You may be forgiven for thinking that designing a van is one of the less complicated automotive challenges. Engine in front - check, big space in the rear - check, new cup holder - check.

But consider that a parcel delivery van can have up to 109 engine starts a day compared with 19 on a high use passenger car - meaning that a Transit covering 240K kilometres will have 222,200 starts in its lifetime.

Furthermore, gearbox usage is double that of cars, with more emphasis on the lower gears - up to 4.9m shifts on a 240,000 mile van.

These unique demands (read abuses) are just some of the issues that has to be tackled at the design and engineering stage of a new LCV, as a chat with Ford's commercial vehicle engineering manager John Reed revealed. And here's one we're all familiar with.

"As you can imagine, a delivery driver in a Transit will have lot of instances where they'll park the vehicle up the curb. You tend not to get that in a car, most people will shy away from a curb, whereas I can assure you CV drivers do not."

To cope with this demand the testing process will include a number of 'curbing events' on various rigs and vehicle tests.

To give an indication, the Transit test has 3,200 angled strikes of the curb and 900 passes of a straight curb compared with a total of 24 passes in a passenger car.

So just remember as you mount the curb for the 3,000th time... There are only 200 more opportunities left.