The Ford Bronco Pickup That Never Was: Report

Ford would no longer plan to build a Bronco-based truck that would have been a Jeep Gladiator competitor. The truck would be released in 2024 or so, but now apparently it won’t be coming out at all.

Of Automotive News:

Ford Motor Co. has abandoned plans to build a pickup version of the Bronco off-road SUV, according to two sources familiar with the decision.

The automaker planned to introduce a Bronco-based pickup in 2024, but in recent months it has informed suppliers that the program has been canceled, the sources told Automotive News. It was to be built in the same plant that assembles the Bronco SUV and the Ranger pickup in Wayne, Michigan.

Ford spokesperson Mike Levine declined to comment on the company’s future product portfolio, but noted that “we continue to see strong demand for our full portfolio of rugged trucks and SUVs, including Bronco brand utility vehicles and our best-selling Ford line of trucks “.

Ford makes the full-size F-150, mid-size Ranger, and mid-size Maverick, and the Bronco-based truck, if Ford had made it, probably would have been something bigger than mid-size but not exactly full-size. The truck would have been accelerated around the same time last year, and now that it is no longer the case, it indicates either Ford’s agility, or the unreliability of some automotive media, or both.

And while Auto News says Ford is not making the Bronco pickup due to too much overlap with the Ranger, I suspect what is also happening here is that Ford has reviewed the Jeep Gladiator sluggish sales and said to himself: No thank you. Jeep sold more Gladiators in 2020 than in 2019, but that’s partly because Gladiator didn’t start selling until 2019, and Gladiator also ended 2020 as Jeep’s second slowest vehicle. , ahead of only the Renegade, a car that has barely been updated in seven years.

Bye, Bronco pickup, we never even knew you.