#bronco

Seeing the response to a Right Spec analysis to last week’s Wrangler, our fancy-pants Managing Ed rightly suggested we go ahead and examine the Bronco. Fresh off a couple of days wheeling it around the sagebrush of Texas, he was ready to declare the long-awaited Blue Oval bruiser lives up to all the hype.

But what the correct mix of options? What’s the Right Spec? Let’s crack open the configurator and find out.

We reviewed the 2021 Ford Bronco earlier this week, and while my feelings toward Ford’s new rival for the Jeep Wrangler were more or less on the positive side of the ledger, I do feel that something is missing.

That thing is a broader range of powertrains.

It’s Bronco Day.

Today is the day that you, the reader, can finally read the reviews of the much-hyped 2021 Ford Bronco.

Few new-vehicle launches in recent years have generated as much hype or been as anticipated as that of the Ford Bronco.

Bronco has been a big story for us and our peers since last summer. We’ve ridden in one already, and now it was our turn to finally drive it. So I dutifully packed a bag and headed to the Texas Hill Country outside of Austin to see if the big Bronco would live up to the hype – and be a strong challenger to Jeep’s venerable Wrangler.

I’m currently sweating my you-know-what off somewhere near-ish to Austin, Texas, in order to drive the Ford Bronco, which is probably the most anticipated vehicle of the year, and I want to give you the chance to play journalist.

As the 2021 Ford Bronco crawls closer to launch, enthusiasts and the automotive media continue to look for any relevant information related to the Bronco. It is the most anticipated vehicle launch of the year, and we all want to drive it now. While we won’t have the opportunity to drive the Bronco today, we do have Bronco news. Both Full Size Bronco and Bronco Nation have fuel-economy numbers for the 2021 Ford Bronco, and they aren’t great.

If you have Bronco on the brain, you may find yourself buying one from a store that stands separate from your local Ford dealer.

The good ship Ford has been quite leaky lately. And the automaker is pinning the blame on its suppliers.

My first car was a hand-me-down 1984 Ford Bronco II that my parents bought new. I took possession of it as a hot-to-trot teenager in 1997, happy to finally be a licensed driver and glad I was lucky enough that my parents could gift me a car, even if it was over a decade old and even if my end of the bargain was to get a job bagging groceries to pay for insurance and maintenance.

Many teens, even in the relatively well-off suburb I grew up in, don’t get a car when they reach driving age. I had friends from families who were wealthier than mine who ended up hitching rides, as they didn’t have their own wheels. So I knew I was lucky to have a vehicle to call my own.

You’ve seen those two-door 2021 Ford Broncos with doors that have a cutout in the middle. They’re called donut doors, because, well, they look like a donut, kind of. They look cool. Unfortunately, they won’t make production for safety reasons, according to a report.

One of the perks of this job, and any auto blogging job, really, is that you get paid to surf the Internet for car news. I came across something yesterday that suggested the upcoming Ford Bronco won’t be available for pricing on the company’s X-plan, which is the pricing plan for friends and family of the company.

I emailed Ford to fact-check this, and yep, it’s true.

A bronco was being tested on Chicago’s Dan Ryan Expressway Monday, without camouflage, in full view of commuters.

We wrote last week about rumors that Ford was testing a Bronco with the Sasquatch Package and a manual transmission. That was remarkable because Ford initially said the off-road-performance package would only be available on automatic transmission vehicles.

Which, of course, caused enthusiasts to howl. Especially on Twitter.

We all know that scene in Jurassic Park where the island’s designated hunter gets outsmarted by the raptors and becomes their dinner. That dude’s death always bothered me because he was cool, and I hate it when cool characters buy the farm in disaster movies. Also, he seemed smart enough to not be outwitted by the voracious dinos, unlike others in the flick.

Ahem, where was I? Oh yes – Ford might be hiding some Raptors of its own, so to speak. Although instead of disappearing behind bushes, these Raptors are lurking in plain sight on public roads, with only canvas and tape concealing them from those who hunt this type of prey.

Ford has been pretty clear that it wants to offer the Bronco in an array of flavors catering to numerous customer types. While the Bronco Sport name has been reserved for its smaller sibling (an interesting decision straight out of the Mitsubishi and Nissan playbook), it was assumed the Blue Oval would eventually provide us with a hardcore variant of the larger model. The mere existence of the Baja-blasting Bronco R seemed to suggest that Ford was already considering the possibility, while the Ranger Raptor filled us with hope that the company would put those plans into action.

It may have already. Reports have surfaced that a Ford engineer updated their LinkedIn profile to include they were now an “EDS Systems Engineer” for the “2021 Bronco” and “2023 Bronco Raptor.”