By Howard S. Abramson, Editorial Director
This story appears in the Dec. 12 print edition of Transport Topics.
DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. said it will offer its V-10 gasoline engine to power its Super Duty F650 line of trucks in a bid to reduce costs for fleets that don’t pile up miles on their vehicles.
Company officials told a press gathering here on Dec. 7 that the gasoline version of the trucks will list for $8,300 less than the vehicles with Ford’s diesel power plant.
Mike Levine, Ford’s truck communications manager, said this move makes Ford the only manufacturer to offer a gasoline-powered vehicle in these sizes.
The engine being offered is a 6.8-liter, 3-valve model that produces 362 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque.
At the same time, Ford officials provided more details of their plan to begin producing the company’s extremely successful line of Transit vans for the North American market, after a long run in Europe.
Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s vice president of global product development, said the company will offer the Transit in four lengths and three roof heights beginning sometime in 2013.
Ford has said it will spend $1.1 billion to build a new plant to make the Transits in Kansas.
Ford has sold more than 6 million Transits since introducing the line in 1965, and that it is the best-selling cargo van in Europe and England, Kuzak said. It’s another example of Ford’s “using its global reach” to bring the best products into North America, he added.
The company currently imports the Transit Connect, a small cargo van with a similar high roof design, from its plants in Turkey.
The Transit eventually will replace the Econoline series of vans that Ford has been producing here for more than 50 years; a total of 8 million E-series vehicles have been sold, Kuzak said.
He said the Transits would weigh about 300 pounds less than the comparable E-series vehicles, and already have been extensively road-tested in North America.
Len Deluca, director of commercial vehicles for Ford, said the company’s commercial sales have grown 11.4% this year over 2010 and that Ford’s share of the domestic van market was currently about 56%.
During the recession, Deluca said, the national van market shrank nearly in half, but it has been recovering since 2010.
He said that the company expects pent-up demand to help push total commercial vehicle sales to 660,000 in 2013, compared with 540,000 this year and 588,000 in 2012.
