2009 Ford Transit Connect
With fuel prices squeezing small businesses, Ford reckons the time might be right to pry light-delivery customers out of their big, heavy V-6 or V-8 powered E-series vans and minivans, in favor of something smaller and more efficient. Enter the Transit Connect, one of those small vanlets you may have seen while vacationing in Europe with a tall box grafted onto a carlike front clip.
Ford's is built in Kocaeli, Turkey alongside its full-size Transit big brother, and available with several engine choices, among which we'll only get a 2.0-liter gasoline offering bolted to a four-speed automatic driving the front wheels. That combo is good for a 19-mpg city/24-mpg highway rating, but there's plenty of room for future fuel-economy improvements with added ratios or a diesel.