Transit vans probably hold more interesting facts than you realise… take five minutes out and allow us to demonstrate (just a bit of fun :-).
- A new Transit Custom is sold every three minutes.
- In 1965 the original Custom cab cost £542 and had a 610kg payload. A 15-seat Custom bus was £997!
- The 2015 Transit is built in Turkey.
- Such was the van’s handling and capability, UK Police were said to describe the Ford Transit “the best getaway vehicle of the 1970s”.
- Unlike the British-built Transit “family”, the first production Ford to wear the “Transit” badge was a van built in Ford’s Köln plant in Germany. It was introduced in 1953 as FK 1000 with a 1.3 litre.
- Essex has the UK’s largest number of white van drivers follow by Kent and then Lancashire. (Not just Transits obviously).
- £1,026 is the average value of contents in every Transit van.
- The Transit was close to being named V-Series but bosses spotted a large “Transit” label on the prototype when it arrived in the UK – and the name stuck.
- The 1965 Transit was the first van big enough to carry an 8ft by 4ft sheet of plywood.
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was built on a Transit SWB chassis.
Barry Clarkson