This, as the picture and indeed headline may have given away, is not your average Ford Bronco. What it is, however, is one more reason why we think the USA could work out quite nicely for us.
Just to be clear, we’re not saying your average Bronco is a bad thing. By APG’s own admission, the Ford Bronco is hardly a slouch off-road – short overhangs, optional 35-inch tyres, 562 Nm of low-down grunt and locking diffs will do that – but the ProRunner is a different animal altogether.
As befits a customised off-roader, you’ll see gigantic off-road tyres, axles as beefy as a Brunellian bridge and enough ground clearance to drive through Kent without turning the steering wheel once. But just about anyone can slap big tyres and Dana 60s under a Bronco and call it good. To say APG’s gone a bit further would be underselling things a touch.
See, even the Cliff Notes version of what’s gone into the ProRunner feels like a laundry list. There’s bigger, beefier boxed and billet control arms – billet on top and boxed on the bottom, in case you were curious. Racing coilovers bolted to raised and reinforced shock towers offer 14.5 inches (37cm) of suspension travel on 40-inch tyres, and up to 16.5 inches (42cm) on 37-inch tyres. As for the dampers themselves? Well, APG’s Bronco is so American that even the shock absorbers have had triple bypasses.
Speaking of lazy American stereotypes, this Bronco is wide. Even before you add in aerospace-grade carbon fibre fenders, the tyres and new axles alone add 14 inches of girth (cue the Archer jokes) over a regular Bronco, and it still manages to be four inches wider than the full-nutter Bronco Raptor.
And OK, speaking as English persons, we know we’re supposed to look down our gin-ruddied noses at this. Too big, too flashy, too specific for countryside we don’t possess (well, anymore) and undotted horizons we can’t pursue. But we can’t; all we really want is access to that countryside and those horizons.
So, consider this our official pitch to become Americans and have access to this kind of awesome.
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