In honor of the 2015 Ford Transit van coming online, the company has dusted off their old photo albums and dug up all the best awkward movements the van has gone through growing up. You know, just like the first time your signifiant other met your mum.
In the US, we're only seeing the Econoline van bow out to the Transit for 2015. But over in England, they've already sold some seven-million Transits over many decades. Here are some of their favorite memories the van's given us, starting with that time it toted some baby elephants around the London Zoo in 1965 (above).
A "floating Transit" was cooked up by actual Ford engineers to particpate in an Essex, UK raft race. Apparently it did not win.
Do you know who Henry Cooper was? I didn't either... but he made a name for himself as a boxer in England, and apparently moonlighted as a banana hocker. He used a wood-tray'ed Transit in his family's fruit peddling operation.
That would be a 49' model Cetiosaurus. You know, a "whale lizard," on its way to a park in Edinburgh, Scotland riding a Ford Transit and probably scaring the shit out of little kids in traffic. Pretty sure this predates all rear-facing station wagon seats, but if you saw this running up on you from there you'd be dropping your juice box like whoa.
Transit doing duty as the Tottenham Spurs soccer ("football") tour bus in the 60's. Fans might recognize Jimmy Greaves in the yellow, top on the left.
Rock and roll band "The Tremoloes" out of Dagenham, Essex, England never quite reached Beatles or Rolling Stones-level stardom, but they did rack up fourteen UK and two U.S. Top 20 hit singles in the 1960's. The Transit was their daily driver for awhile.
Michael Caine rocked a Transit in a car chase in the 1987 flick The Fourth Protocol. Caine plays a British secret agent squaring off against Pierce Brosnan... who reps the KGB!
48 students from Barking College, a real place, crammed themselves into a Transit for some kind of world record. Great?
Hughes Overland ran trips from London to Australia, getting the 10,000 mile ride done in 10 weeks. Driving this thing must have been one hell of a gig.
This is the Ford Transit that owned England's 1985 caravan towing record, hitting 170 MPH. Aerodynamic package on the van looks pretty slick, but I wonder why they didn't fit some skirts on the trailer?
One the other end of motorsports, this off-road Transit banged out 7,500 miles across North Africa.
This is not Photoshop, some maniac named Steve Matthews jumped 15 cars in this stock Transit. All they did to the van was pull the windows and tape the doors down.
Ford was proud to announce Alfie Kerr (baby pictured) was born in a Transit October of last year. Haven't heard back yet from Ford regarding their records on how many babies are made in their vans.
So, does anybody have their own epic photo of Ford van history they'd like to share?
Images: Ford