Van Of The Day: May 15, 2012

Today's car of the day is Matchbox's 1986 Ford Transit.

The Ford Transit is a range of panel vans, minibuses, and pickup trucks, produced by the Ford Motor Company in Europe.

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.

Although the Transit name has been in use by Ford since 1953, the first definitive Transit platform was launched in 1965. Since then, six million Transits have been produced across three basic platform generations (first debuting in 1965, 1986 and 2000, respectively), with various "facelift" versions of each, carrying various generation and model designators depending on market.

The global, fourth-generation Transit will be officially unveiled in April 2012, and will partially replace the Ford E-Series range in North American markets.

The Transit is a commercial vehicle, while the Ford Tourneo, however, is a minibus entirely based on the Transit featuring back seats and back windows as an ordinary car. Both the Tourneo and Transit run on parallel, so if for instance there is a new/facelifted Transit introduced, the Tourneo will get the same.

For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: Ford Transit

Australian livery on a British van owned by an American company.  It's a small world after all!

The second generation Transit platform appeared in January 1986 and was notable for its all-new bodyshell which was of "one-box" design (i.e. the windscreen and bonnet are at the same angle), and the front suspension was changed to a fully independent configuration on SWB versions. The engine range was carried over largely unchanged from the last of the 1978-85 generation models, although in 1989 the high-performance 3.0 V6 petrol was replaced by the Cologne 2.9 EFI V6. A subtle facelift in 1992 saw the fully independent front suspension adopted across the range, whilst a redesigned floor plan allowed the use of single, rather than paired, rear wheels on the LWB derivative, further increasing payload—these models are identifiable by the slightly more rounded front headlamps.