Transit Van Club 10 reasons to sign up with the Ford commercial collective.

Classic or modern, restored or modified, the Transit Van Club is open to everyone, reckons Peter Lee — you just have to love Ford’s iconic van.

When was the club founded? The club was formed in 2004 when I was asked by Ford for help due to a former Transit club closing. I honoured the old members’ subscriptions and we were up and running. Also at the time Ford had started getting a number of calls about classic Transits and the owners needing help.

I was also aware of the need to get the true Transit history story told due to enthusiasts not knowing the full history and the myths about these vans were increasing. While more and more classic Transits were being sent to the scrapyards and being crushed it seemed the time was right. Since then, the club has saved 62 Transits from that fate, and in fact we have saved three during the first lockdown.

Has the direction of the club changed much since the early days? The format used by the club is still the same and has never changed. We have stayed true to our original goals — non-profit making but supporting children’s charities.

Year-on-year we hand over all our money to kids and we are open to all young and older people, and new vans or classics are welcome. There’s no committee, just my faithful wife and me.

Which models do you cover? We cover the whole 55-year range — if it’s on a Transit platform then that’s fine. Original or customs are cool and you don’t have to own a Transit, you just to have a love of them!

What does your club offer new members? New members get a newsletter six times a year, free entry into all the shows we attend around the country, technical information and help, parts finding and members can place adverts in the news letter free of charge.

The club has raised a lot of money for charity over the years, hasn’t it? How much do you think you have raised? We support UK children’s charities as we are based in the UK and have raised over £30,000 over the years from selling club items and with the sale of my books as well as loads of help with items given to us by Ford to pass on to raise money.

Have many members do you have? As of November, we have 1619 members!

Can you describe a typical member? We have a very diverse membership from young owner drivers, retired owners, fleet operators, ex-Southampton employees, even a number of designers and other Ford people from Ford Dunton and the head office.

Do you host your own show? Yes we have our own show at the British Motor Museum once a year — it’s our 16th year there.

What other shows or events does the club have a presence at? We attend Carfest North and South, the Classic Motor Show and the restoration show at the NEC along with the London Classic Car Show at Olympia.

We also have a presence at a number of Ford shows around the country where we have the club stand putting on displays for the public.

What are the club’s goals for the future? To carry on promoting and saving Transit vans along with their history.

We are finding now that as the cost of classic Transits gets into the higher Pound bracket (I mean on average £15,000 ) more people are taking up the challenge to save them. Our help is needed even more to make sure that we are there to help with the fine details and mechanical specifications so that their restorations reflect the amount of money invested in the vehicles.

Being a DVLA-recognised club we are getting a lot of dating requests when Transits are imported from abroad.