The 2021 Ford Bronco Nails a Nearly Impossible Comeback

The last time a brand-new Ford Bronco rolled off the assembly line, the iconic 4x4 had become a bit of an Elvis. Not the hot apple pie, Blue Suede Shoes Elvis, but more of the sweaty, I-still-got-it-god-dammit Elvis. The fresh-faced little off-roading trucklet that debuted to instant stardom in 1965 was, by the mid-Nineties, clinging to life as a full-size F-150 in a wig. Add to the Bronco's resume a surprise cameo as the getaway vehicle in the most famous live police chase in television history, and the writing was on the wall. The Bronco was put out to pasture in 1996, and Ford put an even beefier dumb thing, the Expedition, in its place.

It's bewildering sometimes, watching the fall of a superstar. The Bronco is widely credited with creating the sport utility vehicle segment in America. Yet somehow, the Bronco faded from the market right as Americans started buying SUVs like they were time machines filled with Bitcoin. The field was plowed by the Bronco, but the imitators hogged all the sun.

Thing is, there was another trucklet bouncing around back in the Sixties, being sporty and utilitarian long before the Bronco set our hearts a-flutter with its slabby sides and well-understood marketing value. That vehicle was the Jeep CJ, a rounded steel shoebox with enough ground clearance and traction to go just about anywhere the two full-grown hamsters under the hood could take it.

If the Bronco lived Elvis' life, the CJ was Chuck Berry, who'd already invented most of rock 'n' roll long before Elvis appointed himself the King of it. Berry's life wasn't easy, and neither was he. Keith Richards tells a story of his first time meeting the American rock hero. He made the mistake of moving a little too quickly towards Berry's open guitar case, and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. That was the Jeep CJ. It didn't promise you volleyball on the beach, it told you stories about parachuting out of a plane in WWII. It barely even had doors.

The Jeep CJ was fully its own thing before the Bronco arrived. And it hardly changed afterwards. It took more than 20 years after the Bronco debuted before the CJ was succeeded by the Wrangler. Even then, Jeep barely elaborated on the proven family recipe: an open body riding on a couple of live axles, high- and low-range four-wheel drive, and a simplicity that encouraged owners to beat them to hell and back. That's pretty much what the Wrangler still is today.

Which brings me to why I stepped off a plane last week in Austin, Texas. Since those Jeeps never stopped being Jeeps, and since an unrelenting throng of people keeps buying them, Ford brought the Bronco back to try and get a slice of Jeep's pie. Ford is well aware of what Jeep has been doing—and not doing—with its last quarter-century as the only player in the open-top off-road category. And the folks in Dearborn clearly feel the Bronco has a rightful spot at that table. After five years of what I'd like to imagine as a fast-forward Rocky training montage, Ford has introduced not just a new Bronco, but essentially a brand-new, fully-realized Bronco sub-brand. And they've parked it right next to Jeep's guitar case.

Not including the Escape-sized Bronco Sport, which Ford wisely rolled out earlier this year so it wouldn't get squashed by its own big brother, the real-deal Bronco comes in no less than seven different trim levels. Each is available in either two- or four-door guise, with either a 2.3-liter turbo four-cylinder making 300 hp and 325 lb-ft of torque, or a 2.7-liter twin-turbo V-6 putting out 330 hp and 415 lb-ft (all outputs with premium fuel). The four-cylinder offers a 7-speed manual transmission with an ultra-low Crawler gear, while a 10-speed automatic is available with either engine. There's a dizzying array of equipment packages available across the lineup.

A base two-door Bronco starts at $29,995 ($34,695 for a four-door), and is essentially a steel-wheeled blank canvas with a manual transmission. From there, you can spec up your Bronco depending on how nicely you intend to treat it, and how nicely you'd like it to treat you. The trim lines, in increasing order of fanciness: Base, Big Bend, Black Diamond, Outer Banks, Badland, Wildtrak, and First Edition. I'm not going to rehash the immense spectrum of individual differences here—it would make my fingers hurt and it's already widely covered. But the option you're gonna wish you ordered, regardless of trim, is the Sasquatch package. That's how you get the gear meant to humiliate your Wrangler Rubicon-owning friends: massive 35-inch Goodyear Territory mud tires on beadlock-capable wheels (lesser models get 30-, 32- or 33-inch tires); front and rear electronic differential lockers; a 4.7:1 final drive ratio; and position-sensitive Bilstein shock absorbers. The great thing is, you don't have to buy the very top-dog Bronco to get the Sasquatch stuff—you can turn any model into a Sasquatch, even the base trim. But depending on your driving style, there's one bit of bad news: Say goodbye to the 7-speed manual as soon as you 'Squatch your build, as the 10-speed auto is mandatory.

It's worth mentioning that a Sasquatch'd Bronco still won't deliver quite as much suspension clearance as a Wrangler Rubicon when pushed to the limit. But it's also worth pointing out that the Bronco comes damn close while offering a modern independent front suspension design that's worlds more advanced than the ancient solid-front-axle setup found on every Wrangler—and largely unchanged since the CJ. Ford's betting that for 99 percent of people, the trade-off of losing a little potential clearance in the most extreme articulation events is worth it in exchange for modern steering feel and predictable handling. Count me as one of those people.

Ford rolled out every conceivable Bronco configuration in Austin for the media to sample. It would have been impossible to draw meaningful on-road and off-road comparisons between each setup in the time available. Luckily, Ford is launching the Bronco with a top-dog trim line called the First Edition, combining many of the best off-road features of the hardcore Badlands edition with the tech and comfort options of the Outer Banks model, as well as the underbody bash plates and Baja drive-mode tuning from the Wildtrack edition. And of course, don't forget the Sasquatch. I grabbed a two-door First Edition in Cactus gray, with the twin-turbo V-6 and 10-speed automatic, and spent as much time behind the wheel as I could, logging highway miles, crawling trails, and being cornered by perfect strangers nearly everywhere I went.