2026 Ford Transit Bus Review

We’ve tried a variety of ‘holiday time’ vehicles over the years and have found that a van with a flexible seating arrangement is great if you have kids and lots of clobber to move about the country. Ford loaned us a Transit Kombi Bus (a.k.a Bus LWB) for the task, which proved very capable. 

This eight-seater is tailored more toward commercial operators than family use, but it still worked out well. Starting at the back, the load area is 1.3m wide, a metre long and 1.2m high. So heaps of room then. The rear row is a full, three-seater bench, the back rest of which can be folded flat if you’ve more gear to carry in the ‘boot’. The seat can also be removed completely, but that’s a somewhat difficult, two-person job. Then you’ve got a massive 1.6 meter long load area and seating for five passengers. The second row has three individual seats, which can also be removed to convert bus to van with a 2.6m load length. So it’s versatile then.  

While you can’t slide the seats to adjust legroom, everyone has enough space, though none has a recline function. They are still reasonably comfortable, with no complaints from our crew. The rubberized floor is hard-wearing, and easy to sweep out. A few passenger niceties include lighting, rear air conditioning controller and various USB ports about the place.

 

There were no qualms with the operation of the rear barn doors, though the side sliders are difficult for kids to open (the handle clunky, the mechanism heavy) but close easily. We had a few quality issues with the interior; one of the seat belts didn’t work and multiple pieces of trim fell off.  

Up front, while the driver’s seat has a good range of manual adjustment, the two seat passenger bench goes without any. A grab handle on the A-pillar would help ease entry too. The driving position is upright and high. It’s a van afterall, and as such, you must put up with a plastic interior. There’s storage aplenty though, a charge pad and an easy to fathom infotainment system. About the only thing we missed was smart key entry.  

It can be a little bit hard to judge the extremities of this in the car park; it is long, but not too unwieldy while you have a good surround view camera to help. The turning circle is okay for a LWB vehicle. 

The 125kW/390Nm 2.0-litre turbodiesel pulls well, no real turbo lag around town and enough steam for open road overtakes. The eight-speed auto shuffled through its ratio nicely too. Urban fuel use registered in the mid-nines, while open road running returned low sevens.  

What was appreciated was the ride quality, it was plush over bumpy main highways. A pity about the road noise however, it’s loud on coarse chip. It even steers okay, though there’s a slight self-centring urge. And the lane keeping can nudge the wheel around. The active cruise we found to handy both in and out of town. 

At $75,990, it’s a lot, though it’s not hard to find them on special at around $66k. As for the competition, there isn’t much; the LDV Deliver 9 with 12 seats is $86k, Renault’s Master 12-seater is $80k and the Benz Vito eight-seater is circa $85k. A more passenger orientated option is the $75k Kia Carnival.   

While this is more geared toward commercial rather than family use, it might be handy for those who find themselves in need of a bus sometimes, a van occasionally, and something in between at other times. It’s really quite versatile.