Ford's Bronco Off-Roadeo Is an Epic Waiting Room for Expectant Owners

The atmosphere in the room was charged with expectation, like we were awaiting something big, which we were. Twenty of us, all well dressed and mannerly, were gathered at the base of a ski hill at Gunstock Mountain Resort in New Hampshire's Belknap Mountains. We were a few of the many—125,000, according to Ford—who had plunked down $100 to reserve a new Bronco since it was unveiled in July 2020. And most of us sitting there were fidgeting like expectant parents, because we were still awaiting delivery.

Our own Broncos weren't sitting outside the upscale outdoorsy lodge, but there were Broncos at the ready. That's the whole point of Ford's Bronco Off-Roadeo parks, to make the waiting a little easier and give us just a taste of the 10Best-winning goodness that we'll eventually drive home.

I put down my deposit in October 2020 on a two-door Bronco in Big Bend trim with a manual transmission and removable hard top in Antimatter Blue over a black cloth interior. I wanted something pure and simple, an old-school truck I could imagine taking to the Two Hearted River on a fishing trip with Hemingway. What I didn't imagine was having to wait this long for the Bronco.

Ford's Off-Roadeo locations—there are four in total, with the others in Nevada, Utah, and Texas—are part of the automaker's marketing play to build the Bronco into a lifestyle brand. As such, there was plenty of merchandise for sale on-site, and the walls were covered in Bronco paraphernalia including photos, old advertisements, and a copy of the original interoffice memo greenlighting the first Bronco project in 1965, with Lee Iacocca's signature at the bottom.

For me, the new Bronco was love at first sight. I do have a weakness for rectangular things, probably because I'm a bit rectangular myself. Once, while walking at night with some friends, we passed a streetlight and our shadows appeared distinctly on the sidewalk in front of us. "Hey," said my pal. "Who's holding up the shoebox?" He was referring to my head. So I come by my love honestly.

There was a couple from Annapolis, Maryland, waiting on a 2023 Bronco Raptor, the high-performance variant that Ford has yet to publicly reveal. An appreciative murmur went through the room when they announced their order, and the two beamed. A father and son traveled from Illinois; the son was awaiting a Wildtrak four-door in Antimatter Blue with the Sasquatch off-road package. Another couple was waiting on a four-door Wildtrak.