Transit High Cube T he Ford Transit "HighCube" announced in April,
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has gone on sale through 150 Ford Transit specialist dealers. The vehicle is the result of close co-operation between Ford's Special Vehicles Engineering Department at Dunton and Motor Panels in Wigan which assembles it (CM713 April 1994). Several million pounds has been invested in the Wigan plant and about 100 people have been involved in the project, including more than 20 new staff at Motor Panels.
Ford is planning to sell up to 7,000 12m3 (SAE) High-Cubes a year. Initial models will all be white right-hand drive variants but production of left-hand drive versions is scheduled to begin soon. The seven standard Ford colours will also become available.
The vehicle has moved from the drawing board to production in just eight months. Motor Panels begins by assembling extended sides, Front door apertures are supplied by Ford and Motor Panels completes the assembly with a standard Transit panel behind the front door section and a short side extension. Additional stiffening is built into the structure. The completed assemblies are then shipped back to the Transit factory in Southampton to be built into a "donor" vehicle.
This consists of a standard LWB Transit van platform for single-wheel models or chassiscab for twin rear wheel models. This is made up from a fully trimmed Transit cab, LWB van floor and the Motor Panels sides. The roof and rear section are left at this stage and the partially built vehicle is shipped back to Wigan via Ford's Halewood plant at Liverpool.
Meanwhile, Motor Panels fabricates the rest of the vehicle at Wigan. Using rear side panels from the pre-1991 LWB Transit, the extra length comes from the additional rear overhang, The complete rear section is built up by adding the extra high-roof Transit rear door aperture and rear floor extension.
This subassembly is then
shipped to Motor Panels at Coventry for priming, before returning to Wigan for top coating and final assembly on to the donor vehicle. To safeguard the anti-corrosion warranty, the body sides and floor are bolted together. Welding would damage the paint finish and leave the metal exposed to possible corrosion. Gaskets seal the body join and finally the roof is added. The Resin Thermo Moulding (RTM) plastic top is 50mm higher than the standard Transit extra-high roof option.
Motor Panels carries out the final quality checks including a high-pressure water penetration test. The PDI is also carried out in the factory before despatch to the Ford dealer network.
The finished vehicle has the same wheelbase as the DVB Transit. Except for the Motor Panels roof, side panel extension and strengthening, all the parts are off-the-shelf Transit bits.
The production volumes are too small to fit the large-scale volumes and economics of the Transit plant in Southampton. Despite the exchange of panels and sub-assemblies between Ford and Motor Panels the arrangement is highly cost effective. The High-Cube is now included in the Transit price list: the single rear wheel version, with a payload of 1,490kg, costs £17,645 (ex-VAT), while the twinwheel model (payload 1,380kg) costsL18,145. Either can be ordered from any Ford dealer, and a minibus version is likely to follow in the coining months.
7_ by John Kendall