The Ford Transit is a 3/4-door van from Ford, built from 1965, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 3.5L Ecoboost V6, 3.5L Cyclone V6.
The story
The Ford Transit is a family of light commercial vehicles manufactured by the Ford Motor Company since 1965, primarily as a cargo van, but also available in other configurations including a large passenger van (marketed as the Ford Tourneo in some markets since 1995), minibus, cutaway van chassis, and a pickup truck. The vehicle is also known as the Ford T-Series (T-150, T-250, T-350), a nomenclature shared with Ford's other light commercial vehicles, the Ford F-Series trucks, and the Ford E-Series chassis. As of 2015, 8 million Transit vans have been sold, making it the third best-selling van of all time and has been produced across four basic platform generations (debuting in 1965, 1986, 2000, and 2013 respectively), with various "facelift" versions of each.
The first product of the merged Ford of Europe, the Transit was originally marketed in Western Europe and Australia. By the end of the twentieth century, it was marketed nearly globally with the exception of North America until 2015 when it replaced the Ford E-Series van. Upon its introduction in North America, the Transit quickly became the best-selling van of any type in the United States, minivan sales included. That mirrors the success the Transit has achieved in Europe, where it has been the best-selling light commercial vehicle for forty years, and in some countries the term "Transit" has passed into common usage as a generic trademark applying to any light commercial van in the Transit's size bracket.
What is underneath
Power comes from 3.5L Ecoboost V6, 3.5L Cyclone V6. It shifts through a 10-speed Automatic Transmission. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Europe: Ford Thames 400E / North America: Ford E-Series; its successor was the Ford Transit Custom (for Ford Tourneo); assembly was at Cologne (Cologne Body & Assembly), West Germany. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Nissan Silvia, the Lamborghini Miura, the Dodge Charger — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Ford catalogue sit the Ford 021C and the Ford Escort.
What it costs now
The money question first: $12,900–$29,800 is the typical asking range today, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $3,185–$5,020 a year. Insurance sits around $1,220–$2,020 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.