Ford has marketd the new Transit Custom heavily to owner-drivers such as tradesmen, who value its car-like qualities and style.

Automotive data specialist CAP says that the van market has become more sensitive to aesthetics and model freshness than ever before.

The firm says that until now, the van world has generally been considered immune from the pace of change that sees car designs changing more often today than ever before.

For example, last year, CAP reported that the shelf life of some car models has halved since the 1970s, as manufacturers compete to keep their products as fresh and interesting as possible.

Van model cycles have always been longer, as operators have preferred to focus on proven reliability, cost of ownership and other such practicalities. However, the growing importance of aesthetic appeal in the van market has been identified by CAP’s van price forecasting expert, Tim Cattlin, who says the days of vans being seen purely as a work tool are over:

“… the days of the van being seen as purely a tool to get a job done are clearly ending and the signs are strongest in the one tonne panel van market.

For example, Ford has spent the first 18 months of the life of the Transit Custom successfully cultivating the ‘artisan’ retail smaller business sector.  Looking at registration statistics there has been a high proportion of ‘Trend’ and ‘Limited’ models, with relatively high specification, sold.”

However, Tim Cattlin highlights the risk that with vans being looked at in terms of fashion, as well as utility, second-hand values could become more volatile:

“Looking again at the 4×4 lifestyle vehicle, key players in that sector such as Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Ford are fully aware of how their current offering can fall out of fashion quickly. When that happens and a model starts to fall behind its peers in terms of image, then demand drops off in the used market sufficiently to cause more rapidly falling values.

“In our own forecasting of future light commercial vehicle values we are now extending this lifecycle effect to other areas of the LCV market because we believe it will have an increasingly significant bearing on the value realised at disposal time.”

Although the near-iconic status of the Volkswagen Transporter — a van that always has strong residuals is not news — the idea that this situation could spread more widely through the used van market is interesting, and could have unexpected consequences, as Mr Cattlin explains:

“In the end, the creep of vanity into the van market is a mixed blessing. It ensures a more dynamic marketplace, with exciting and fresh offerings appearing with increasing regularity.  But it also threatens faster depreciation as model ‘shelf life’ begins to shorten and end users are constantly drawn to the newest vehicle on offer.”

For van rental companies, which tend to change their vehicles regularly, I’d hope that this wouldn’t have much effect on resale values — and indeed, the best way to be driving the latest van at all times is to take advantage of long-term rental agreements, rather than buying.

On the other hand, van buyers looking at older vans may have to face a dilemma that has been present in the car world for a long time: you can buy good quality, but unfashionable, used models for very attractive prices, but when the time comes to sell them, they are worth virtually nothing — in other words, the total cost of ownership isn’t necessarily lower, but the initial outlay might be.