The front-engined Ford Transit range of panel vans launched in 1965, was the first formal co-operation between the two entities, simultaneously developed to replace the German Ford Taunus Transit and the British Ford Thames 400E. Prior to this, the two companies avoided marketing their vehicles in one another's domestic markets, and in much of the rest of western Europe were direct competitors, with totally separate product lines, despite being owned by the same American parent, in a similar manner to General Motors’ Opel and Vauxhall subsidiaries at the same time - indeed GM followed Ford's precedent in the 1970s by merging the operations of Opel and Vauxhall into General Motors Europe. The process took several years to complete, as new model ranges arrived and the older model ranges were gradually phased out.