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Preview: Ford Transit Connect coming to America...with top rating
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Cue Neil Diamond for a chorus or two of “Coming to America.” Mid to late-summer 2009, a new Ford --at least new to us--will be imported. Not that imports are anything new, even for Ford, which has been bringing cars to the U.S. from overseas since the 1950s.
But this one’s really new. It’s the Ford Transit Connect.
It’s new because it’s the first time for Ford to bring a small tradesman-type truck/van to the States. But more surprisingly, the Ford Transit Connect is made in Turkey. As in the country in the Middle East. Ford has a plant in Ankara where the Transit has been made since 2002 for export mainly to Europe.
Built for European use, it’s built to European dimension. The Transit Direct’s wheelbase is 114.6 inches, much shorter than Ford’s conventional American E-Series van which measures a whopping 138 inches. And instead of that vehicle’s big V-8, the Transit Connect is powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that makes 136 horsepower and 136 lb-ft of torque and is rated at 19 city/24 highway mpg. Don’t ask what the E-Series gets. It’s too heavy for EPA mileage rating.
The Transit Connect won’t be in direct competition with the E-Series van or the E-Series’ equivalents from Chevrolet and GMC. Rather it will match up against the Chevy HHR or Honda Element. Advantage: Transit Connect with its 143 cu ft of cargo volume and maximum payload of 1,600 pounds. The Chevy has about 62 cu ft and the Honda 74.6 cu ft of cargo volume, and neither—as technically automobiles—has a payload listed. Neither has the height inside that a Transit has either.
The Ford Transit Connect, not to sound too much like a cheerleader, sounds like the right product at the right time. And if the origin seems a little odd, consider that the British trade magazine Fleet News has called the Transit Direct the “second most reliable model” for 2007 and 2008. That’s not faint praise considering that number one was also a Ford, the larger Ford Transit van.
It can’t happen fast enough for Ford, of course, even it means that some of its income is made overseas. After all, as Ford products, the profits are coming to America too. Sing it, Niel.
Illustration courtesy Ford Motor Company.
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