fuel that tends to accompany truly hot performance models. Ford has applied exactly the same principals to create the Transit Sportvan. The only difference being that this is a warm hatchback with space to fit a standard warm hatchback in the back.
The Transit Sportvan’s stand-out feature is that paint job. All the models that will make it onto the streets in the UK will receive the same Performance Blue body-colouring and a pair of striking white stripes that run from its nose back over its roof. The Sportvan may look like someone has left it parked where they shouldn’t while the council were repainting the lines on the road but there’s real Ford racing heritage in those stripes. The design, if not the colour scheme, first found fame on the GT40 racing cars that dominated at LeMans in the late 60s and it has since been resurrected on the £110,000 Ford GT supercar. Today, it can most commonly be spotted applied as an optional extra to the Ford Fiesta ST performance model and now the Ford Transit Sportvan has received the same treatment.
"Transit Sportvan is about as visually exciting as panel vans get"
The other features that combine to give the Sportvan exterior its racey edge are a pair of exhaust pipes, a body-coloured grille and bumper, a full bodykit including side skirts, front fog lights and extended wheelarches. Buyers also get impressive-looking 18" snowflake patterned alloy wheels shod with low profile tyres and a full set of mud flaps. The interior specification is a long way removed from most peoples’ idea of what a commercial vehicle is all about. No vinyl seats and wind-down windows here, it’s leather seating, tinted wndows, air-conditioning, cruise control, electric everything and a six CD autochanger stereo. All of this comes on top of the remote central locking, rain-sensing wipers and automatic headlamps that are also fitted.
The specification and styling of the Transit Sportvan is definitely more hot hatch than van but, if we’re honest, the engine is more van. This is a good thing. Ford could have dropped in the 2.5-litre turbocharged engine from their fast Mondeo and Focus models it would have secured miles of column inches and we’d all have raved about its savagery on a racetrack but nobody would have bought it. The Sportvan’s target market is businesses or individuals who need a van but also want to make a statement. The 2.2-litre Duratorque TDCi 128bhp engine in the Sportvan allows them to do this without incurring the kind of operating costs that will propel them straight into insolvency. The common-rail diesel engine is no shrinking violet and performance is way above average for a panel van with 310Nm of torque available to get this sizable vehicle moving.
On the latest Transit, particular attention was paid to cutting noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), something which they claim to have achieved to the tune of 20%. The engine block and head are stiffer, while rear axel whine has been cut and there’s a marked improvement on something called the articulation index. This sounds complicated but actually refers to the ability of driver and passenger to hold a civilised conversation above the sound of the engine, without bawling their heads off at each other.
The interior of this Transit has definitely made a step in a car-like direction. Mock-aluminium detailing is not something I’d previously encountered in a panel van but there it is, glinting back at you from the Transit’s gear lever, steering wheel spokes and stereo controls. More important than the cosmetics of it all is the sturdiness that’s common to the switches, dials and other controls. There’s a slightly modular feel to the dash with the dark grey plastic of the stereo console not quite tallying with the lower grade black material that constitutes the rest of the facia. Anyone who’s driven Ford passenger cars will quickly form the suspicion that the Transit interior has been made more car-like by the liberal inclusion of bits of cars within it. That stereo, the stubby gear shifter and the steering wheel all look like they’ve seen service elsewhere in the Ford range. Of course, this is no bad thing.
The designers have included some tidy storage solutions around the cabin with specific slots for 2-litre drinks containers and one for your mobile phone. There are cup holders in abundance and even a flip-up table on top of the facia to help drivers scale that mountain of paperwork. The dash mounted gear lever is a first for this generation Transit but it’s one of the last panel vans to get with the programme in this respect. Long floor-mounted shifters are so 1990s with operators having taken a particular liking to their drivers being able to clamber across the cab and emerge on the pavement side of their vehicle rather than running the gauntlet of on-coming traffic. It makes some sense but the pencil-thin shaft and bauble end of the old-style gear levers never presented a serious obstacle to a committed van driver in any case. Luckily, on top of this perceived practical advantage, the dash-mounted shift in the Transit has a neat, direct feel while its cable-actuated configuration means there’s less vibration than with a floor-mounted lever connected directly to the gearbox.
Based on the Transit 260 short wheelbase bodystyle, the Transit Sportvan is about as visually exciting as panel vans get. Beneath the spoilers and extrovert paint job it’s just a normal Transit but happily, Ford’s offering remains one of the top panel vans on the market today. The Sportvan styling accoutrements won’t be to everyone’s taste and they don’t come cheap but when you factor in the amount of equipment you’re getting and the undeniably special looks, dealers should have no problem shifting the limited Sportvan allocation.
Facts At A Glance
CAR: Ford Transit Sportvan
ENGINES: 2.2-litre TDCi 128bhp
SAFETY: ABS, EBD, BTCS, ESP, Driver’s airbag.
DON’T CHANCE IT, TRANSIT!
Steve Walker takes a look at the latest version of Ford’s business workhorse…
Ford might be about as British as ten-gallon hats, pancakes for breakfast and the right to bear arms but the British people still feel a certain kinship with the blue oval’s products. The Transit van is a prime example. Preferred transport for van drivers - traditionally one of the most patriotic, flag waving sections of society - Ford’s panel van has been firmly adopted as an honorary Brit. Naturally, this has had a far from detrimental effect on Transit sales over the years and it’s a situation that has been royally milked by Ford’s ‘Backbone of Britain’ advertising but there’s also more than a grain of truth to it. The latest Transit was designed in Essex, is assembled in Southampton and uses transmissions built on Merseyside. Has it got the qualities to do us proud?
This Ford Transit arrived on the scene 41 years after the very first Transits appeared on British roads. The model would be well and truly over the hill were it not for a whole series of major revisions, facelifts and completely new designs that Ford have trooped out incrementally over that period to keep things fresh. Today’s Transit is the latest in that line, substantially different from its predecessor in most key areas but, Ford hope, retaining that core Transit appeal.
The smaller Transit Connect van has provided the inspiration for its bigger brother’s front-end. There’s one seriously chunky grille dominating proceedings from the Transit’s nose, bordered on either side by large clear-lens headlight clusters that reach up to a point high above the bonnet line. The characteristic wing mirrors that sprout from black plastic triangles at the lower front edge of the side windows are carried over from the previous generation model, as is almost all the bodywork rearward of the cab. Panel van loadbays don’t offer a lot of scope for vehicle stylists to apply their art and Ford have chosen to leave the Transit’s largely alone. Overall, it’s a good look for the Transit, modern and distinctive without going overboard and risking the alienation of the sector’s largely conservative buyers. Volkswagen’s Crafter mirrors some of the themes seen on the Transit’s front end but takes them to an unorthodox extreme which sits less easily on the eye.
"The Transit range, you’ll be happy to learn, is as big and complicated as ever"
The stated aim of most commercial vehicle manufacturers over the past few years has been to nudge their products closer to passenger cars in terms of quality, refinement and driving experience. Not an easy task, given the panel van’s parallel requirements for toughness, durability and reliability. Ford were nevertheless, keen to soften the Transit’s rougher edges on this model.
Particular attention was paid to cutting noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), something which they claim to have achieved to the tune of 20%. The engine block and head are stiffer, while rear axel whine has been cut and there’s a marked improvement on something called the articulation index. This sounds complicated but actually refers to the ability of driver and passenger to hold a civilised conversation above the sound of the engine, without bawling their heads off at each other.
The interior of this Transit has definitely made a step in a car-like direction. Mock-aluminium detailing is not something I’d previously encountered in a panel van but there it is, glinting back at you from the Transit’s gear lever, steering wheel spokes and stereo controls. More important than the cosmetics of it all is the sturdiness that’s common to the switches, dials and other controls. There’s a slightly modular feel to the dash with the dark grey plastic of the stereo console not quite tallying with the lower grade black material that constitutes the rest of the facia. Anyone who’s driven Ford passenger cars will quickly form the suspicion that the Transit interior has been made more car-like by the liberal inclusion of bits of cars within it. That stereo, the stubby gear shifter and the steering wheel all look like they’ve seen service elsewhere in the Ford range. Of course, this is no bad thing.
The designers have included some tidy storage solutions around the cabin with specific slots for 2-litre drinks containers and one for your mobile phone. There are cup holders in abundance and even a flip-up table on top of the facia to help drivers scale that mountain of paperwork. The dash mounted gear lever is a first for the Transit but it’s one of the last panel vans to get with the programme in this respect. Long floor-mounted shifters are so 1990s with operators having taken a particular liking to their drivers being able to clamber across the cab and emerge on the pavement side of their vehicle rather than running the gauntlet of on-coming traffic. It makes some sense but the pencil-thin shaft and bauble end of the old-style gear levers never presented a serious obstacle to a committed van driver in any case. Luckily, on top of this perceived practical advantage, the dash-mounted shift in the Transit has a neat, direct feel while its cable-actuated configuration means there’s less vibration than with a floor-mounted lever connected directly to the gearbox.
The Transit range, you’ll be happy to learn, is as big and complicated as ever. The body variations alone offer over 60 different choices to businesses. Then you must look at the engine range which is comprised of advanced 2.2-litre, 2.4-litre and 3.2-litre Duratorq TDCi common-rail diesels with various power ratings. It’s not even as straightforward as that, however, because the 2.2-litre powerplants are exclusively offered with the front wheel drive Transit models, meaning that the 2.4s and 3.2s take on the heavier-duty work in the rear-wheel drive variants.
Whether it’s businesses looking to restock their van fleet or private buyers who’ll be at the wheel themselves, safety will be a top priority for most Transit customers. Ford have endowed this model with a whole array of features including ABS, electronic brakeforce distribution, a brake traction control system and their electronic stability programme. Perhaps more important than any of these, however, is the inclusion of disc brakes all round instead of the rear drum brakes that did the stopping on the previous Transit. Ford’s panel van has always been very strong on security and measures like a Thatcham alarm, hood lock and the PATS Passive Anti-Theft System mean nothing has changed. The Transit remains a real turn-off for the criminal element.
Ford were never about to drop a major clanger where the Transit was concerned. Updating Britain’s favourite panel van in a manner that rendered it singularly repugnant to the entire van buying community would have been an astonishing feat. As it is, today’s Transit looks to be merely more of the same - the same being pretty darn good.
Facts At A Glance
CAR: Ford Transit range
ENGINES: 2.2-litre TDCi (front wheel drive) / 2.4-litre and 3.2-litre TDCi (rear wheel drive)
SAFETY: ABS, EBD, BTCS, ESP, Driver’s airbag.