Ford heavy truck? Who knows anything about that? Hand up! Ford is known to be extraordinarily successful in vans, where 'Transit' is a nickname for completely undemanding vehicles that are always on duty. The metamorphosis towards electrification also seems to be going better than at GM at the moment, where they start with the Hummer of all things.

In the USA, the F-Class is a magic word for high registration numbers, but the Americans seem to have given up on manufacturing heavy trucks under their own management. Specialists in Germany still know the Transcontinental, which was offered until 1984. In 1997 the heavy truck division was sold to Freightliner (Mercedes).

And now it's back, of course bearing the successful letter 'F' in its type designation, neither related nor related by marriage to the 'S-Max'. Unlike the Transcontinental, it does not seem to consist mainly of purchased parts, but is being built in a joint venture under the umbrella of Koç Holding in Turkey.

We in Germany are familiar with the collaboration between VW and Ford in the case of the Sharan and Galaxy, whereby VW did the design and Ford the manufacturing. Newer projects are the VW Caddy respectively Ford Tourneo Connect and the VW Amarok respectively Ford Ranger. Now it looks like both partners, Ford and Otosan Otomobil Sanayii want to compete against the overpowering competition.

Turkey has been 'only' the workbench of large manufacturers for a long time, now people are trying to become a little more independent. The first attempt was probably significantly hampered by Corona, because the vehicle was already at the IAA 2018, but is only now coming to the German market. It remains to be seen whether the brand can establish itself with more conservatively oriented transport companies.

Not many differences can be seen from the data. With the same cubic capacity, the performance and torque values are similar to those of the Mercedes Actros. You can't go wrong with ZF transmissions anyway. Sometimes you hear something about higher fuel consumption, which would make the branch of trade prick up their ears. A few nice gimmicks, e.g. for keeping shoes dry in the doors and a lot of storage space.

Ford also stamped its name on almost every part, as one did already during the production of the Jeep during World War II. However, the competition is great. Of the world's 10 largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles, 5 are Chinese, only one is American and two are German. That will be difficult given the transformations that lie ahead of the business.