Ford Transit Custom Trend LWB 2025 Review

The 2025 Ford Transit Custom Trend is the entry specification in the range, at $56,590 plus on-road costs (ORCs) in short wheelbase form and $57,590 plus ORCs for the long wheelbase van tested here. Frozen White is the only standard exterior paint, while Agate (black), Magnetic (metallic grey) or Moondust Silver are $700 extra. You can also get the van painted to match your business’s branding colourway with the $1400 SVO Paint option, which provides a choice of over 50 different colours.

Other options include two seats up front (in place of the standard three-seat bench) for $150, a driver side sliding door ($1000) and a lift-up tailgate ($700) instead of barn doors. If you want to pony up an extra $1500, there’s also the Secure Visibility Pack, which deletes the windows in the rear barn doors and bulkhead, and adds a digital rear-view mirror with integrated dash cam.

Warranty cover extends to five years and unlimited kilometres, with roadside assist for the first 12 months, extended by each service for a year (up to seven years). Servicing (due every 12 months or 30,000km, whichever comes first) is capped at a maximum of $499 per service for up to four years or 120,000km (not including brake fluid service).

The key exterior ingredients to the Transit Custom Trend are full wheel covers on 16-inch steel wheels, a body-coloured front bumper, power adjustable and folding side mirrors, single kerbside sliding door and 180-degree-opening rear barn doors with rear glass windows and a window wiper on each door.

The Transit Custom’s innards are replete with the kind of stuff you want to make your day easier. For starters, there’s a steel bulkhead between the cabin and load area and load floor protection in the 6.0 cubic metre load area. With a maximum payload of 1223kg, GVM is 3225kg and braked towing capacity is 2500kg.

The cabin is no glitzy gin palace – no surprises there – but this is more than a plain workstation. There’s a cloth bench for three and if the driver needs to get in or out on the kerbside, there’s no handbrake or gear lever in the way. Instead, there’s a column-mounted gearshift selector and an electric park brake button on the dash. As you’d hope for in a 2025 van, there are plenty of storage bins dotted around the cab.

Ford’s gone big with infotainment tech. You have a 12.0-inch digital instrument cluster alongside the larger-than-life 13-inch infotainment touch-screen running Ford’s latest SYNC 4 multimedia platform. An embedded 5G modem bumps up connectivity, with over-the-air updates possible, and there’s wireless phone charging as well as multiple USB ports.

The Ford also offers a sizeable safety meal deal. Key things worth a mention include rear cross-traffic alert with rear brake assist, adaptive cruise control with stop and go, a 360-degree camera and exit alert. While not ANCAP rated for crashworthiness, the Transit Custom has been given a ‘Gold’ 63 per cent rating in ANCAP’s Commercial Van Safety Comparison. In that assessment, the Ford was rated as ‘Good’ for AEB (car to car), ‘Good’ for AEB (car to pedestrian), ‘Marginal’ for AEB (car to cyclist), ‘Weak’ for lane support, ‘Acceptable’ for Occupant Status Monitoring and ‘Good’ for Speed Assistance Systems.

The powertrain is the familiar?2.0-litre four-cylinder EcoBlue turbo-diesel (with 125kW/390Nm) with an eight-speed automatic transmission that directs drive to the front wheels. Claimed fuel consumption is 8.0L/100km.

This might just be another new white box, but levelling that claim at the 2025 Ford Transit Custom is to miss the level of attention Ford has applied here to taking the strain out of life on the road. Things like a steering column that adjusts so you can place a laptop on the steering wheel when parked, the low overall height (1961mm), low loading height, wider side aperture (1030mm) and a new lower and wider side step all help. Fit and finish is not bad either, in context of its competitor set.

The displays are not hard to get used to, nor lathered with warning icons and obscure displays that ultimately distract. Vision out of the van is really good; threading this long-bodied van through tight urban spaces felt easier than it should, and there was no shifting in the seat trying to get comfortable after a few hours of driving.

The powertrain is excellent, with strong response from the diesel off the mark and through the mid-range, well mediated by the eight forward speeds. No, it’s not like the instant torque of an electric motor, but for a turbo-diesel it’s not at all laggy. We achieved an average fuel economy of 7.8L/100km over a week of urban and intra-urban driving, which isn’t bad.

The Transit Custom’s ride and handling are quite good for this segment; it points well and while firm unladen it’s more compliant than some others in the segment.

The only noteworthy problem with the new 2025 Ford Transit Custom was the test vehicle had a glitch with the active cruise control. It ‘saw’ obstacles while in Sydney’s M8 tunnel a couple times and braked heavily to avoid them. The problem was that it was a quiet Sunday morning with no other traffic in that section of the tunnel, or any other obstacle. This happened more than once. However, on a later trip on the M5 freeway, active cruise did not do anything untoward. We’re still awaiting a response from Ford on this issue.

The cabin did have some rattles, seemingly from the load area or the bulkhead. It’s not surprising, given there’s an (albeit isolated by the bulkhead) echo chamber in the form of a mostly untrimmed cargo area, but there are other vans that don’t transmit much noise though the bulkhead from the back at all.

While there are some reservations on the Ford’s safety systems (that is, the active cruise control) this is not the first vehicle we’ve seen with this tech to have glitches.

It’s not a cheap van, either. Yet the 2025 Ford Transit Custom is a van worth serious consideration in this segment. While there are cheaper options to consider, the Ford offers ample cargo space and payload, plus an abundance of technology and safety features together with good ride quality for a commercial.

2024 Ford Transit Custom Trend LWB at a glance:

Price: $57,590 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel
Output: 125kW/390Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 8.0L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 209g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: Not tested (see text)

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