Ford Pinto
Offered with an inline-4 engine and bucket seats the Pinto's mechanical design was conventional, with unibody construction, a longitudinally mounted engine in front driving the rear wheels through either a manual or automatic transmission and live axle rear end. Suspension was by unequal-length control arms with front coil springs; the live rear axle was suspended on leaf springs. The rack and pinion steering had optional power assist, as did the brakes.
Ford Transit
In August 1977, a facelifted version—codenamed within Ford as the "Transit "—but usually referred to as the Transit Mark II, debuted with a restyled, longer nose section which could now properly accommodate an in-line engine in place of the Essex and Cologne V4s - therefore the Pinto engine from the Cortina became the Transit's dominant power unit. Many fleet owners experienced premature camshaft wear in early Pinto units in the Cortina and for two years the Transit 75 was available with the 1.6 L Ford Kent cross-flow engine. High-performance versions intended for police or ambulance use used the 3.0 L V6 version of the Essex engine, Australian variants had 4.1 L (250 cu in) inline 6-cylinder engines. The new frontal styling brought the Transit back into line with the rest of Ford of Europe's passenger car range of the period with square headlamps and the black louvred grille, although the rear styling remained unaltered. The dashboard was also completely redesigned with a more comprehensive instrument cluster and switchgear taken from the Taunus/Cortina Mk.4.