Forza Horizon 4 adds classic Ford Transit van

Until now, players of the Forza Horizon 4 driving sim have had their choice of some fairly high performance Ford Motor Company products to race in the game, including the rugged, off-road-capable Ranger Raptor pickup truck and the 216-mph Ford GT supercar. One of the latest additions to the game, now available for downloading, modding, and racing, is a bit more mundane, however, but maybe even more beloved by British enthusiasts. Forza’s photographers and developers, in collaboration with Ford of Britain’s heritage collection, have come up with an accurate simulation of the original Transit Mk 1 small commercial van to race in the video game, and Ford has released a short film describing how those accurate simulations are created.

Ford’s corporate collection of historic UK vehicles includes a pristine 1965 Mk 1 Transit, and the maker of Forza, Microsoft’s Team 10 Studios, sent one of its photographers, Miko Russell, all the way from Redmond, Washington, to Dagenham to shoot the car. The digitizing process uses as many as 1000 photographs of every possible exterior and interior angle of the vehicles that they replicate. In the case of the Transit, that meant Russell getting up close and personal with details like door hinge bolts. The video game maker’s 3-D modeling team subsequently used that database of images to create as perfect a digital replica of the van as is currently possible.

“The Ford Transit is such a unique car that we wanted to have the very first one in the game,” Russell said about the ’65 Mk 1.

Then, Forza’s physics team took over, giving the simulated Transit real-world driving dynamics faithful to its delivery van suspension and the 75-horsepower “Essex” V-4 engine that powered the truck.

It’s still not clear if the Transit Mk 1 for Forza Horizon 4 is free or if you’ll have to pay for the new downloadable content. It might be a tough sell when up against some of the game’s more powerful and sporty cars, but we admit that we’re interested by the thought of a dozen Transits, painted in various florist, plumber, and delivery company liveries, trading paint on a city circuit.