No other light commercial vehicle has had such a wide variety of uses as the Transit, from fire engine to fruit hauler, builder's van to breakdown recovery;- Think of a task and someone has converted the ever-ready Transit to do it. In fact, at its launch in 1965 the Transit range contained a staggering seventy-eight different models, and the range has continued to expand. The Transit could well have been launched in Britain bearing its internal code name of 'V-Series' had it not been for the intervention of Bill Batty, who was later to become Ford of Britain Chairman. Just a few weeks before the public announcement, Batty asked to see one of the latest pilot build vehicles and, as it happened, a British-built, German-market left-hand-drive, vehicle, labelled 'Transit', was sent to him at Ford's British headquarters. Batty immediately seized upon the name and had it changed it time for the pan-European launch. BRS Rental, one of the UK's largest commercial vehicle hire companies operates nationwide with more than 2000 vehicles and over 1000 support staff. The Ford Transit Mk I was one of the earlier vehicles in the fleet.
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