After the new generation of Ford Bronco was officially launched in 2021, it has been widely popular in the North American market, and the phenomenon of large price increases at dealers is very common. If you don't want to increase the price, the waiting cycle in the US market is at least more than half a year, and it is only a cash car in the store, rather than an optional model carefully selected by consumers.
Similar situations are really not uncommon for us Chinese consumers, but in the North American market, which has matured to the point of no longer being mature, Bronco's popularity is actually quite rare. Maybe it can't be compared to the treatment when the Ford Mustang debuted in 1964, but in a way, I think it's pretty much the same. Uncle I don't really want to talk about the new generation of Bronco today, but the birth story behind this topical off-road vehicle, I think I can talk about it carefully.
Bronco is a car series with a long history, born in the mid-1960s, after years of development, it gradually fixed its position under the Ford brand - a more personal four-wheel drive luxury off-road vehicle. It was more private because for a long time Bronco only offered a two-door body form, and most of its models in history were equipped with V8 gasoline engines. Despite its strong off-road potential, Bronco places more emphasis on the ability to comfortably traverse unpaved roads than on the Wrangler's more hardcore off-road orientation. Although there are derivative models born under the name bronco in history, they are different from Bronco in terms of technology and positioning, such as Bronco Sport, which needs to be emphasized.
Unfortunately, although the Bronco is a well-known off-road vehicle in the North American market, it has almost no intersection with China, and perhaps before this generation of Bronco was officially introduced, the only opportunity Chinese to familiarize itself with was the O. Bronco of decades ago. J Simpson drove a friend's white Bronco to lead a large number of News Clips of American police driving a police car throughout the parade.
The fifth-generation Bronco with Simpson Cruise was discontinued in 1996, and it spanned twenty-five years with the sixth-generation model. More than once during this time, Ford wanted to restart Bronco, so we took three concept cars as a clue to see what Ford had done in the past twenty-five years.
Not long after the discontinuation of the fifth-generation model, Ford restarted bronco research and development in 1999, and the plan at that time was to build the sixth-generation model into a simple, lightweight, and cost-effective off-road vehicle based on the positioning of the original Bronco, with the project number U260. The project itself went well, and in terms of design, Ford opted for a retro look, almost replicating the body of the Bronco in the 90s in the language of design from the 90s.
The first attempt to replace Bronco ended in 2001, but not long after the 2004 North American Auto Show, Ford showed the public a concept car called the Bronco Concept. Compared with the U260, in addition to being more of a concept car, the car also more faithfully restores the external image of the original Bronco. This concept car is based on the Then Ford Escape, that is, the original Wing Tiger, and the chassis, suspension and other aspects are not as hardcore as its external image.
It wasn't until the 2019 Baja 1000 event that Ford released a prototype called the Bronco R Prototype. Although the car is modified to the standard of Baja racing, we can clearly see from all the design details that this is the Bronco that will be released in 2020 and officially launched in 2021. Although Ford made it clear that this was a superficial attempt, its typical retro design made many fans have a beautiful fantasy about the future Bronco model at the time.
It turns out that no matter which concept car or prototype, Ford's retro design in the sixth generation of Bronco models is the key to its ultimate success. And in the more personalized moment, providing Bronco with hundreds of rich options and the means of constantly introducing special models of various attributes has always made this off-road vehicle in a rare state of high heat.
Associated with the unexpected popularity of the domestic tank 300 in 2021, putting aside the same off-road vehicle attributes, in fact, one of the elements of the success of both is a relatively retro design. And this shows that our current car design has reached a stage where it must be introspected and reviewed. Why do designs that pay tribute to the past always get praise, and why is the idea of finding the future always questioned? I am not a person who is willing to take the initiative to live in the past, but in the face of such a phenomenon, in the face of bronco and tank 300 in the design of the affirmation, I think there are always some things worth thinking about.