FORD BRONCO

Dearborn's reborn off-road adventurer is now available in the UK as agrey import

- MATT PRIOR

TESTED 9.2.22, BERKSHIRE ON SALE NOW

TESTER'S NOTE The windows are frameless, which will make the doors lighter to lift off but harder to chain to a tree while you're off adventuring. MP

Given that Ford of Europe doesn't have enough head room under its legislative CO2 emissions targets to make a new Focus RS, there's no way it could officially offer a Jeep Wrangler-like SUV.

But you can get a new Ford Bronco (unofficially imported) here if you ask the right dealer: London's Clive Sutton, which is also big into the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Corvette.

Unveiled in 2020, reviving a grand old name, the Bronco is a separate-chassis 4x4 that comes in two-door or four-door forms. There's also the Bronco Sport, a very different, smaller, more road-focused unibody SUV.

This 'real' Bronco's chassis is derived from the Ranger pick-up truck, with a beam rear axle and independent front suspension.

See it and a Wrangler pictured together (it has been out in America long enough for multi-car reviews) and you can see the extent to which it's targeted at the Jeep. In four-door form, it's 4.8m long and 1.9m wide. You can get a soft or hard top. They're both rugged, separate chassis cars with 2WD modes and 4WD with high and low ratios. The doors and roof come off. Even the tailgate swings open sideways.

Jeep sells more than 200,000 Wranglers per year and does a pretty good line in parts, too, so you can see why Ford would fancy dropping a strong name into that class.