- Close your eyes and take your mind
on a journey to the distant past, the year 2021.
A year when everything old was new again,
Taylor Swift released an old album,
Keanu Reeves reentered the Matrix,
COVID rebooted itself a bunch of times.
It was also the year that Ford completely re-introduced
a line of SUV's that used to be one
of their signature vehicles.
It was a two-door truck, made infamous
by OJ Simpson and your redneck cousin.
But the new Bronco is a completely different animal
and Ford bet so big on this flagship SUV,
that if it failed, the whole company might've been screwed.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on the second most popular vehicle,
named after a horse, that Ford has ever made.
I'm talking about the Bronco (neighing).
Pet my nose, it's velvety soft.
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Now, let's get back to the show.
(digital chiming) (beep)
- The brand new Bronco is designed to harken back
to the very first Bronco, on sale from 1966 to 1977.
That Bronco was the brainchild of Ford product manager,
Donald Frey, the same dude who came up with the Mustang
just a few years earlier.
I don't wanna speculate, all right,
but I'm pretty sure that this guy
definitely kissed a horse or two in his day,
on the lips, French style.
Frey called this new idea an MPV
or a multipurpose vehicle because the term SUV
didn't exist yet.
In fact, American car companies
weren't really making many cars like this,
apart from Jeep and International Harvester.
Now Frey envisioned a truck, okay?
That would match the Jeeps off-road capabilities,
but could be more comfortably driven
for normal daily use, i.e. on the pavement.
A coil spring front suspension helped provide
a smoother ride than Jeeps leaf springs
and the Broncos shorter wheel base
gave it a smaller turning radius
that helped navigate tight traverses off-road.
The Bronco was an immediate success for Ford,
was a fricking smash hit and it helped usher in
the era of the American SUV.
And if you wanna know more about the history
of the original Bronco, we made a video about it,
you're in luck, it was a few years ago,
so I'll put a link in the description down below.
Now to make a long story short,
by the 1990s Ford had four generations of Broncos
under its belt.
Plus the short-lived Bronco II, a smaller version,
that's mostly known for its love of surprise roll overs.
And this thing rolled over more than an obedient dachshund.
(dog barks)
Now around that time, the demand
for two-door SUV's plummeted, in favor of larger,
more family friendly vehicles.
More doors, more chores.
Okay? And it looked like the Bronco's time
as Ford's flagship SUV was over.
The Bronco was shot in the head
and turned into glue and they pivoted their focus
to the four-door Explorer,
eventually it's bigger bro, the Expedition.
More SUV's followed as the segment exploded
in popularity in the early 2000s.
At that same time, a wave of retro designs
and model resurrections like the new Beetle,
PT Cruiser and even Ford's own Mustang,
took the car industry by storm.
(thunder crackling)
It's honestly surprising that Ford didn't bring
the Bronco back then, but, the time just wasn't right.
And it's a good thing they waited
because in the late 2010s, The Blue Oval
made an announcement, that shook the automotive world
to it's core.
And they need a flagship, an exciting vehicle
to lead them in their new direction.
What was that announcement?
No more cars. Okay?
All trucks, all the time.
In 2018, Ford announced, they'd phase out
passenger cars from their American lineup by 2022,
that's this year, excluding the Mustang,
of course, 'cause you can't get rid of that.
People love it and it's a pretty smart move
because Americans really don't buy sedans anymore.
They buy SUV's, they buy trucks, they buy crossovers.
The F150 is like the best-selling vehicle on the planet,
so Ford had the truck game on lock,
but what about their SUVs? Okay?
Where's the icon?
All they had to do's was, bring it back from the dead.
Dare I say, beat a dead horse, in a good way?
Now reviving a classic car badge
is not a completely original idea
and you can definitely, definitely do it wrong.
In fact, Ford failed massively
when they tried the exact same thing
with the Thunderbird in the early 2000s.
First few T-Birds from the '50s
are some of the most iconic cars in history.
They are the Space Age.
The 2002 Thunderbird, there's very good reason
that this car flopped.
Now, I usually say, that every car is cool,
but this car is not cool.
It's one of the worst looking things
I've ever seen in my 22 years on this earth.
It's like two different toddlers started drawing it
in either end and met in the middle.
I digress. For a more direct comparison,
just a couple of years before Ford dropped the new Bronco,
Chevy reintroduced the classic two-door
sport utility vehicle, the Blazer
as a mid-size four-door crossover.
The original Blazer was actually designed
in response to the success of the original Bronco,
but the reaction to the new Blazer was like this.
Now for some reason, Chevy didn't feel
that it was necessary to make the Blazer
anything like the original,
which was a really cool, truck based SUV,
with off-road chops.
Instead, Chevrolet built a car based SUV,
AKA a crossover, that prioritizes
paved road practicality over off-road action.
And then they slapped a Blazer badge on it.
The Blazer is the worst selling vehicle in its class.
Now this kind of thing can happen
when a car company brings back a beloved brand
like the Blazer or the Bronco and if you screw it up,
people are just gonna be like,
you guys don't even understand your brand.
You just wanna cash in on our love of nostalgia.
It's a bad look.
We'll get into how Ford avoided this, in a minute.
So resurrecting the beloved Bronco seemed like a great idea,
but Ford already builds a dozen SUV's
and crossovers, right?
Where would the Bronco land? Jeep country.
For the last decade, Ford sat twiddling
their big fat thumbs, as sales of Jeep Wrangler skyrocket.
They more than skyrocketed with the release
of the four-door Wrangler in 2007,
Jeepers have become maybe the biggest,
or definitely one of the most visible
automotive subcultures in America.
This could have been Ford with the Bronco,
but the past is dead.
The only time we have is now.
With this in mind, Ford found a place
and a purpose for the new Bronco.
The bucking horse would take on
the undisputed heavyweight champion,
one of the coolest cars named after jeans, Wrangler.
That was the only part of the plan. All right?
Ford saw an option to make the Bronco
into a whole fricking herd of horses.
They figured that as long as big daddy landed well,
besting the Wrangler in performance and looks,
the Bronco brand could expand to include
a more street friendly option as well.
Now the new Bronco family includes
the traditional two-door, body on frame Bronco,
built on a Ford Ranger pickup platform,
that's right body on frame, it's a real truck.
And then there's also the four-door version,
built on the same platform.
And those are legit 4x4's with fricking transfer cases
and everything, which I only mention
'cause fricking off-road guys love transfer cases.
They also have a third model, the Bronco Sport
and it looks kinda like a cross between a Bronco
and an Escape because, it's basically
a Ford Escape with some Bronco looking crap on it.
Now I'll acknowledge that some people might hate
this kind of move and I get it,
I thought it was weird too.
But there's a certain sense to the idea
that a Mustang must be a coupe and not an electric SUV
and a Bronco must be a real truck,
but it's also a smart hedge by Ford to position
the new SUV between the big off-road focused Bronco
and the smaller, more city friendly, Escape,
while still capitalizing on the excitement
of the revived Bronco brand.
Now, I get it though.
Looks like crossover wannabe off-roader, whatever.
Now with all these different models under the Bronco banner
and all of them performing so well,
you can see Ford understood how important
the Bronco would be to the future of the company
and the only option was getting it right.
So let's talk about how they did that.
Generally speaking, the new Bronco fricking rips, all right.
Ford absolutely nailed a modern, yet ultra retro design.
It doesn't just ate the original, it elevates it.
They pulled this off thanks to a process
that Ford calls, minimal working prototypes.
Rather than focus on creating multiple,
expensive, fully working prototypes,
the Bronco was mostly designed using cheap foam core model.
This sped up the design phase significantly.
Ford spent about three years designing the new Bronco,
which is pretty typical, but they were able to cycle through
tons more design options, than you normally can.
And this gave engineers and product planners time
to reach out to 4x4 enthusiasts, uh, us
and find out what they really wanted
and also, what they really didn't want.
That was time well spent because the off-roading world
is on fire, with the new Bronco.
Production literally can't keep up with demand
and people are happily absorbing
crazy, crazy dealer markups for these things.
I'm talking over $100,000 for one,
which should be illegal.
It should be.
Now it seems like these foam core design models
were a total game changer and Ford agrees
because they use it for all their product developing now.
Hopefully that means that Ford will keep cranking out
awesome new versions of other old badges.
And I want a fricking Ranchero.
Now it's a sad fact of life for car enthusiasts
that lots of intensely anticipated new cars
don't live up to the hype.
The new Bronco is a real exception.
This sequel is so good,
that it might actually top the original.
Once they figure out their ongoing problems
with the hard top, the body on frame construction shows
that Ford really wanted the Bronco
to appeal to real off-roaders.
But, there's lots of more, all right.
Real four wheel drive with a transfer case,
waterproof upholstery and interior stuff.
You can even get it with a manual.
In fact, the Bronco is the only Ford truck
or SUV available with a stick.
Ford is a truck company now.
At least in the US and that's the plan
for the foreseeable future.
That's why it was so important for the new Bronco
to tick all the boxes.
If they messed it up, it would have been a huge blow
to their new business plan and much more importantly,
their image, but good thing, they didn't mess up.
They took a gamble on a retro flagship
to lead them into the future and they nailed it.
Bronco (beeps).
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(upbeat retro music)