TECHNICALLY MINDED

“The new Swift Trekker made its official debut at Ford’s Technical Centre at Dunton in Essex”

Peter Vaughan Road Test Editor

It’s been a very long time since I last attended a motorhome launch hosted by a chassis manufacturer but the new Swift Trekker made its official debut at Ford’s Technical Centre at Dunton in Essex – a few weeks after our photo/ video shoot at the Swift factory (see page 100).

It was a show of strength for Ford, as well as an indication of its growing relationship with Swift as this was the first ever European leisure vehicle presentation at a Ford site.

Swift is one of only 200 recognised Ford Pro converters (in all aspects of vehicle conversion) and Ryan Bowdidge, Leisure Vehicle Manager for Ford of Europe, was clearly proud of the brand’s growth in the campervan/motorhome market. From only 13% market share in 2021, that grew to 27% of the sector in the UK last year.

As well as seeing the new Trekker and Trekker X, we were introduced to the Ford Pass app (with neat features like remote locking and starting from your phone) and Ford Camper Assistance (see the news pages for more), which will apply to all campervans on the new (V710) Transit Custom and motorhomes built on the facelifted Transit, which will arrive later this year. And we got an early preview of another new Ford campervan, too, which we hope to bring you more information on next month.

A tour of the facilities enabled us to take to the banked test track in the new Transit Custom and witness a Trekker being frozen down to minus 40 degrees in Ford’s huge network of cold chambers.

And was that the new VW Transporter under disguise that we spotted? Apparently, it has been developed alongside the very closely related Transit Custom and Volkswagen even has a small team currently based at Dunton!