I thought this might be of interest to visitors. My wife and i attended the "Ford Transit Tour" in the Seattle Washington area on Thursday August 14th. Below are my notes that i shared over at the FT Forum. The bottom line for my wife and i is we are very happy with the fit/finish/drive of our current Chevy van over the FT we drove. The ONLY reason we would consider another van is if we truly felt that added interior volume was needed to obtain our long term goals with a rig like this. For she and I, in every area we could think of except sheer massive fourth dimensional interior space... Our Chevy van is a keeper over the FT. With that said, here is my post from the FTF in it's entirety:
--------begin FTF post:
Well my wife and i are home on the Oregon coast after a ~9 hour round trip drive to/from Seattle area. We spent about an hour at the event. We were actually the first round of peeps in the rigs on the track at the 1:00 event. It was the "Last session on the last day of the tour" we were told... The crew were cordial and responsive to questions, though really ? They didn't know any more (or were unable to share more) than what we all have been talking about here. I asked about some really simple things like rear door interior handle...he had no idea what i was trying to get at so i showed him the interior of the cargo van and gee, guess what? there's no handle/door exit thingy to open the rear door from the inside! Here was a guy that had been touring with the crew since who knows when and that was the first time anyone had apparently asked that question. It struck me as funny.
Please be kind. Your mileage may vary greatly!! Certainly the Transit is a high quality design/rig...the following is just our honest opinion hashed out during the 3.5 hour drive home.
OK, so i'll start with the summary. Background first. I'm 5'8", my wife 5'2", both regular build. We are not "Chevy people" but we do drive a Chevy 1500 AWD Express cargo van conversion.
Summary: There is no reason my wife and i would go out and buy the FT over what we have now if not for the sheer cavernous volume of the LWB EB HR. None.
OK, details.
Driver cockpit for us.
Me, I liked the dash layout, good view out the passenger front window to nice rear view mirrors with nice view of side. Didn't like the (more) limited view out the passenger side slide window (higher than our chevy window on slider and not as long...so less visibility when looking over right shoulder out the side window, which we do many times a day each drive.) The steering wheel angle was so school bus like i could imagine wanting to try to bend the angle down superman style. A real negative for me, but usable, just don't know for how long. I'm not into driving a school bus or class A.
Her. She too liked the overall look/feel of the cockpit viewing commenting similarly as i mentioned above. Seat to pedals was comfortable. Wheel placement/angle was all wrong. The wheel angle (like a school bus no mater how it was adjusted) was an irritant to her before she hit the second turn on the test track. This was honestly for her enough of a turn off that i hope Ford listens to the prospective buyers and makes a change in driver ergonomics, at least more steering wheel adjustment to vertical (again, we like the wide range of comfort/adjust-ability in our current rig, it is very sedan like feel behind the wheel, which to us is a positive.)
Egress front to rear:
Me: Wowzer, I thought i was going to have to brush up on some Yoga moves. Really a tight fit with my normal sized 10 Red Wings on my feet.
Her: Same. It was like... What the heck!?!?
Egress Cab-To-Back is WHY we have a van! Our current rig is spin inward and head on back.
Drive on test track with LWB RB HR EcoBoost with 2500 lb payload
Since we were interested in the EcoBoost that's what we jumped into. And since we were on a time clock (wanting to get south of the Seattle area before any rush hour traffic hit) that is the unit we spent time in. They did have the other two available, but we had no real interest.
The EcoBoost characteristics are everything any other test driver has shared; very responsive. The handling was well mannered. We were disappointed that the extended body vans were only for display and not available for test drive. That said, we were both happy with the characteristics of the van we drove. BUT... Our current rig a hundred pounds shy of its GVWR is just as peppy off the line and corners/handles easily as well as what we drove today. Also, egress into/out of the Transit (the step up) is noticeably more strained than our van even with
our 3" lift kit and larger tires.
Fit and finish
Very nice. I've not really looked at a Ford. But this was one well fit-unit. The doors worked well and securely. My only gripe was the lack of egress out the rear door in the van. The wagon had a small plastic latch labeled "Pull for emergency exit". Really?? Our van has
a fully functional door handle on the inside of the stripped cargo van. Also, honestly, while we both like the look of the FT, it certainly will need a whole lot of upfitment to look anything close to cool. Just sayin. It's well... mom and pop-ish. The class B retirees will luv it!
Interior rear volume
Fantastic for both of us! There is just so much one could do behind the cockpit in the LWB EB High Roof van!! And
THAT is the one thing that will keep the Transit in our vans-to-watch list.
So back to the summary/bottom line. For my wife and I... We will continue to follow the Ford Transit development over the next few years. And again, the only real reason we would consider one would be for all the extra room we could fill with an all-in-one camping conversion where we no longer desired to pull our
fun little fiberglass travel trailer and have two _rooms_. It certainly beats out the Sprinter in our opinion due to the great dealer network (like our Chevy). And we are thinking the Promaster will be somewhere in the middle between the two, though we haven't driven or looked closely at one yet (only the outside at a dealer lot after close).
So there you have it. My; "I'm not a Chevy or Ford guy but drive a Chevy Van" Opinion
Cheers,
Thom
Oh yea, we signed our life away so no pics during our event either.