Review: It's the Bronco Sport, people — and it's a terrific little SUV
The Ford Bronco and the Ford Bronco Sport are two completely different cars. Here's the difference and what makes the "Baby Bronco" such a great buy.
I'm constantly amazed by people on the internet.
We've created the most glorious communication platform the world has ever seen, and people use it to argue — with factually inaccurate statements, to boot — about cars (and politics and sports and a million other things).
A few weeks back, I posted some videos of the new Ford Bronco on TikTok, and folks in the comments were furious. They wrote about how Ford had absolutely ruined the Bronco name by affixing it to such a wimpy vehicle and that they were so personally offended by it that they'd never buy another Ford product again.
In the Badlands trim, the Bronco Sport can handle an impressive amount of off-road action.
Except they were talking about the Ford Bronco Sport, which is an entirely different vehicle from the Ford Bronco.
Now, Ford takes an awful lot of the blame for this confusion. In the view of Ford's marketing department, naming one car the Bronco and another the Bronco Sport is a stroke of genius. Bronco is one of the best-known and most beloved nameplates of all time, and obviously, you'd want to milk this and have as many Broncos as possible.
Except for one thing: The smaller Bronco Sport, based on the Ford Escape crossover and filled with a lot more curvy design features than the old Bronco had, was released first — almost nine months before its bigger, badder brother.
The Bronco Sport has a smartly designed interior with clever storage and handy controls.
Only the baby Bronco was at Ford dealers made many people think that the compact and affordable Bronco Sport was the new Bronco. Quelle horreur!
The Ford Bronco Sport is an excellent little SUV (and I'll be getting to that more in a minute), but it's a far cry from the original Bronco. And, were it the only vehicle to have the Bronco name, I'd be surprised and disappointed. Except it isn't.
The Ford Bronco is a fantastic off-roader available in two- and four-door variants and is solid competition for the Jeep Wrangler.
The rear of the Bronco Sport is spacious, especially with the seats folded down. More handy storage tricks help maximize the space.
Then there's the Ford Bronco Sport, which competes with the Jeep Compass (and lots of other small SUVs) and will be popular with many folks who will probably never take it off the pavement.
Confusing the two, while understandable, does leave Ford with a bit of a mess on its hands. But at least people are aware of the thing; half the marketing battle won right there.
If you want to know more about the big boy Bronco, you'll have to check my other review because I drove the baby Bronco this week, and I absolutely loved it.
The under-seat storage in the rear is a great repurposing of normally wasted space.
My review unit was an almost fully-loaded $37,940 Badlands edition, which has all kinds of off-road capable equipment like off-road tires and underbody bash plates. I drove one off-road last year at a Ford event and came away impressed with its off-road chops.
But after spending a week with one, I'm even more impressed by its on-road manners and how well-designed the truck is. It's ridiculously practical.
The back of the front seats have zippered pockets that are large and padded enough to store a laptop safely, and there are a few rows of MOLLE loops — those are military-derived loops that can be used to hook carabiners and all manner of helpful gear.
The backs of the front seats have a series of MOLLE loops, a standardized mounting system for hanging, well, just about anything.
One of the rear seats pops up to reveal a hidden storage compartment perfect for whatever you might want to put in a hidden compartment. Up front, there's a convenient storage bin in the dash beneath the (large and lovely) infotainment screen that I used to hold my sunglasses.
Another bin below has a wireless phone charger, which is perfect because the Bronco Sport has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And there's webbing on the side of the center console to hold maps or your phone or whatever else.
And while there are two cupholders in the center console, there are two more in each front door. This is a seriously road trip-friendly SUV.
Even if you never leave the pavement, you’ll know that the Bronco Sport is always be ready to go exploring.
The cargo area is spacious, and you can open just the tailgate glass if you want to grab something off the top without opening the entire liftgate. And, though the rear seats aren't the biggest in the world, they're plenty roomy for shorter drives, and the rear headroom and visibility are tremendous thanks to stadium-esque seating and a roof that rises a bit.
I'm not going to argue whether the Bronco Sport is an affront to all Bronco-dom. That's for fanboys on the internet to debate — but I will say that the Bronco Sport is a terrific little SUV, and if you're in the market, it's well worth a look.
Just be prepared to explain to people that it's the Bronco Sport, not the Bronco... or drive off and don’t read the comments. That seems easier.
One Cool Detail:
Ford wants you to know that this is a Bronco so badly that there is but a single blue oval on the car (on the rear tailgate). Everywhere else — the seats, the steering wheel, the wheel caps — that you might find a carmaker’s mark, you have the Bronco logo instead. The embossing on the seats is particularly nice, especially if you catch it just right in golden hour sunlight.
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