Just over 10 years ago, Ford brought its Transit Connect across the Atlantic. The practical small van first launched in Europe in 2002 as a commercial vehicle serving small and medium-sized businesses. The first-generation model was very successful, but the second edition, which made its debut in 2014 here, failed to live up to expectations – this despite it being an improved product in every way. Sales remained stagnant and evidently not to Ford’s liking.
The result is that the model seems at an end in North America. Indeed, Automotive News recently reported that Ford will stop selling the Transit Connect in the United States by the end of next year. The company has also abandoned plans to build the next generation of the model in Mexico.
One of the factors that evidently led Ford to this decision was the fact that the company would have to pay up to $1.3 billion in penalties as part of a long-standing dispute over import duties paid on the vehicles.
Since the start of the pandemic, sales of the model have been sluggish, falling 15 percent in July of this year in the U.S., after dropping about 25 percent last year.
The report by Automotive News cited sources familiar with the matter; Ford declined to comment on it. As for Canada, we can only speculate that where the U.S. goes, so do we in this case.
We'll be following this story closely.
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