- First Name
- Adam
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2021
- Threads
- 3
- Messages
- 94
- Reaction score
- 264
- Location
- South Portland, ME
- Vehicle(s)
- 2019 MX-5 RF / Factory Five 818 / 2018 CX-5 GT
- Your Bronco Model
- Black Diamond
- Thread starter
- #1
I reserved my Bronco a year ago today (July 14th): 4dr black diamond, A51, MIC top, Roof rails, 7MT. My plan was to have this as the adventure mobile to compliment my wife’s family car for our family of four.
My dealer got a mannequin in this week. It’s a 4dr Badlands, Sasquatch, Lux, 2.3L 10AT, soft top in Cyber Orange. They let me and my wife take it for a drive. We put probably 20 miles or so on it. Some highway. Some urban. Some suburban. No offroad, unfortunately.
Some random thoughts and initial impressions:
It’s a lot more comfortable than the Wranglers and Gladiators I’ve driven recently. Roomier, wider, and you’re not sitting so close to the dash and the windshield. Highway ride was better than I expected. Soft top makes a lot of wind noise at 75mph. It wasn’t hard to have a conversation at normal volume levels with the front passenger, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hear my daughters talking from the back seat. Maybe that’s a feature not a drawback…
The 12” screen is dumb. When you’re on a trail using multiple cameras, I’m sure it’s excellent to be able to see as much as possible. But on the road in normal driving, it’s too big. The infotainment doesn’t make use of all that space, so what you get is a lot of grey negative space and buttons just spread out to far. Maybe Ford can make better use of all that screen real estate with a firmware update, but for now, there’s basically no benefit to it when the cameras aren’t engaged.
If you’re on the fence about converting to the soft top, there’s a lot to like there. It opens quickly and easily without getting out of the car, there’s little wind noise from it when it’s open, and it’s really not terrible at highway speeds. Loud for sure, but acceptable. The radio at about 40% volume drowned it out completely.
The start stop tech was pretty unobtrusive. Sometimes the systems are so aggro that it’s hard to live with. Ford’s is easy to forget about.
I am a manual transmission enthusiast, and I ordered my Black Diamond with the 7MT. I have been concerned that the 10AT would be poorly matched to the 2.3L, but that was an unnecessary worry. The shift logic feels a lot better than the Ranger I drove. A small turbo engine and a transmission with too many gears tuned for fuel economy often work against an engine that needs to build boost to actually make power. But in this application it did not offend me. It was mostly smooth and would drop down a few gears pretty quickly if I put my foot into it.
Which gets me to the engine. Maybe it would feel peppier with the 7MT, but it’s just…adequate. It’ll be an even match for a Wrangler‘s Pentastar, but nobody will be writing sonnets to this engine combo. If it was the only option Ford offered, it wouldn’t be a big enough demerit to not buy a Bronco at all.
My big takeaway after driving the Bronco today is that this truck is better at being a daily driver than I expected. I guess I was expecting it to be closer to the experience of a Jeep. It’s much better than that. So it had me totally rethink my truck build. This thing can be my adventure mobile AND the family truckster at the same time. But for me, after driving the 2.3L, I’m convinced it needs the bigger engine more than it needs a manual. Though I do wish I could spec both.
So after a drive, my new build: 4dr Black Diamond in A51. Sticking with the MIC top with roof rails. 2.7L, Mid, 4A.
I know that’s what most of you specced from the beginning. You’re all smarter than me. But I got there eventually. It took me longer because I was working with the small engine…
My dealer got a mannequin in this week. It’s a 4dr Badlands, Sasquatch, Lux, 2.3L 10AT, soft top in Cyber Orange. They let me and my wife take it for a drive. We put probably 20 miles or so on it. Some highway. Some urban. Some suburban. No offroad, unfortunately.
Some random thoughts and initial impressions:
It’s a lot more comfortable than the Wranglers and Gladiators I’ve driven recently. Roomier, wider, and you’re not sitting so close to the dash and the windshield. Highway ride was better than I expected. Soft top makes a lot of wind noise at 75mph. It wasn’t hard to have a conversation at normal volume levels with the front passenger, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hear my daughters talking from the back seat. Maybe that’s a feature not a drawback…
The 12” screen is dumb. When you’re on a trail using multiple cameras, I’m sure it’s excellent to be able to see as much as possible. But on the road in normal driving, it’s too big. The infotainment doesn’t make use of all that space, so what you get is a lot of grey negative space and buttons just spread out to far. Maybe Ford can make better use of all that screen real estate with a firmware update, but for now, there’s basically no benefit to it when the cameras aren’t engaged.
If you’re on the fence about converting to the soft top, there’s a lot to like there. It opens quickly and easily without getting out of the car, there’s little wind noise from it when it’s open, and it’s really not terrible at highway speeds. Loud for sure, but acceptable. The radio at about 40% volume drowned it out completely.
The start stop tech was pretty unobtrusive. Sometimes the systems are so aggro that it’s hard to live with. Ford’s is easy to forget about.
I am a manual transmission enthusiast, and I ordered my Black Diamond with the 7MT. I have been concerned that the 10AT would be poorly matched to the 2.3L, but that was an unnecessary worry. The shift logic feels a lot better than the Ranger I drove. A small turbo engine and a transmission with too many gears tuned for fuel economy often work against an engine that needs to build boost to actually make power. But in this application it did not offend me. It was mostly smooth and would drop down a few gears pretty quickly if I put my foot into it.
Which gets me to the engine. Maybe it would feel peppier with the 7MT, but it’s just…adequate. It’ll be an even match for a Wrangler‘s Pentastar, but nobody will be writing sonnets to this engine combo. If it was the only option Ford offered, it wouldn’t be a big enough demerit to not buy a Bronco at all.
My big takeaway after driving the Bronco today is that this truck is better at being a daily driver than I expected. I guess I was expecting it to be closer to the experience of a Jeep. It’s much better than that. So it had me totally rethink my truck build. This thing can be my adventure mobile AND the family truckster at the same time. But for me, after driving the 2.3L, I’m convinced it needs the bigger engine more than it needs a manual. Though I do wish I could spec both.
So after a drive, my new build: 4dr Black Diamond in A51. Sticking with the MIC top with roof rails. 2.7L, Mid, 4A.
I know that’s what most of you specced from the beginning. You’re all smarter than me. But I got there eventually. It took me longer because I was working with the small engine…
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