A car enthusiast since childhood, Chris Perkins is Road & Track's engineering nerd and Porsche apologist. He joined the staff in 2016 and no one has figured out a way to fire him since. He street-parks a Porsche Boxster in Brooklyn, New York, much to the horror of everyone who sees the car, not least the author himself. He also insists he's not a convertible person, despite owning three.
Back in the Fifties, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing sported a unique steering wheel with a folding rim that aided ingress and egress over the tall door sills. A Ford Transit does not have the same entry/exit problems, but the Blue Oval has taken this folding-rim concept and adapted it for a very different purpose.
Fold in the wheel on the new Transit Custom, and you have a space to put your laptop or a specially sized lunch tray.This is one of those neat things that makes you wonder why no one thought of it sooner. After all, there are 70 years between the Gullwing and this Transit—how did no one see a Gullwing wheel folded up and not imagine a tray to be placed on it?According to a Sunday Times story published last year, the wheel was created by D-Ford, a unit of the company primarily comprised of designers and engineers without standard automotive industry backgrounds. The team works with customers to improve the day-to-day livability of Ford's cars. It found that Transit customers can spend up to eight hours a day in their vans and often eat and work on their computers in the driver's seat. This solution now makes it easier to do both.In the F-150, Ford offers a similar solution with a gear-shifter that folds away and a center console lid that folds forward creating a flat surface. But you have to twist sideways to eat or type away on a laptop. In the Transit Custom, you can do both without twisting awkwardly.The Transit Custom is a van for the European market, so it's unclear if or when we'll see this in the U.S. We've reached out to Ford to find out.
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