2024 Ford Bronco Everglades

The 2024 Ford Bronco doesn’t seem to want to be a Ford… I can only find one spot in the car that actually mentions “Ford” - and that’s on the little badge between the two front seats where it also says that it’s designed and engineered in Dearborn, Michigan.

So the Bronco is American through and through. Built at the Michigan assembly plant, in the heart of the car manufacturing state, it’s most definitely a Ford. But the focus throughout the vehicle is on “Bronco”, not “Ford”. With that said, however, I doubt there are many people who don’t know what you’re talking about if you just refer to the Ford Bronco as, simply, Bronco.

On that note - what is a Bronco? It’s fun. It’s brutal. It gets a lot of looks.

The amount of waves and recognition that I get while driving the Bronco exceeds any other car I’ve spent time in - even compared to some very expensive and sometimes even more unique cars.

There seems to be a Bronco wave - every Bronco driver waves to my Bronco and me. This makes for quite the fun club (or cult, depending on how you look at it) to be a part of. People of all walks of life love this vehicle. Why they love it? I assume it’s because of what the Branco stands for. The excitement. The brutal off-road capacity. But also, I don’t think “why” is the correct question to ask here. Excitement doesn’t ask why.

Exterior

From the nose of the Bronco -including a brutal winch hanging off the front - to the very tail end of the truck - where the spare tire hangs - this truck looks made to tackle whatever rugged adventure you throw its way.

How often do Broncos get to see anything remotely as rugged as the exterior hints at? That’s a good question - we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, let’s look at the suite of off-road bells and whistles included in the Everglades package (really it’s an “edition”, but who’s going to call me on that detail?).

The massive winch is just the start. The extra wide stance and the massive tires should give you traction on pretty much anything, but they also make this Bronco stand out from the masses - quite literally. The snorkel is an extra touch that might never get used, but that gives the Bronco Everglades a superior off-road look.

Interior

Our test Bronco Everglades is technically also a convertible - yay! Not in the sense that it’s a sporty coupe convertible, but in the sense that you can remove the roof and doors, making this one summer-ready Bronco.

The fact that the doors can be removed explains why some of the buttons and knobs are in peculiar places - at least in comparison to most other vehicles. The settings knob for the exterior mirrors lives in the center console, between the seats. Had Ford stuck those on the door - where most other cars have them - it would be quite impossible to adjust your mirrors when you’ve removed the door. The door lock buttons on the other hand, are perfectly ok to have on a detachable door… If the door goes, you’ll not need to lock them, huh.

The Bronco interior shows off its rugged capability. The bolts and knobs throughout the interior coupled with an abundance of “oh shit handles” remind you that you’re in a truck that can take a beating. Even these small interior details have been crafted in such a way that they look rugged. Now, one might question of the know to raise the volume needs to be rugged - but that’s beside the point, it looks really good.

The seats look fairly luxurious, but still staying true to the more rugged interior design. The faux leather with the Bronco branding ingrained between your shoulders will keep you comfortable as you bounce along your route.

Ford has found a good middle ground between comfort/luxury and rugged usability throughout the interior. The floor of the Bronco lacks the plush carpet often found in luxury vehicles, making way for a rubber mat. Not as tasteful obviously, but hell of a lot easier to keep clean. Also, it won’t mold if you happen to ford through water deep enough to get some inside.

Backseats are comfortable enough, even for a 6 foot adult like me. This is, after all, a relatively large truck so I would’ve been very disappointed if I couldn’t sit in the backseat. The rear passengers also have their fair share of oh shit handles. There’s plenty of space in the rear compartment for whatever gear your adventure requires. If it’s not enough - and you don’t need the seats for passengers - the rear seats fold flat, giving way to quite a large amount of storage space.

Throughout the rear interior of the Bronco you’ll see evidence of the removability of the outer shell - with latches and hatches keeping things in place (instead of welded to the spot). The window behind the C-pillar is itself removable, which means that the pillar itself is not connected to the window. The speakers are mounted on the pillar, so they stay when the window and walls go.

The rear of the Bronco opens in what some might call a “rugged” way. The rear window opens upwards and then the remaining piece of the rear swings open like a door. This takes some time getting used to, since this means that the door is going to swing out backwards and continue off to the right of the car. Plan your parking accordingly.

A small but awesome detail is the pull-out bench in the trunk. Raise the rear window and swing open the trunk door, pull out this sliding bench and viola! you’ve got yourself a seating area without having to repack the car, nor will you be touching the rear bumper with your legs, keeping your jeans pristine too.

Infotainment

The infotainment system in the Bronco is the standard Ford system. This is a good thing, as the current iteration of technology is easy to understand and navigate. It also connects wirelessly with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. (Yeah, I know, most car companies have gotten to the wireless integration, but not all, so I figure it’s worth a mention).

The ginormous screen of the center console houses your phone’s mirroring as well as Ford’s built in navigation system and your radio controls. Actually, that screen houses pretty much everything available in the car. And to make the most of the very large screen, there is a split screen function that enables you to display more than one feature/function simultaneously.

The infotainment screen is also used for displaying many of the off-road functionality and toys. One fun view is the pitch and roll of the car - obviously a great tool when tackling the more extreme terrain, but equally fun when just messing around on smaller inclines. It’ll also show how much your wheels are turned, which is fun for folks in the car - kids and gear-heads alike.

Driving Characteristics

The Bronco comes loaded with a bunch of driving modes - twirling the knob in the in the console between the seat and you’ll switch from modes like sport, slippery, mud and ruts, sand, rock crawl, as well as the normal and ECO modes. Obviously, switching between these will set you up in different version of four-wheel-drive status, but it also adjusts pretty much all the other driver assist systems and driveline features. There are modes for a lot of really advanced circumstances - even though I assume that most Broncos will spend their time in the “normal” driving mode. Although, to be fair, if you purchase the Everglades Edition, you must be planning on using these awesome toys for more than tooling around the Costco parking lot..!

The Bronco - with its four-cylinder engine - absolutely produces enough power to get around. It’s not a rocket - nobody ever claimed it would be - but the Bronco will definitely move. Getting on the freeway, or even accelerating to pass on the highway, is not a problem. In a world with lots of off-road vehicles that not only feel like trucks to drive and with poor acceleration, it’s refreshing that the Bronco can handle its own. The Bronco picks up and goes.

Now, even though the Bronco will pick up and go, it is still a large vehicle with large tires. There’s a lot of weight to throw around here, and you’ll want to slow this pony down before taking on any quick corners - especially if there are passengers on board who are not already holding onto the road-shit handles. Whipping around roundabouts, for example, is an interesting affair. And wether you’re turning or not, the slightest bump on the road will echo through your spine. Not horribly, but definitely enough to remind you that this ain’t no luxury sedan, it’s a truck! If that bump happens to come as your turning, you’ll feel it even more.

Summary

The Ford Bronco is a fun, exciting, outdoorsy, and rugged vehicle. A truck! If you were looking for an SUV to drive around town in, doing the usual daily life errands, and weren’t planning on taking it off-road, then the Ford Bronco Everglades is probably not the best choice. Unless you really like the looks and how it makes you look - that would be a valid argument.

Nonetheless, this is a beast of a truck. It looks and sounds like a truck, and it most definitely feels like one. So if you don’t mind driving a truck as your daily driver and you do in fact spend your weekends rock crawling or mud bathing your car, then the Ford Bronco is right up your alley.