Brainwashed Crossovers That Think They Compete with the Bronco
 

Brainwashed Crossovers That Think They Compete with the Bronco
By Geoff Castaneda

The closer we get to 2020, the easier it is to speculate about the upcoming Bronco. While we await the return of the king, let's take a look at some of the posers that have been masquerading as off-road worthy SUVs.

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Jeep will always be the king, period.

What surprises me is with the resurrection of the Bronco is that GM hasn't announced any plans to revive the old amazing K5 Blazer on the Colorado chassis.

I have a feeling this will be a copy of the Jeep Wrangler 4 doors, only without the quirkiness, piss poor ergo's and leg room, and lame axles. Dana 44's with lockers would be nice.

The Wrangler Unlimited's have a pretty good formula. And an easy one to improve on.

It's not hard to compete with a Bronco that is not yet here... But this article is silly. The Honda CR-V is a mainstream compact sport ute that sells in huge numbers and has no off-road claims made about it. On the other hand, a Subaru with a bit of lift and some gnarly tires can do amazingly well off-road unless you really want to go bouncing off boulders, in which case you need a Wrangler with a bunch of armor on it. We shall see what the Bronco ends up being. I used to think it would be an Everest with restyled front and rear ends, but am now thinking that Ford will go a bit wilder on the bodywork--but they will have to be careful how much they invest in it.

The percentage of SUV buyers who seriously go off-road is very small. I would bet that 80% or more of the Raptors that Ford sells are barely used for any serious off-roading. They exist for people to "wear". My dentist, a 45ish outdoorsy woman, drives a Wrangler, probably mostly to get to hiking trailheads and campsites with graded roads.

George

If the Bronco ends up like their latest Thunderbird debacle, then we're screwed. At least the Bronco will share a chassis with the Ranger so we know the bones will be strong.

Looks like a Toyota fj cruiser or even a Dodge Nitro. Bronco was only king of one thing... most heavy removable shell.

Ford has the Edge already and the Blazer falls on top of that in size and function. Ford is hopefully going to try to differentiate the Bronco significantly, much like Toyota differentiates the Highlander from the 4Runner... The Bronco will be based off a pickup truck chassis, so that is a clear difference from the unit body used on the Edge and the new Blazer.

The conflict between vehicles that are "too close" in the Ford line is pretty clear when you compare Explorer sales to Flex sales...

Notice that GM isn't calling the new Blazer a Trailblazer like the old ones that we remember in our youth.

The original full size Blazer came out as the first sawed-off full size pickup sport ute in 1969 (shortly after the 1966 small Bronco) and went through various versions including the S-10 Blazer (which got the regular Blazer name when the big Blazer got 2 extra doors and became the Tahoe). And the S-10 version came in 2 and 4 door versions.

Ford cloned the big Blazer with the full sized Bronco which came out for 1978 (and that became the Expedition in 1997).

The Trailblazer didn't exist till the current century, something like 2002, so it is relatively new...guess it depends on when your youth was :)

And for a minute there was the Dodge Ramcharger. And lots of Jeep Cherokees and Wagoneers over the years. Actually the Suburban was the predecessor of all of these and dates back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth :)

George

Yes, I'm plenty old enough to remember of this, lol and old enough to not only remember the Suburban but also the long forgotten International Harvester (IH) Travelall.

Let's not forget the Scout. That is what the first generation Bronco copied, in size, shape and layout. The Scout was introduced in 1961, until that time there was nothing quite like it.

As far as heaviest removable top? That honor should go to the '71-'80 Scout II.

Good point on the Scout preceding the early Bronco. As some of my old brain cells awaken, I will note that the Land Rover came out in 1948 as a full-bodied vehicle on a Jeep chassis so that was one of the missing links that probably led to the Scout...

No idea how much a Scout top weighed, but I had a 1980 FJ40 Land Crusher (note that the Land Cruiser also dated back to 1951 with a jeepish body and got station wagon type bodies circa 1960). The top from my FJ40 was heavy...not even including the steel rear doors that came off separately. I rigged up pulleys in my garage to lift the top off and swear the whole garage roof sagged when I pulled the top off :) I find sunroofs handy these days...