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Early Thoughts 96 Hours and 600 miles from Granger - Former Jeep JLU Owner

RivianNowPlz

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Hey again all,

I was deliberating compiling further comments and differences on the Bronco now that I've owned it a few days. This morning though I realized that up until Saturday.. I was on this forum daily.. I was reading all the comments, all the reviews, all the impressions and I fully get the hype/desire for this Bronco and because of it I'm going to randomly continue my differences from a JLU owner of 3 years. If you're interested to read my thoughts from my 300 mile trip after taking delivery it can be found here below. Otherwise, until I decide to provide in depth detail and analysis I'll likely just keep up with my bullet thoughts so that each of you have just 1 other new thread to keep tabs on while you patiently and anxiously wait for delivery. I was the same way.

https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/thre...0-miles-back-from-granger.30526/#post-1031689

Before I get started a couple of quick notes on me and my stable. I presently own a Tesla Model S, and this 2021 Ford Bronco. Carvana took my JLU Wrangler away yesterday, and my Subaru Ascent I traded in on this Bronco. I have a 37 Performance Pack Raptor on the way (someday... waiting like the Bronco) and both the Bronco/Raptor will be my very last gas vehicles. I ordered a Rivian in 2019 that I expect to arrive in April/May of next year at which point the Bronco/Raptor will likely be held on to for fun and nostalgia purposes until they croak.

  1. The Bronco has a bit north of 600 miles now on it with various city/highway miles. My MPG average has come up from 14.7 to 15.5. My Rubicon with 33s averaged 16mpg so I can't complain much here and I am indeed hoping to see further increase, but if not, oh well.
  2. The Bronco continued to feel like the better put together vehicle, in my previous post I gave 12 bullet points on why I felt it to be more premium after my first day, and this hasn't changed. In fact, a couple of other noticed improvements would be the fact the car seems more complete. The Wrangler has missing trim/plastic pieces in areas that are fully covered by the Bronco so while this styling may feel subjective, the Bronco does feel more complete on top of premium still.
  3. It's cold here in Minnesota, and the Bronco suffers from the same exact heating situation my JLU suffered from, which is, it gets too hot inside the cabin regardless of where you keep the temperature. In the JLU you're either on ice AC or volcano heat and the Bronco has this same problem. Anything over 70 degrees and I'm burning up. In comparison to my other vehicles, I haven't had this problem with any other car. This may be fine for some, and perhaps for some this is a plus (like for my wife) but not me.
  4. The heated seat situation.. typical Ford, like my old Explorer if you have it on 3 bars heated seats.. be careful. It's smoking hot. Much hotter than the JLU.
  5. Oddly this doesn't carry over to the heated steering wheel where the JLUs steering wheel is considerably hotter than the Broncos.
  6. I'm starting to realize why people dislike the analog speedometer, I haven't looked at it more than 2 times in the dozen + drives we've now taken. While I enjoy the readout of the Broncos various features/functions more than the slow and cumbersome ECU on the JLU - the speedometer is a big miss. Overall, I still enjoy the functionality of the gauge cluster to the JLU because of the speed limit indicator, the multitude of functions available on selector screen that move at a high frame rate with no lag, and the confusing up for down, down for up display on the JLU. If you know you know.
  7. Blind spot, cross traffic detection work the same. Both function perfect as is.
  8. Broncos lane keep (not lane centering) is... gentle... but doesn't always seem to work properly. In comparison to other lane keeping systems I've used which seem to ping pong you harshly, the Bronco very gently guides you back *but* it doesn't always seem to work. I've purposely let it leave the lane to see what alerts and indications come on and have been surprised the amount of times it just doesn't work. I should also note that from the factory the lane keep is set to ALERT ONLY and not to ping you back into your lane, you must go into settings and turn this feature on.
  9. Pics to come.. but.. while my Bronco is lightning blue, I think that a bar in the front of the vehicle behind the bumper was painted in velocity blue. Its a little jarring and now that I've noticed it.. not sure I'll be able to not notice it again.
  10. The lock mechanisms for the hard top modular are extremely tight and you've got to give them a bit of the business to open in comparison to the JLU which far more easily releases and unlocks. Overall, easy and similar to the JLU and as someone who has taken off my hard top JLU top solo - I'm excited to see how much easier it will be for me to take off the Broncos top solo.
  11. Only certain GOAT modes allow certain camera modes to be selected.. e.x. rock crawl and baja to view the side wheels. I'm hoping this is a change for FORSCAN, because I can see some good real world uses for that camera that shouldn't be locked behind a GOAT mode.
  12. Sync4 maps may replace Android auto. It is *that* good.. now coming from a Tesla, I'm used to not having Android Auto - we had it in our Ascent/JLU and since both navigation systems in those systems were trash it was easy to always switch to Android Auto/Apple Carplay. In the Bronco, this may be a different story. The system is really intuitive, its very fast, it navigates slower traffic, and it has awesome functions such as when the gas light comes on the navigation system pops up a bunch of gas stations right on the screen to drive to. The color scheme is also less jarring with AA in the way, and because you can still have AA wirelessly in the secondary (or primary screen) it adds more functionality by splitting the Sync4 Nav side by side with AA for audio. It's a really impressive system and it blows Uconnect out of the water, I'm really impressed that this is OEM.
  13. This next one is a problem that will go away with time - but driving this as much as we have in such a short period of time in an area with so few full sized Broncos has brought up an interesting problem of people chasing you down to take pictures... on the freeway.. I guess I never personally made it to that level of insanity (mostly because my Bronco is only the 3rd one I've ever seen).. but I would not be shocked if somewhere in the US someone has caused an accident. We're all excited, I get it, but this is next level. My Tesla S overall gets more eyes, but for the people who KNOW what this is.. they come at it. To stay light hearted though, it's still fun getting all of the thumbs up and jealous fellow Jeep owners cranking their neck when they see it.
  14. The gas strut for the tailgate is a blessing. Don't let any review tell you otherwise.. from a JLU owner.. yeah this is what all Wranglers need and I'm just grateful the Bronco has it. Especially if any of you have kids who may load items.
  15. The B&O System has harder bass than the Alpine in the JLU. I can't say which one sounds clearer, I'm not an audiophile.. they both get really loud, but if you're into bass you'll be happy with the B&O.
  16. I'm loving the window switches and location. The JLU is a little awkward, but nothing you can't get used to. My JLU only had 1 touch down on the front windows and all 4 windows needed to be held to come back up. In the Bronco all 4 windows are one touch down and one touch up.. this.. is.. fabulous.

Well, there it is... a long wall of text of 16 new thoughts from a (now former) JLU owner. More thoughts to come as I settle in and dive in. I hope this gives even one of you thats out there watching your Bronco on the truck/rail everyday waiting for it to be delivered something to latch on to. Cheers.
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Vantcrst

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Thanks. Like you said I think we can all use more content to keep us occupied until our trucks arrive.
 

pfd799

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Good write up and you answered one of the things Iā€™ve been wondering about and havenā€™t really seen concrete reviews of, the factory nav. I like factory Nav, I think itā€™s a bit more reliable and accurate than the phone based apps through Android Auto/Car Play, and I think their displays tend to be better, but the traffic data and routing has been very much lacking on the past two vehicles Iā€™ve had with it. I was interested to see how integrating live data from TomTom would work, and hearing this well written positive review of the Sync4 Nav has me excited to use it, especially with the ability to still put the phone audio on the smaller screen as you mentioned. Good post šŸ‘šŸ¼
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