Ford Bronco Everglades review: I love the look, despite myself

Driving the Ford Bronco, which rose to fame during the OJ Simpson police chase, was like eating a vegetarian meal and enjoying it. Ford has just given Jeep buyers a better choice.

Ford Bronco Everglades.

Stephen Corby

4 min read

12:00AMJune 10, 2023

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Now, like, I must say I do not, like, like the way that some Americans, like, overuse the word like. Like, you know?

I remember this verbose violence starting to attack the English language some years ago, particularly from the mouths of younger folks, but I recently found myself having breakfast in a flashy hotel offering a $1500 frittata next to a group of American adults who couldn’t, like, stop their breathy exhalations of the term. I, stupidly, thought that that generation would have grown up and started speaking properly, but I was wrong.

Ford Bronco Everglades.

I’m also shocked, whenever I drive in the US, by the cars that they like, really like. I landed in Los Angeles recently to go and do something glamorous, but chose to get there via a quick stop at a colourful (bright orange) hotel that looked like a Breaking Bad set. I had borrowed a Ford Bronco because of its historic worth and the fact that it was partly engineered in Australia.

My first impression of it was that I loved the look, despite myself – an experience that reminded me of eating a vegetarian meal and somehow enjoying it. The rugged Everglades model of the Bronco that I had borrowed was all red meat, however, with a map of where to find Sasquatch on each front fender (no, really), a snorkel, and a whopping great winch on the front with its tongue hanging out like a particularly large dog on a hot day.

I immediately started hoping I would come upon the scene of a non-fatal car crash into a ravine, or a truck jack-knifing, so that I could come to the rescue, before remembering that I have no idea how to use a winch and would no doubt injure everyone nearby if I tried.

I also noticed that there were bags in the boot to store the doors in, because you can remove them, and the roof. It also feels almost expensively basic inside in a way that seemed discomfortingly familiar, and then it hit me – Ford has built a Jeep.

The Ford Bronco dates back to the mid 1960s.

The manager of my movie-worthy hotel was beside himself with excitement when he saw my Bronco, declaring proudly, “I’m a Ford man” – a once frequent phrase I had not heard for many moons at home – before insisting on educating me about how great my car was.

The Ford Bronco dates back to the mid 1960s and was a part of the American landscape right up until the point it became hugely famous, in 1994, when OJ Simpson hid in the back of a white one and, behaving as any innocent man would, led police on a chase through LA watched by as many as 95 million Americans live on TV (and thousands more who ran out into the streets to cheer him on, as you would when a celebrity has been charged with a brutal murder, or two).

My Ford-loving hotelier is convinced that the public somehow turned on the Bronco because of its association with those notorious events, and indeed it was canned in 1996, after five generations, only to be revived in 2021 (with a little help from some Australian friends; it’s built on the same platform as our stupidly popular Ranger) as a direct competitor for … the Jeep Wrangler.

Regular readers of this column, or roughly 92 per cent of the population, will recall that I drove a Jeep of similar style recently, the Gladiator, and enjoyed it about as much as a colonoscopy. It came as some surprise, then, over the next few hundred miles, how much I didn’t hate the Bronco, and even came to bond with it in some inexplicable fashion (I think doing road trips on my own melts my brain, slightly, as I’m used to having kids to shout at).

It has 2.3-litre, four-cylinder engine.

Yes, it’s rough and ready, and clearly built with a bent more towards being off roads than on them – the removable roof whistles in the wind at freeway speeds, but an American would have just removed it as its makers intended – and I found the 2.3-litre, four-cylinder engine a little wheezy and the 10-speed gearbox a bit whiny.

But sometimes a car is more than just the sum of its parts, and there’s just something very cool about the Bronco, from its chunky design and stylish badges to its G.O.A.T. modes for off-roading (no, I don’t know what it’s got to do with Lionel Messi, either), to the way it tackled a downhill winding pass with less body roll, and more steering involvement, than any Jeep could manage.

While the interior attempts to mirror the strange Jeep desire to make the windows and windscreen so small that you feel like you’re driving a letterbox, it’s not quite as silly.

I’ll admit I may have been somewhat influenced by how many Americans stopped me to say how much they loved my car, but I genuinely hope the rumours that it might make it Down Under in right-hand drive one day are true. Not for me personally, of course, but to give those Jeep buyers a better choice.