The Ford Transit Courier – the smallest Transit-branded model in the company’s LCV division – is celebrating its ninth year on the market in 2023. The Blue oval automaker usually keeps its small business vans on sale for about ten years, which means a successor should be on the way very soon. We have new spy photos that show work on the new Transit Courier is already well underway as a camouflaged prototype was caught in Germany wearing its production body.
This isn’t the first time we share spy photos with the new Transit Courier. In September last year, our photographers snapped an early test vehicle wearing the front fascia of the Puma crossover but it wasn’t equipped with its production body and lights. As you can see now, the body of this prototype looks significantly boxier and the front fascia is edgier. To a certain extent, the light commercial van looks like a smaller Tourneo Connect, which is in turn a rebadged version of the Volkswagen Caddy.
Gallery: Ford Transit Courier first spy photos
The new Transit Courier will be produced at Ford’s Craiova plant in Romania where the Puma crossover is also currently being assembled. Both the van and the crossover will receive fully-electric versions and Ford wants to have a battery-powered variant of its every LCV until the middle of the decade. The Transit Courier EV will join the recently unveiled Tourneo Custom with a 74-kilowatt-hour battery for an estimated range of 230 miles (370 kilometers).
Ford hasn’t shared any official information regarding the new van but it is believed it will ride on a modified version of the Puma’s platform, which in turn is based on the current Fiesta. The LCV has five lug nuts as opposed to its predecessor’s four lug-nut setup, which could be a hint at the new model’s slightly larger dimensions and higher load capacities. Combustion and electric powertrains are planned, but we don’t know much about them. A 1.0-liter EcoBoost will likely be the core engine before the EV arrives, though.
The new Transit Courier will continue to be a Europe-only affair as it is simply too small for American tastes. The future of the smaller Transit vans in the US is uncertain at the moment as the automaker has reportedly decided to cancel the project for a Transit Connect replacement.
