Wikipedia: Ford Transit
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Ford Transit page on 18 November 2015, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Ford Transit is a range of light commercial vehicle produced by Ford since 1965. Sold primarily as a cargo van, the Transit is also built as a passenger van (marketed as the Tourneo since 1995), minibus, cutaway van chassis, and as a pickup truck. Over eight million Transit have been sold, making it the third best-selling van of all time and have been produced across five basic platform generations (debuting in 1965, 1978, 1986, 2000, and 2013 respectively).
The first product of the merged Ford of Europe, the Transit was marketed through Western Europe and Australia; by the end of the 20th century, it was marketed nearly globally with the exception of North America until 2013; it replaced the Ford E-Series in 2015. The Transit has been the best-selling light commercial vehicle in Europe for 40 years, and in some countries the term "Transit" has passed into common usage as a generic term applying to any light commercial van in the Transit's size bracket. While initially designed for European consumption, the Transit is now produced in Asia, North America, and Europe for worldwide buyers.
The first Transit (1953–1965)
Unlike the British-built Transit "family", the first production Ford to wear the "Transit" badge was a van built in Ford's Köln (Cologne) plant in Germany. It was introduced in 1953 as FK 1000 (Ford Köln carrying 1,000 kg) with a 1.3 litre inline-four engine from the contemporary Taunus. In 1955 the engine capacity was enlarged to 1.5 litres. From 1961, this vehicle was called the Ford Taunus Transit. Production of this model ceased in 1965.
The German vehicle was not widely exported, and the "Mark 1" tag has commonly been applied, retrospectively, to the 1965 to 1978 British model (see below). Whilst there have been five basic Transit platforms since 1965, the various facelifts and upgrades over the years have been referred to using a conflicting range of "Mark" numbers, with some sources counting a facelift as a new "Mark", some not. Ford's own historical look back at Transit production, published for the launch of the 1994 model, avoids the issue by referring to generations of Transit by years produced. This article attempts to make mention of all the common naming systems.
|6 December 2012||Ford Transit Custom Sport - Speedmonkey approves||Matt Hubbard, Speedmonkey|
|16 July 2013||Ford Transit Supervan 3 takes to the Goodwood Hill!||Matt Hubbard, Speedmonkey|
|17 April 2015||Parts and Accessories Necessary for Safe Operation; Application for an Exemption From Ford Motor Company||Federal Register: FMCSA (Larry W. Minor)|
|12 August 2015||Parts and Accessories Necessary for Safe Operation; Ford Motor Company Application for an Exemption||Federal Register: FMCSA (T.F. Scott Darling, III)|
|14 January 2016||RealWheels Enhances Ford Transit with Stainless Steel Simulators and Trim||RealWheels Corporation|
|11 February 2016||Rosco Vision Systems Introduces Ford Transit Brake Light Backup Camera to Integrated Product Line||Rosco, Inc.|
|16 November 2017||Parts and Accessories Necessary for Safe Operation; Exemption Renewal for Ford Motor Company||Federal Register: FMCSA (Larry W. Minor)|
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