I’m not talking about E series vans
I’m talking about much bigger vocational vehicles
Class 4 and bigger
To kind of answer the original question posed:
From an engineering perspective, there is no reason a unibody, monoque or any other kind of structural arrangement couldn’t perform as well as or better than the old body on frame arrangement did.
The real question is will the new (now, not so new) Transits be up to the task. So far, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.
Not that Sprinters are much better. At my old job we had a satellite truck built on a Sprinter. One of our guys was backing it into the parking lot one day when he heard a clunk, and saw it was leaving a trail of oil. Got out and looked, and the crankshaft pulley had fallen off.
Few months later I was driving to a story and saw a competing station’s Sprinter off to the side with the flashers on. I knew most of 'em, so I stopped to see if I could help. Crankshaft pulley fell off.
Awhile after that I’m covering a mass-shooting-by-cop in Wisconsin that got national attention. One of the guys from a station in the Twin Cities saw my truck and started a profanity-laced diatribe about how much they suck. Seems his had stranded him in the middle of nowhere awhile back. The problem? Crankshaft pulley fell off.
That’s some awe-inspiring quality control right there.
That truck gave us problems constantly. Between the lousy base vehicle and the lousy broadcast conversion it was almost a cause for celebration when the thing made it through a whole evening worth of newscasts without causing a disaster.
Snide comment as usual. I’ve come to expect nothing less.
I used to do the overflow work for a courier/delivery service that had a fleet of Express and Econoline vans. They had their own mechanic but I did what he couldn’t get to. They ran their GM and Ford products to 350-400K miles. About 10 years ago they decided to start replacing them with Sprinters, figuring fuel savings and the larger cargo hold would save money in the long run.
Well, they saved a ton on fuel costs but that was more than eaten up by the added maintenance. It wasn’t just engine repairs. My friend there had to design a beefier rear door hinge, deal with failing electronics more often, etc.
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Why are you interested in how many were made anyway?
Of course my first thought was ( all of them).
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