Category Archives: Van News

News and articles about UK vans – especially information relevant to the van hire market. Coverage of new van model launches from all the major manufacturers – Ford, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Fiat and Citroen.

New Van News – Ford & Kia Introduce New Models

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Ford Transit Connect Hits US Shores

Ford has been promising the Transit Connect van to the US market for some time. It looks like that time has now come.

The Transit Connect will go on sale in the US this summer with a starting price of around $21,000. It will have an optional second row of seats and extra windows, making it a viable people carrier as well as a useful small van. Needless to say, it will be powered by a petrol engine with an automatic gearbox, rather than the manual diesels favoured on this side of the Atlantic.

Ford has also confirmed that the Transit Connect will form the basis for Ford’s promised electric van, due to market in 2010. This seems likely to be based on Smith Electric Vehicles’ existing Transit Connect model, the Ampere.

For full details and photos, click here for the AutoblogGreen report.

Kia Introduces 4×4 Sorento Van Model

A rather more surprising vehicle introduction is the new van from Kia. Known for its good value cars and people carriers, the Sorento SUV has now been converted into a 4×4 van!

The Kia Sorento XE-C is still identifiably a 4WD passenger vehicle but has been modified to remove the rear seats and provide a reasonably large load area.

One downside is that it still retains passenger-style rear doors – which are not a patch on van-style sliding doors when it comes to accessibility. That said, it’s a niche vehicle for a niche market and should benefit from Kia’s usual competitive prices and reliable build quality.

You can read an early review of the Sorento XE-C here, in the Scotsman.

Job Losses and Short Time For UK Van Factories

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Falling van sales across Europe mean that the UK’s two largest van factories are cutting back on manpower.

Ford has taken the difficult decision to cut 500 jobs at its Southampton factory. The plant, which makes the Transit van, as recently moved from running a double day shift to a single day shift, but as I reported here the company’s original intention was to manage this transition by cutting working hours, rather than jobs. Perhaps this was always a little too optimistic…

Ford are struggling with falling global sales – last year, the Southampton factory only produced 66,000 Transits – against almost 75,000 in 2007. This year’s total may be even lower – with export markets all over Europe suffering a downturn.

Vauxhall are also experiencing falling demand for their hugely-popular Vivaro van. Workers at the GM plant in Luton, where the vans are made, have had their working hours cut from 38 to 34 hours per week, although no job losses have been announced as yet.

More New Van Deals

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Hot on the heels of Renault’s recent National Van Week, two more major van manufacturers have launched new van marketing programs to try and entice small business customers to buy new vans.

Peugeot has launched its own ‘Van Week’ – running from 2nd-8th February. According to April Harris, Peugeot’s UK LCV Product Manager, “Van Week is the ideal opportunity for our customers to take a look at the award winning Peugeot LCV line-up.”

Peugeot’s line up of vans includes the award-winning Bipper, which has been awarded both the What Van? ‘Van of the Year’ title and the International Van of the Year 2009 titles. It’s a city-sized van that is designed to make light work of tight city environments while retaining an impressive payload and loadspace.

Volkswagen, meanwhile, is offering new van customers 3-year, fixed-price service plans on all van models, including the Transporter-based Caravelle and California models. The deals start from just £295 and are available until 31st March, 2009.

Any retail or business customer* purchasing a new van before 31st March 2009 is eligible for the deals and there are a choice of mileage bands, ranging from 45,000 to 90,000.

*maximum fleet size of 25

Staffordshire Fire Service Finds Sprinters Highly Effective

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The last year has seen several fire and rescue services around the UK take delivery of specially-equipped Mercedes Sprinter vans.

My local fire station (in North Yorkshire) has one, and Staffordshire Fire & Rescue service has recently taken delivery of two further Targeted Response Vehicles (TRV), as they are known.

Mercedes Sprinter TRV
Mercedes Sprinter TRV

The vehicles carry 800 litres of water and are specially equipped to deal with small fires such as grass and bin fires.

According to Staffordshire Fire & Rescue Service Chief Fire Officer Peter Dartford, the TRVs have been extremely successful at dealing with such incidents. “Unfortunately a large proportion of fires we attend to now are small, deliberately started fires – this new vehicle has been purposely designed to deal with these types of incidents, particularly as it can get to areas where a normal fire appliance wouldn’t be able to access.”

These latest two vehicles were ordered following the success of Staffordshire’s first TRV, based at Stoke-on-Trent which dealt with 346 incidents during its first six months in service, in 2007. This freed up larger, traditional fire appliances to attend more serious incidents and improved the fire service’s ability to access difficult or remote locations.

Update: Avon Fire & Rescue Service are also using Mercedes Sprinters – but in a completely different way, creating smaller conventional fire appliances from crew-cabbed Sprinter chassis with custom-built bodies. Click here for the full story.

LDV In Trouble As Van Sales Plummet

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LDV Maxus Luton Van

LDV Maxus Luton Van

The West Midlands factory of van maker LDV, which produces the Maxus range of vans, has been closed since 12th December 2008. LDV employs around 900 people at its Washwood Heath, Birmingham plant and produces 13,000 vans per year.

Due to reopen on the 12th January, it remains closed today due to plummeting demand in both the UK and its eastern European and Russian markets. LDV have now arranged a meeting with the government to discuss the possibility of state support for the struggling company.

Like Ford (and most other vehicle manufacturers), LDV has been hit hard by a sudden drop in demand. According to LDV Marketing Director Guy Jones, “LDV is producing the vans of tomorrow today and we hope the UK Government recognises and supports such UK innovation”.

The latest figures show that new van registrations (of all makes) were down 26% in December and down 14% on the year as a whole. In a company statement, LDV said that it “is struggling to forecast when sustained demand for new vehicles will recommence and losses are presently being incurred due to little or no production and reduced sales.”

Renault Launch National Van Week – Special Offers

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New Renault Kangoo

New Renault Kangoo

The January Sales are bigger than ever this year and it’s good to see that van manufacturers are getting into the action, too.

Renault has just launched National Van Week, heralding a fortnight of (yes, two weeks) of special free offers on new vans. There are three free offers available:

  • AirCon+ Pack
  • 12 months’ Road Tax
  • Free TomTom ONE satellite navigation unit

The offers are available from the 16th – 31st January 2009 – so get down to your local Renault van dealer if you are interested. The AirCon+ Pack includes air conditioning, electric front windows and electric heated wing mirrors, so it is a desirable option that should help the future resale value of your van.

The three offers are available on the van model range of New Kangoo Compact, New Kangoo Van, Trafic (including panel, Crew Van and Platform Cab models, excluding Double Deck Dropside), Master (panel, Chassis Cab and Box Van models) and Passenger Vehicles (6, 9 and 16-seat versions).

These offers are available from all participating Renault dealerships, with the only conditions being that orders must be placed between the 16th and 31st January, and to vehicles registered by 31st March 2009.

Ford Cuts Transit Production In Southampton

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Ford is dramatically cutting production of its Transit van model at its Swaythling, Southampton factory.

The factory is moving from a two-shift working day to a single shift – although Ford stresses that none of the factory’s 1,100 staff will lose their jobs. Instead, working hours are being cut and all staff will remain on full basic pay, according to the company.

More than half of the Southampton factory’s output is exported to Europe and Ford says that it is simply responding to “significantly reduced medium commercial vehicle sales across Europe”.

Source: BBC News

2009 CV Show Cancelled

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The 2009 CV Show at the Birmingham NEC has been cancelled.

The decision is not entirely surprising – just a couple of days ago I reported that exhibitor numbers had slumped with virtually  all van and truck manufacturers having pulled out.

Fleet News is now reporting that the show has been cancelled due to a lack of support by exhibitors for the concept of refocusing the event to be a transport engineering show.

Better luck for 2010 – hopefully the economy will have bottomed out by then and there maybe enough positive sentiment to generate some enthusiasm (and funding) to make the show viable.

Van Manufacturers Desert 2009 CV Show

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This year’s Commercial Vehicle Show at the Birmingham NEC is likely to be a shadow of its former self, with almost every commerical vehicle manufacturer having withdrawn or declined to exhibit.

According to Fleet News, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Citroen, Isuzu and Vauxhall have all confirmed that they will not be exhibiting, as have lorry manufacturers Iveco Truck, Volvo, DAF and Scania.

There are a few companies still to confirm – by my reckoning the biggest of these in van terms are Ford and then LDV.

The CV Show’s organisers are keen to stress that they still have more than 300 exhibitors signed up and the show will be what it always has been – a transport engineering show.

With (almost) no vehicles.

To contrast this to last year’s show, take a look at my write-ups from then.