Ford Transit celebrates its first full year of U.S. production with a record-setting sales month, selling 12,134 units in June and leading Ford to the company’s best first half van sales performance since 1988. June is the eighth straight month that Transit has been the best-selling van in America.
Transit is new to the North American markets, having launched in November 2014 after having been available in Europe since 1965. It replaced Ford’s longtime brand, the Econoline.
Yaroslav Hetman, brand manager for Transit, Transit Connect and E-Series, said:
“The fact that Transit sales have grown every month since January 2015 demonstrates that customers have embraced Transit’s flexibility, efficiency and low cost of ownership,” Hetman said. “Recognizing that our customers count on Transit vans as the biggest tool they use to get their jobs done every day, we make Transit available with 58 configurations from the factory. Moreover, 11 of the top upfitters in the country have established facilities within 20 miles of our Kansas City Assembly Plant where Transit is manufactured. This makes it easy and convenient for customers to add racks, bins, service bodies and other necessary equipment — without having to ship their Transits to an offsite location.”
Transit is available as a full-size van, wagon, cutaway or chassis cab, with a choice of three roof heights, three wheelbases and three engines, including gas and diesel options. It features a modern unibody construction that makes extensive use of boron steel to provide weight savings, improve torsional stiffness and provide long-term durability. When equipped with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine, 2015 Transit low- and medium-roof regular wheelbase wagons get up to 46 percent better fuel mileage than comparable E-Series vans with the 6.8-liter V10 premium gas engine.
During the first half of 2015, Ford sold a total of 109,783 vans — a 26 percent increase over 2014 and the company’s best first half van sales performance since 1988. In fact, with a total of 21,419 full-size vans sold in June, Ford outsold every other full-size van competitor combined. With a total of 4,476 Transit Connects sold in June, Ford also outsold all of its compact van competitors combined, for their best June results since 1999.
