Small Utility - BabyB

[BroncoBuyer]

Old Customer Walks Into Ford Dealership Order Me One Of Those. Half-Soldiers. Or Whatever. You Call The Dam Thing.

Is this one of those wake up in the middle of the night when it finally hits you jokes?
Damn you I have an early meeting tomorrow morning!

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[Nickp]

Exactly!
The orange concept could be the ranger bronco, the shadow is the raptor based FSB!

*BALLS FIST*

 

[Stampede.Offroad]

...
The secret spy shots are NOTHING like this car we are seeing out in the wild.

For one, the tires are WAY larger on the old spy shots, just look at the orange one or the grey one.
2nd, The wheel center caps sit BELOW the rocker panel on the orange one yet they are above the rocker on this one. Where in the hell did all the ride height go for off roading? Did they slam it to the ground to throw us off?
Lastly, what the heck is with these new worthless TINY wheel wells? The orange one has way larger openings that flare out at the bottom to leave things wide open for lifts/bigger tires. This new one has wheel wells so dang small the tiny OEM tires barely fit! How is anybody going to put bigger tires on that without some serious hacking?

I see nothing anybody can work with here... if that’s the baby bronco, I will be extremely disappointed and very concerned over what the real bronco ends up being.
...

It does look far less capable than the concept.

The tires and wheel-wells seem to have been significantly reduced. Most cars don't leave much room for tire/wheel upsizing, but if this was supposed to be a 'rugged' or 'off road' capable vehicle they seem to have curtailed that capability. It's not too different than the competition though.

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[TeocaliMG]

I am quite sure that we are looking at the compact off roader dubbed "baby bronco" on this forum. Two things I would point out: 1, it has Pirelli tires which I think are available on the escape so they may just be using those as donors while they test powertrain to further "camouflage" the vehicle. Or there may be different trims, like Jeep has between Sport and Trail Hawk. 2, This thing is heavily camouflaged, and that may very well include the wheel wells. You can hide a lot with some cardboard and zebratape.

As Stampede pointed out, this still wouldn't be far off the competition, but I highly doubt those are the wheels and tires we would see on the final "baby bronco", if it was I would be very disappointed!

Also I don't want to be one to crush the FSB, I think there is market potential for it personally but that orange one in the spy shot is absolutely not the ranger based one (I at least worked on ranger). Whether or not it is a exaggeration or accurate portrayal of the "baby bronco" is yet to be verified. Meaning the shadow is representative of the Flagship Bronco.

 

[Nanook]

How would on-road sporty driving dynamics be a home run for a “off-road wrangler capable” vehicle?

 

[Nanook]

Aren’t the next gen ranger and 2020 explorer 2 different architectures?

 

[Stampede.Offroad]

Aren’t the next gen ranger and 2020 explorer 2 different architectures?

Yes. The Explorer shares its new rear wheel bias unibody with the Lincoln Aviator.

The Bronco will most likely be the first vehicle built on a new ladder chassis that it will share with the next model of the Ranger due out in a couple more years (it might actually be preceded by the F150 if this turns out to be a new scalable truck chassis platform as some rumors indicated).

The small utility (baby) shares a compact car unibody platform with the Escape and a couple other small cars sold in other markets.

 

[Stampede.Offroad]

How would on-road sporty driving dynamics be a home run for a “off-road wrangler capable” vehicle?

I would also expect the two body on frame vehicles to have more handling similarity. Especially when you take the idea of soft suspension into account -- Expedition is doing it for that 'floating' sort of road luxury/comfort, and Bronco would do it for articulation.

The small utility might have some of that unibody road precision the Explorer does though.

 

[TeocaliMG]

Unless you are closer to the product development than me I am quite sure that's not right. The Explorer and Aviator share an all new RWD unibody architecture. More similar to the mustang actually than the trucks/vans. The next gen Ranger and Bronco will still be RWD BOF architectures. That said, I'm sure they will include improved vehicle dynamics both on and off the road. The current ranger is not exactly cutting edge chassis wise.

 

[BroncoMike]

No matter what they call it, it is becoming increasingly clear that you won't be interested in it.

So, why are you here?

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