Ford’s UK head believes the brand can sell significantly more vans in an area of the market where it has been lacking.
While the brand has dominated the medium to large van sectors with its Transit for 48 years, in the smaller van sector the blue oval has lost out to rivals.
That should change, Ford UK Chairman Managing Director Mark Ovenden says, when the new Transit Connect launches next month.
The Connect will join a four-prong total renewal by Ford of its CV line-up, alongside the Custom, Courier and the currently-launching Transit.
Speaking to The Van Expert during the launch of the Transit, Ovenden indicates that the Connect will enable Ford to close the gap to rivals such as Vauxhall’s big-selling Astra van.
“We finally have fully competitive product in that range, our share of that part of the market is nothing like the medium side,” he says.
Having spent 29 years at Ford, Ovenden believes the market, in both CVs and cars, has never been more competitive than today, with a failure to tackle over capacity a major factor.
“The over-capacity situation in Europe has not really been addressed, and in some ways has got even more difficult,” he says.
“Europe as a market was last really profitable in 2006-7, then came the financial crisis and in the intervening years lots of manufacturers have put productive capacity in to Russia without taking it out of Europe,” Ovenden adds.
“In the past they used to send a lot of what they made in Europe to Russia, so the market is getting ever more competitive and will continue to do so.”
Ford’s big plans for the Connect are still unlikely to outshine its larger Transit sister model, which has dominated the CV market since it first launched in 1965.
Today one in four vans sold in the UK is a Transit, it outsells its nearest two rivals combined, and is the sixth best-selling vehicle in the UK – more Transits hitting the roads than 3 Series BMWs and Nissan Qashqais.
With the all-new Transit promising more variety, more efficiency, more capacity and more technology, Ford does not expect that dominance to be seriously threatened any time soon.
