No sacrifices on practicality – and don’t forget that for long items like timber and pipes there’s a hatch in the front bulkhead that extends the load length to 3555mm
As far back as 2007 it was offering a short wheelbase Transit Sportvan with just about everything blingy apart from flaming wheelarches. In fact you still see them round my neck of the woods, still looking pretty funky and clean.
With the new Transit Custom having been launched earlier this year Ford is now busily rolling out extra versions.
Latest on the block is the upgraded Sportvan, complete with 18in alloy wheels on low profile 235/50 tyres, leather seats, a special muscular body kit with colour-coded bumpers, stripy metallic paintwork, a rearview camera with a trailer hitch assist system, a lane-keeping alert system, front foglights, cruise control, air-conditioning, a heated windscreen, electronic stability control (ESC) and ABS brakes.
But the curious thing about this van is that, unlike the rival VW Transporter Sportline with its hefty 180bhp powerplant or the Mercedes-Benz Vito SportX with its outrageous 224bhp, the Ford rival doesn’t actually have anything fast under the bonnet.
The 2.2-litre diesel engine is a standard 155bhp offering. Ford reckons that what people wanted is to LOOK good, never mind driving like Lewis Hamilton.
And they are probably right as previous editions of the Sportvan were snapped up in a matter of months.
What’s hot
- Well, looks for a start. The pictures here say it all – any red-blooded van operator will fall for the charms of the Transit Custom Sportvan. And it doesn’t stop there.
- If you’ve read our reports on other variants of the Transit Custom (click here) you’ll know we hold this van in very high esteem. Its build quality is superb and it handles like no Transit we’ve ever come across so far. It’s massively better than the previous Tranny.
- There are some nice touches in the cab too, such as a little desk that pulls down from the back of the middle seat and a 12-volt take off on top of the dash, which means that if you plug in a sat-nav unit you won’t end up with wires trailing halfway across the van.
- Top marks too for the two-litre cola bottle bins on each side of the cab and the nice big rearview mirrors.
Superb build quality carries through to the cab which is also full of practical touches
- We must also allude again to the aforementioned VW Sportline and Merc SportX. True, they may both have more power but the Sportline costs around £4000 more and the SportX is an eye-watering £7880 more.
- And both, hardly surprisingly, can’t touch the Sportvan for fuel economy. The Ford boasts 40.4mpg on the combined cycle compared to the VeeDub’s 36.2mpg and the Merc’s lowly 33.2mpg. So if you want bling without the ching (that’s the sound of your hard-earned cash disappearing down the drain!) then the Ford badge wins hands down.
- In the business end, we find a flap in the bulkhead that opens up so that longer loads can be pushed through into a compartment under the passenger seat, which increases load length from 2,555mm to 3,055mm.
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