Ford Broncos piling up again in a Michigan holding lot

Bronco fever hasn't abated; buyers are still clamoring for the world's most recent hardcore off-roader. We'd normally consider this a good problem for Ford to have, but these aren't normal times and the Bronco isn't a normal vehicle. Two years of industry disruptions have dropped continuous bombs on delivery times, on top of Bronco-specific ailments like the defective tops that led to huge backups last summer — and all this for a rig that some buyers first signed up to buy in 2020. Automotive News reports that the chip shortage is biting especially hard into Bronco deliveries at the moment, with trucks stacking up in a lot outside the Michigan Assembly Plant that online watchers dubbed "Dirt Mountain," the coming of a snowy Michigan winter changing the name to "Ice Mountain."

Both Ford Motor Company and Ford dealers admit this is about the lack of chips. The automaker's dealer council head believes the current process is the most efficient, with Ford continuing Bronco production and waiting on chips before delivery. Ford isn't the only automaker doing this so-called "build-shy strategy," and we saw the same thing a year ago when pickups were in the spotlight, F-150s hoarded in parking lots across the country while Ford waited for those infernal shards of silicon. Buyers seem to appreciate the difficulties of keeping product flowing in the current climate. What they haven't appreciated is Ford's lack of communication during the process. Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg last week in relation to another issue, "All we can do at this point is scale as fast as we can and break the constraints and communicate to (buyers) what’s realistic." This isn't what's happening, supposedly. One Bronco buyer who spoke to AN said, "I do think they could be communicating better," another said he hadn't got "any transparency on Ford's end," a third described Ford's forthrightness as "nonexistent."