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dsl
Transits will always be messy, whatever we do, and there's no clean solution. Before I joined imcdb I thought their history started when Ford Detroit wanted to merge Ford UK and Ford D into a new integrated Ford Europe and set up the Transit as the first joint project begin constructing the marriage. So when I joined imcdb and found most RHD early Transits were listed as UK origin and most LHD as D origin, it kinda made sense.
But then over the years, I learned more about Transits and it started to unravel. For a start Ford D never did any legwork for the supposed joint project and left it all to Ford UK. And as far as I can tell no Transit was ever built in Germany (ignoring the early 60s Taunus Transit, which was a completely different beast with no carry-over).
So my take on it is that no Transit (whether RHD or LHD) should have origin D - there's no reason to apply it, so it's wrong. Doesn't mean that all last century Transits were made in UK, because they were built in lots of places including Belgium, Netherlands and Turkey in Europe, and lots of other countries round the globe. However switching all Transits to origin UK starts looking stupid after early 2000s, particularly as UK builds stopped in 2013.
If we wanted to be strictly precise, we'd probably have to debate origins for each Transit generation as separate questions to resolve, and after perhaps 1990s no single uncontestable answer. If you want the debate to kick off, I'll propose the following starters:
1] no Transit of any generation should get Origin D, which means
2] the current imcdb default to give all Transits origin D should be removed
3] Origin UK should apply for all last century Transits, wherever they're built
4] Origin UK should not be applied for any 2013+ Transits, and maybe an earlier cut-off is appropriate - perhaps as far back as 2000 - see the wiki page for one account of which bits of Ford did the legwork - I'm not sure it's totally solid, but probably as good as it gets to work from.
I don't expect everyone will agree with these suggestions, so they're made with the expectation that folk will throw stones - and maybe big rocks - at them. But it should illustrate why we've never managed to solve this before.
But then over the years, I learned more about Transits and it started to unravel. For a start Ford D never did any legwork for the supposed joint project and left it all to Ford UK. And as far as I can tell no Transit was ever built in Germany (ignoring the early 60s Taunus Transit, which was a completely different beast with no carry-over).
So my take on it is that no Transit (whether RHD or LHD) should have origin D - there's no reason to apply it, so it's wrong. Doesn't mean that all last century Transits were made in UK, because they were built in lots of places including Belgium, Netherlands and Turkey in Europe, and lots of other countries round the globe. However switching all Transits to origin UK starts looking stupid after early 2000s, particularly as UK builds stopped in 2013.
If we wanted to be strictly precise, we'd probably have to debate origins for each Transit generation as separate questions to resolve, and after perhaps 1990s no single uncontestable answer. If you want the debate to kick off, I'll propose the following starters:
1] no Transit of any generation should get Origin D, which means
2] the current imcdb default to give all Transits origin D should be removed
3] Origin UK should apply for all last century Transits, wherever they're built
4] Origin UK should not be applied for any 2013+ Transits, and maybe an earlier cut-off is appropriate - perhaps as far back as 2000 - see the wiki page for one account of which bits of Ford did the legwork - I'm not sure it's totally solid, but probably as good as it gets to work from.
I don't expect everyone will agree with these suggestions, so they're made with the expectation that folk will throw stones - and maybe big rocks - at them. But it should illustrate why we've never managed to solve this before.