Ford Transit review

You’d think a van wouldn’t need to do much to appease its driver, beyond having enough power to haul around big loads without fuss. Try telling Ford. There’s genuine delight for car nerds in most of the Transits.

Ooh, where can I find that delight?

A crisp manual gearchange sits inches away from the steering wheel in the Connect, Custom and the big Transit, so you can change gear nearly as efficiently as in a racing car with an elongated sequential stick. And in the Courier the six-speed manual is lifted straight from the Fiesta parts bin, so it’s an excellent gearbox.

Transit steering wheels are always a perfect size, your view out of the windscreen is always vast and even the brake pedals feel fantastic and set up with far more care than any dozy crossover you care to name. All of the touchpoints are clearly set up by people who actually give two hoots.

What about engines?

The most striking – and relevant – thing about how the bigger Transits drive is how effortlessly the power is delivered. As sports car makers have moved into an almost entirely turbocharged era, they’ve talked at great length of the things they’ve done to eliminate turbo lag. Their solutions are complex, expensive and not always that successful.

If only they’d given Ford’s commercial vehicle engineers a ring. We sampled one of the biggest Transits you can buy – a long-wheelbase, high-roofed 350 – with a seemingly very modest 128bhp turbodiesel powering its rear wheels. Even when filled with an entire flat’s worth of belongings, it was charging forward with the keenness (if not quite the speed) of a Ferrari 488 Pista on a warm trackday.

You’d be very dim-witted indeed to stall a Transit. It feels like there’s 500lb ft of torque everywhere in its rev range, and you end up pulling away from lights and dicing through traffic with the confidence of a motorcyclist, such is the urgency of its powertrain.

Speed is a balancing act, though. A Transit feels fast because it doesn't look or feel like it should be. The sweet spot of the range as far as driving goes is probably the 168bhp motor in a Transit Custom. Brisker still, but with a chassis that copes even better. That 2.0-litre engine is remarkably refined for a commercial vehicle too without much rattle at all filtering into the cabin.

The Transit’s pretty good, then?

The Transit configurator probably accounts for half of the world’s internet usage, such are the myriad ways you can combine sizes, engines and the like. So, you could have a bigger engine in a smaller van and quite possibly invert the space-time continuum as you accelerate down a slip road.

Alright, we’re being silly, but the point is there’s fun to be had in here. Rather a lot of it. Ever read some road-testing geekery about weight distribution and glazed over? Well, using a massive Transit to take things to the tip serves up a very tangible demonstration of how it all works: leaning into corners when full and flickering traction control when empty gives a very practical demonstration of how that sort of stuff works.

What about the teeny Transits?

The boxy-looking Courier with its Puma/Fiesta underpinnings is just as fun to drive as the bigger Transits. You get a tight 10.7m turning circle, willing little engines and a pointy front end. There’s minimal body roll, and it also gets proper tyre sidewall so it doesn’t crash about the place like some vans.

The new VW-based Connect isn’t quite as deft to steer, but it’s still far more car-like than you might expect, allowing you to corner at greater speed than it has any right to. At least, with an empty loadbed. We tried it in PHEV guise, which pairs a 1.5-litre EcoBoost petrol engine with a small motor and 19.7kWh battery for a combined 148bhp/258lb ft, but more impressive is the 73 miles of all-electric range. In crew-or-cargo body style this really could be all the car (or van) you ever need.