50 things you didn’t know about the Ford Transit
How many of these facts did you know?
BACK in 1965, The Beatles met Elvis, Thunderbirds were go, Asda opened its first store ... and the Ford Transit was born.
Every year since, the Transit has been Britain's No1 van, contributing billions to the economy and racking up an incredible 2.54million sales. This paper was probably delivered by one.
Here, we celebrate the van of the people ... still fab at 50...
1. A new Transit is sold every three minutes.
2. More than 2.54 million UK sales and close to eight million worldwide.
3. Lined up end-to-end, 50 years of Transits would circle the globe.
4. The Transit replaced the 400E Thames Trader.
5. The first Ford Transit was built at Langley, Berks, an old Hawker Hurricane factory, on August 9, 1965.
6. The Custom cab cost £542 and had a 610kg payload. A 15-seat Custom bus was £997.
7. Ford took £33million of orders before production had even started.
8. Langley built 317,800 Transits before production moved to Southampton in 1972.
9. Southampton, an ex-Spitfire factory, built 2,200,173 Transits before closing in July 2013.
10. The 2015 Transit is built in Turkey.
11. The Transit was close to being named V-Series but bosses spotted a large "Transit" label on the prototype when it arrived in the UK - and the name stuck.
12. It was given the codename Project Redcap during development.
13. The 1965 Transit was the first van big enough to carry an 8ft by 4ft sheet of plywood.
14. Two baby elephants once hitched a ride at London's Regent Park zoo.
15. So did a 15m, 1.5-ton cetiosaurus - from Kent to Scotland.
16. Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper drove a pickup delivering fruit and veg.
17. One was converted to run on train tracks in Switzerland.
18. Scotland Yard once described the Transit as the "perfect getaway vehicle" used in "95 per cent of bank raids".
20. The first Transit diesel was fitted with a Perkins engine. They used Dagenham-built diesels from 1968.
21. A new low-emission (Euro6) 2-litre diesel for the Transit and Transit Custom will be made at Dagenham from late next year.
22. Professor Reyner Banham once said a Transit should be "buried for posterity". He added: "If anthropologists and archaeologists continue to insist on evaluating civilisations by their artefacts, we deserve to be remembered by the Ford Transit."
23. The one millionth Transit was built in Southampton in 1976. It was shipped to Nigeria.
24. David Bellamy saw the two millionth Transit off the line in 1985.
25. There have been eight versions of Transit - 11 including facelifts.
26. A smaller Transit Connect was launched in 2002. It could take two Europallets through the rear doors.
more motors
27. Clarkson drove a Transit hover van up the River Avon on Top Gear.
28. Michael Caine used one in the film Fourth Protocol.
29. Even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was built on a Transit chassis.
30. But a Transit has never appeared in a Bond film.
31. The new Ford Transit covered the equivalent of 275 round-the-world trips during testing.
32. One in four UK van sales is a Transit. Wrestler Mick McManus starred in 1969 ads for the Transit chassis cab.
33. The first Supervan, built in 1971, was based on a GT40 with a 5-litre V8.
34. It was followed by Supervan II and III.
35. Two Transit vans drove flat out for a week at Monza in 1972, covering 10,000 miles at 74mph.
36. The 3001 Transit concept, a six wheeler with gullwing doors, was built in 1979 as a "vision of the future".
37. Apprentices at Dunton built a Transit pedalo for a 1985 raft race.
38. A stuntman jumped over 15 cars in a Transit that same year.
39. Supervan II set a world record for towing a caravan at 170mph.
40. A Transit buried in snow for six months started first time.
41. The old master Ken Gibson saw the five millionth Transit built at Southampton, in the van's 40th year.
42. The brilliant Backbone of Britain TV ad was first aired in 2007.
43. Capital Radio circled the M25 for seven days and nights in one in 1986.
44. By 2010, the Transit had lasted twice as long as the Model T. Now sold in 116 countries on six continents including America from 2014.
45. A Czech driver complained when his clock stopped at 999,999km. He was given a new one.
46. The one-ton Transit Custom went on sale in 2012. It was named International Van of the Year and was the first van in its class to receive a 5-star safety rating.
47. Two years later the new Connect was named 2014 International Van of the Year.
48. The £11,145 Transit Courier, Ford's first baby Transit, completed the new four van line-up last year.
49. More than 450 model variants are now available.
50. Ford has four golden Transits touring the UK to celebrate its 50th birthday.
Join the Transit Van Club party at Gaydon Heritage Motor Museum this weekend. I'll see you there.