Ford Transit
Muscle · Ford
Ford Transit: Europe's Default Van Comes to America
The Ford Transit is a family of light commercial vehicles Ford has built since 1965, mostly cargo vans, plus passenger vans, minibuses, cutaways, and pickups. By 2015 Ford had sold 8 million, making it the third best-selling van of all time.
The first Ford to wear a "Transit" badge was a small van built in Cologne, Germany, from 1953. The Transit as most people know it came out of a 1963 joint project between Ford of Britain and Ford's German arm, and launched in October 1965 as the first product of the newly merged Ford of Europe. It was built at first in Langley, England, in a former Second World War factory that had made Hawker Hurricane fighters, then in Southampton until that plant closed in 2013, as well as in Genk, Belgium, and Kocaeli, Turkey. The five millionth Transit came off the Southampton line on July 18, 2005, and was donated to a charity. There have been four basic generations, starting in 1965, 1986, 2000, and 2013.
The Transit has been Europe's best-selling light commercial vehicle for forty years, and in some countries "Transit" is used as a generic word for any van that size. North America didn't get it until Ford began building it at Kansas City Assembly in April 2014 for the 2015 model year, replacing the E-Series van. It quickly became the best-selling van of any kind in the United States, minivans included.
The North American Transit switched from the E-Series' separate frame to a unibody, and heavy use of boron steel raised payload by up to 600 pounds over a similar E-Series. It's rear-wheel drive, with MacPherson struts in front and a leaf-sprung live axle at the back, and it's sold in 150, 250, 350, and 350HD series. It's also the basis for ambulances, buses, and RVs. Ford sells two smaller vans alongside it: the Transit Connect, based on the Focus platform, and the mid-size Transit Custom.
Frequently asked questions about Ford Transit
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