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Review: Ford Transit Custom Sport
There’s this unfathomable attraction us motoring journo types have to bare-bones, workaday vehicles. Perhaps it stems from the anonymity, and I reckon this to be the more likely factor, but it also serves as a palate cleanser after strings of cars with ambient lighting and fragrance diffusers.
Then you get the Ford Transit Custom Sport. On paper and in person, all indicators point to it being purely and simply immature. Racing stripes, spoilers… Essentially what an 8-year-old me would bootstrap with a Lego kit. It’s the antithesis to anonymity and likely the last word on how to make what would otherwise be the breadman’s boring van exciting. There are kilowatt-adding racing stripes, a body kit, and the 17-inch sports-inspired wheels – it’s so, so wrong, and yet it’s hard not to love this almost shameless undertaking of perceived performance.
Ford probably considered weaving this theme into the interior space and thought better of it. The only real racy stripe innuendo is on the cloth seats, with the rest of the 2-seat cabin space finished in hard-wearing, easy-to-clean plastics that are likely able to withstand the most careless tradesman’s perpetually greasy hands. It’s a purposeful but functional cabin space… And while grease-resistant touchpoints are to be expected, the level of refinement and niceties overdelivers in a big way.
There’s a 13-inch landscape-orientated touchscreen infotainment system loaded with Ford’s SYNC4 software with USB Type-C and mercifully Type-A ports for smartphone plug-in, while driving information is displayed on the 12-inch instrument cluster. While screen real estate is nowadays a non-negotiable measure of value, in the Transit Sport it comes with an asterisk when driving at night: the insistent screen glare on the bulkhead. While I wish that this was me just picking nits, the whole exercise of keeping an eye on the surroundings becomes an unnecessary challenge when driving at night.
As for practicality, well, I seem to be on a roll here, but considering all the whims that are catered to, including 6-way electronic seat adjustment for the driver and even storage spaces that are brilliantly thought out and will even swallow a small laptop, there’s one aspect I can’t wrap my head around: the climate settings that are absorbed by the infotainment system. Sure, you don’t have to do a deep dive into the menus, per se, with “shortcuts” presented at the bottom of the interface, but fine-tuning anything on the go proves to be an unnecessary chore. Imagine wearing gloves in the middle of winter…
Under the snouted bonnet space, the Ford Transit Custom Sport brings a 2.0-litre turbodiesel engine that produces power to the tune of 125kW and 390Nm of torque that’s given the go-ahead by an 8-speed automatic gearbox that’s activated using a stalk instead of the conventional centre-mounted drive selector. It hardly sounds fantastic on paper, but considering that unloaded it’s effectively a cockpit, engine, shell, and some wheels, it feels considerably more sprightly than these figures would suggest.
It’s also well refined considering the still-dominant panel van genes at play here, and it’s quite evident that Ford has taken the time and effort to try and keep a lid on exactly that. The flat-bottomed steering wheel carries decent weight on the move with clear front-wheel-to-driver communication. In tight spaces and at slower speeds, it has a quick enough ratio for manoeuvring, while anything done in reverse is made easier with a 180-degree field of view rear camera. And no, the peephole in the bulkhead isn’t enough…
All told, Ford’s sporty panel van offers a relatively dynamic experience with niceties and refinement levels that position it as a decent lifestyle vehicle when it doesn’t have to be on the work site. There’s also a drive mode selector that enables drivers to switch between Normal, Eco, Sport, Slippery, and Towing, and while the temptation is always there to dial it into its most dynamic setting to match the go of the racing stripes, the Normal mode is optimised just so for daily use.
And yes, considering this is a vehicle that’s made for carrying cargo first and foremost, the rear axle has an element of rigidity to it when unladen, which becomes especially noticeable on any road surface other than a smooth national highway, but it’s far from a dealbreaker considering all this van offers.
As for the business end, the cargo area measures 2,602mm from the barn-door openings to the bulkhead, with Ford claiming it has a maximum load volume space of 5.8m3, while it can carry loads weighing up to 1,023kg. The cargo area is also accessible via two electronic sliding doors on the sides that can further be operated using the key fob. Other features for owner-operators to geek out on include six tie-down hoops, a moulded floor to absorb batterings, and LED interior lighting.
In terms of pricing, the Transit Custom Sport sells for R938,000, or about R200,000 more than a standard Transit Custom. It is some R30,000 less than the Merc Vito 114 CDI. For the price you get an optional 6-year/90,000km service plan, a (standard) 4-year/120,000km warranty and a 5-year/unlimited mileage corrosion warranty.
All things considered, then, is the Transit Sport the most sensible panel van on the market right now? Heck no, but sensibility was never the point. The point, I figure, was always to check off a panel van checklist… “I wish I could get a panel van that didn’t feel like a commercial starter pack…"
And it does just that with features that position it near, if not in, a refinement domain not far removed from a luxury SUV – just with a focus on hauling things. Yes, there are quirks, what with the nighttime screen glare and infotainment-embedded air con controls that feel like change for the sake of change, but these can be considered me just nitpicking since, well, I’m getting paid to do just that.
Racing stripes, though… Spoilers? Tasteless on most any other car except perhaps one other Ford product I can think of and maybe something hailing from Maranello, but here it works. It’s the answer to how to make a workaday vehicle exciting. This is it, right here. In a parallel universe an 8-year-old me is probably building one from Lego as you read this.
Images: Niki Louw
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