silwan
Haveing a not too....deep thought on the Front wheel v rear wheel drive option ?
With the Ford it has one advantage over the Sprinter, that being it uses a wide track suspension setup just Like Pontiac did in 1965,this gives the unit a more secure road handling car characteristics by lowering the tyre profile to 14'rimes, in doing this very old Hot rodders trick, the centre of gravity is also lowered... because of this the vehicle is more stable almost to the point of not requiring the likes of ESP, at lower speeds under 50 MPH.
The Transit was originally designed for the UK Market with a three speed manual transmission and a standard 4 pot petrol naturally aspirated single Zenith carb, Front wheel drive works very well on flat roads, with little hill climbing or from a standing start, the roads in the UK once off the main-stream highways are little more than single lane roads, winding through the countryside , which divert into lanes basically not enough room for two vehicles to pass each other, once off a hard road surface. Front wheel drive has more traction and less understeer, or chances of getting bogged down on a country farm track.
Australia of course had them sent down as an alternative to two choices of vans that Ford Australia had on offer the Ford Falcon Panel van or as you guys called them delivery vans, the difference was the tops of the vans where raised from the standard station wagon height, they were only designed to carry 1/2 tonn the Transit was offered as a one ton unit in both van and pickup or fLAT TRAY we never had the stake configuration installed that was and is still popular in the U.S
Australian Ford falcon panel van 1966 through to 1971
The larger Ford's F Series from the U.S were very expensive and Fuel was an issue back in 1972.
With the Mark 11 Ford transit, the first non turbo units came down in Diesel
and did they smoke! right up untill this latest model Front wheel drive Diesel from a standing start non turbo assist from a hill start at 45 degree was a no go, you just blew the clutch out, or the linkages were bent out of shape and the clutch fork actually inverted to the opposite direction under the pressure of the the gearbox tying to bend the whole chassis, the torsion from the unit was beyond the Ford, or even the older Mercedes to handle this work load, so in come the turbo assist to solve the problem but again Ford now understand in some applications front wheel drive units will not work under hill start operations with a full load, as all the pulling power comes from the front opposed to rear wheel drive, where it will push the unit forward without the stress associated with a front wheel drive unit, trying it best to drag it's load forward push pull two different applications for working vehicles.
Mercedes may come through with the all whell drive option late next year for the Sprinter as Ford is also working on the same concept which gives both vehicles superior handeling characteristics which is a standard feature in all Mercedes vehicles of the higher priced units.
I don't know how Ford can resolve it's problems as for GM which has the same problems, they have untill 2012 to resolve all of the factors of Euro configurations for saftety fuel and what ever else the EPA and saftey mandates required for the larger Fords, even the 2008-9 Ford is going to be a tough sell to the U.S folk and if the oil prices spike agian then what hope does Ford have to fund and redevelop a brand new Ford from scratch?
Richard
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but then again we all know what FORD stands for!
Ha, har.
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