Introduced in the U.S. nearly six years ago, the Transit Connect has been a hit with small businesses – caterers, florists, even dog groomers – who need to run errands but don’t necessarily have a lot of equipment or merchandise to carry around.
The Transit replaces the aging E-Series van which has gone years with virtually no significant updates. For the launch of Transit, however, Ford has pumped about $1.1 billion into the Kansas City plant, where it will add 2,000 new jobs.
The full-size van “is an extremely important product for us,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s President of the Americas, as he watched the official roll-out of the first of the new full-size Transit models at the maker’s Kansas City Assembly Plant.
Ford clearly has big aspirations for the Transit, which is basically an Americanized version of the full-size van the maker has been selling for years in Europe. It is offered in a variety of different configurations, including three different roof heights, two wheelbases and three body lengths.
Ford is hoping that will help it boost both its sales and market share in a segment that has been showing some surprising life after years of largely been ignored by manufacturers happy to keep pumping out the same products with little investment or innovation.
Along with the newly updated Transit Connect, compact customers have or will soon have such options as the Nissan NV 200, the Ram ProMaster City, and the Chevrolet City Express.
