The White Van Man will be over the moon. Ford has a long history of producing motorsport-based versions of Transit — the Supervan series and the Rally Transit — and its rumoured that another one is in the pipeline for its 40th anniversary celebrations next year. In the meantime it has come up with a high performance version of the baby Transit; Connect X-press. It has, however, taken a different approach with this one. The starting point — the engine — is not from one of its competition cars, but has been transplanted from a production model; the Focus RS.
The 1,988cc turbocharged 16-valve Duratec RS powerplant was an obvious choice as Connect has a certain amount of under-the-skin commonality with Focus at the front end. It was still not an easy job to fit the engine and associated plumbing into the allotted space.
What Van's view:
'Transit Connect X-press looks stunning in its pearlescent white paint job — courtesy of Harley Davidson, another company Ford owns a chunk of — and it just goes to show what Ford is capable of producing by dipping into its extensive corporate parts bin. We were expecting something much more hairy and unrefined, but was bowled over by the engineering integrity applied to this one-off, road legal, special. Definitely worth a look on the Ford stand at the CV Show'.