#Bronco

Last week marked the Ford Bronco’s 55th anniversary, with the model’s creator celebrating the momentous occasion by throwing an exclusive and socially distanced Bronco party in Holly, MI.

At this off-road soiree, Ford showed off its Bronco family adventure concepts, announced that 165,000 Broncos have been reserved since the July 13 reveal, and proclaimed that Austin, TX would be the first location of the Bronco Off-Roadeo (Ford’s spelling, not a typo) off-road adventure playground.

While all these pieces of information are great, they aren’t exciting enough to headline a Bronco Anniversary party. Instead, the headliners of this party were the off-road ride-alongs in the 2021 Ford Bronco Sport and the 2021 Ford Bronco 2-door.

The ongoing Tom Petty kick occurring inside the walls of Casa Steph continues bearing literary fruit.

Yes, after enduring years of pins and needles after rumors of a Bronco rebirth first arose, Ford fans who recently plunked down a reservation charge could still be quite a ways away from their actual vehicle.

Putting aside your author’s own predilection for traditional sedans (a kink shared by many a TTAC resident, but fewer and fewer buyers), one can understand why General Motors canned its Chevrolet Sonic, Cruze, Volt, and Impala, and why Buick stands to become a utility-only brand come 2021.

Less understandable, especially after last week, is why one newish model arrived in its present form. And it seems some people at GM are wondering that, too.

The unbridled enthusiasm and lust over Ford’s reborn Bronco, which greeted hungry eyes on the evening of July 13th, lasted not quite two days before a fly hit the ointment.

Would-be owners were enthused to see that the Bronco’s gnarly, off-road-oriented Sasquatch package, is available even on the lowly(?) base model, but a reality Ford left unmentioned spoiled some of their fun yesterday.

The Bronco family, as Ford calls the trifecta composed of the Bronco Two-Door, Four-Door, and Bronco Sport, has a singular mission: to leverage the fond memories and emotions generated by a storied nameplate to lure new buyers to the brand, boosting the automaker’s volume and profitability.

Despite the pandemic, Ford’s expectations haven’t changed. And the ideal buyers of any member of the Bronco family isn’t someone who can take advantage of Plan Pricing.

Eventually, the absence of a body-on-frame, go-anywhere, dedicated off-road SUV was too great for the Ford lineup to bear — which is why, after a quarter-century absence, the Bronco triumphantly returns to do battle with its Mopar foe, the Jeep Wrangler.

Talked about endlessly since Ford announced the storied model’s return and leaked as often as celebrity medical records to the National Enquirer, the Bronco makes its debut with the goodies fans want and certain things all SUVs need in the futuristic year of 2021. Namely, a four-door model.

The Ford Bronco news doesn’t just stop with one model. There’s not one, not two, but three in the family.

That threesome includes the two-door and four-door versions of the Bronco, as well as the smaller Bronco Sport.

Think of the Bronco Sport as an off-road version of Ford’s Escape crossover. Ford might get mad at us for saying that, but hey, we’re not PR.

Like its Mustang stable mate, Ford’s returning Bronco finds itself with a brood. The Bronco is now a brand, comprised of the namesake, body-on-frame off-roader and the tag-along Bronco Sport — a retro-styled model based on the unibody Ford Escape.

That’s apparently just the start of it.

A 1970 Dodge ad campaign once said of the viewer, “If you can cope with a whole new image, you could be Dodge material.” Well, today — a week out from what this writer has dubbed B-Day — Ford is appealing to those wild at heart to leave their old lifestyles, and the pavement, in the past.

Are you Built Wild?

Ford’s not calling it that, but the marketing push surrounding the debut of the new-generation Bronco on July 13th is looking a lot like a joke your author has tossed about the past few weeks.

The sheer amount of prime-time programming space purchased on the Disney Media Network’s ABC, ESPN, and National Geographic channels — as well as spots on streaming service Hulu — calls to mind the ill-fated experiment of “E-Day.”

Heralding an automotive invasion that was quickly repelled and thrown back into the sea, E-Day reached viewers on September 4th, 1957.

At this point, if Ford wants to keep the upcoming Bronco and Bronco Sport under wraps until their respective unveilings, it had best invest in surplus anti-aircraft batteries — or just never leave the confines of company-owned production facilities. Even those walls have proven a porous barrier, however.

As the weekend dawned, drone-provided aerial spy photos appeared of the two dissimilar Broncos congregating with a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 out in the desert, far — at least, one would assume — from prying eyes.

Insisting earlier in the week that its scheduled debut date for the new Bronco was simply a coincidence, Ford has nonetheless found itself forced to push back the model’s reveal even further.

The automaker unintentionally made waves after its planned July 9th reveal of the reborn off-roader (already deferred by the pandemic and resulting trade show cancellations) coincided with the birthday of O.J. Simpson — a man forever linked to the vehicle following his low-speed 1994 cruise into infamy.

Everyone noticed, including the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, whose 1994 murder — along with that of friend Ron Goldman — sparked the trial of the century.

Your author was once a CNN addict. As soon as cable TV reached his humble childhood home, you could find him sitting cross-legged in front of that 20-inch set, absorbing a flood of diverse, on-the-scene news reporting taking place in a number of locales outside the Beltway. It was like Opposite World compared to today.

And yes, that impressionable youth stayed up late the night of June 17th, 1994, watching a certain white SUV make its way down an L.A. freeway. Twenty-six years later, the iconic nameplate that famously ferried the guy who played Detective Nordberg from Naked Gun (there was a football career, too, I’m told) is back, due for a July 9th reveal.

What are the odds that the (deferred) debut date happens to be the birthday of that infamous Bronco occupant?

It’s been a rough go for Ford Bronco fans. Just when they thought they’d get to feast their eyes on a real, physical, reborn Bronco, the pandemic arrived and pushed everything back. No glitzy premiere at the now nonexistent Detroit auto show, just tears.

The returning model’s debut is now set for sometime in July, likely early in the month, but photos of a manual-transmission model leaked to the web are better than nothing.

To say there’s a groundswell of enthusiasm for the returning Ford Bronco would be an understatement. Bronco diehards have been champing at the bit for a taste of the resurrected model, which saw its debut and production start delayed by the industry-wide coronavirus shutdown. Hell, a low-mileage, four-speed ’79 example just sold for $64,500 on Bring a Trailer.

On Thursday, Ford revealed the off-roader will drop its camouflage next month.