The Ford Bronco II

• The Bronco II has a "handling" problem like many other of the small sport utility vehicles. It does friction rollovers on the highway. A friction rollover occurs when the cornering forces -tire friction forces- generated by the driver's steering input becomes high enough to cause the vehicle to rotate around its longitudinal axis and lift the tires off the ground. Most passenger vehicles cannot rollover in this way, although they can rollover as a result of wheel trip when the sliding wheel is blocked by a curb or some other impediment. This problem appears in small vehicles because they are too narrow in relation to their height.

• Ford knew that the vehicle exhibited this behavior. Their own tests conducted while the vehicle was still in development produced numerous wheel lift events. They were very concerned about it, they even considered a last minute cancellation of the program but they went ahead and produced the vehicle because they needed the money. Ford had lost billions of dollars in the years preceding the Bronco II introduction and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Bronco II was very profitable, some estimates put Ford's profits at about $ 3400.00 per vehicle when it was introduced in 1983 with a basic list price of about $ 10,000.00.

• Ford was concerned with the problem because of the negative publicity generated by the Jeep CJ rollovers. There is some evidence that Ford lawyers actually went to the Arizona test facility and watched it roll over before it went into production. Ford started planning its defense of the vehicle early, they knew they would be sued. There have been suggestions of a cover-up and deliberate destruction of documents in disregard of the companies own policies.

• How did Ford get into this situation? Why wasn't the vehicle fixed before it went into production? This is a very interesting story and goes to the heart of the problems exhibited by the American automobile industry in this period. Ford had decided to produce a small pickup, the Ranger or "Yuma" project it was originally called, in order to compete with the Japanese and the new Chevy S10. They also decided to develop a new size "utility vehicle" using the small pickups' chassis. They committed from the beginning to making the Bronco II a derivative vehicle, based on a narrow pickup's components.

• Early testing revealed problems, the earliest prototypes were even worse than the CJ 5. They made the Bronco II as wide and stable as they could- without changing the basic platform. Abandoning the Ranger platform would have delayed the project about 18 months and cost Ford hundreds of millions of dollars. Ford documents reveal constant modifications and proposed revisions to eliminate the problem. But effective fixes were too expensive or too drastic to implement so they did the best they could with the project they started with and put the vehicle into production.

• The Bronco II has another problem in addition to being too narrow (actually it is the widest of the small SUV's of this era). Ford decided to use its twin I beam front suspension in the vehicle largely to preserve continuity along the truck lines and for other marketing considerations. The twin I beam front end actually raises the vehicle when it is cornering, about 2.5". This phenomenon is called "jacking" and while present in most front suspension designs, with the Ford suspension the effect is extreme and may make the vehicle go over even though the basic dimensions do not.

• Several Ford engineers have testified along the lines suggested above and we have their depositions and trial transcripts We also have many of the "Bates" documents concerned with development and testing of the Bronco II. Perhaps most importantly we have the seldom told story about why SUV's of this era were so narrow. It has to do with foreign tax laws and is a rather fascinating insight into the international automotive industry.
 
 

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