Ford Bronco Sport Heritage | Cute and Costly

The Ford Bronco Sport Heritage Limited. This bad boy comes in at a scarcely believable $46,400 MSRP. So with tax, depending on where you live, you're looking at a nearly $50,000 Bronco Sport, which is a truly catastrophic amount of money. And let me tell you, there are many other ways you can spend your ducats, and here is a list on screen. The reality of the Bronco Sport is this thing was designed to be an affordable vehicle. It's best sampled or tasted in the 30 to very low $40,000 range. That's where the value proposition of this vehicle really exists. So what is the Bronco Sport Heritage Limited? Well, the heritage element has some unique styling points. The limited part means this is fully loaded. You get a moonroof, all the safety and technology features, including Bang & Olufsen audio system, Ford 360. You get all of the off-road capability found on the Bronco Sport. So you get a TBD rear diff, special suspension tuning, and skid plates. When it comes to exterior styling of the Bronco Sport, it's either a giant plus or a giant negative. But what I will say is at least Ford is trying something different. Most of the vehicles in this segment are essentially flavorless blobs. When it comes to the limited heritage, you only get three exterior color options. The regular, cheaper heritage gets more options. This gets yellow, two blues. You get white wheels and some white exterior accents like the grille. The interior of this vehicle also has unique color options that's like brown or saddle color. It does make the interior space feel a little bit more special, but it definitely doesn't feel like it's nearly $47,000. What about the usability? Well, this is a giant box. So you have a lot of glass, great visibility in this thing. So the storage in this vehicle is pretty good despite its relatively small size. The hatch in this vehicle gets a tiered setup. So the cargo shelf in the back acts as a secondary layer. So you can stack things on top and below to separate things out. You can pull that cargo shelf out to have a fairly large space. The rear hatch has a split open function. So it can either open the glass or the door. With the rear seats down, there's a good amount of space in this vehicle. It's very competitive for its class. The rear seats, however, are not large enough for full-size adults. If you have a taller driver, but for kids, they're fine. You have great interior storage in the door pockets and the center console area, and you have a little cubby below the infotainment screen. What about the seats? Well, as I mentioned earlier, they're this unique brown color. They're mostly comfortable. They certainly don't feel like a $40,000 seat, but they are heated. And the driving position in this vehicle is good enough for all body types. You can be a shorter driver. You'll have good visibility despite the long hood. And if you're a taller driver, you have good headroom. The functionality of the infotainment is very, very easy. You have all physical controls for things like HVAC, volume, track select. Your steering wheel controls are very logical. It's easy to interact with the safety setup. Your center gauge cluster has two analog gauges and a little digital display between both of them, which shows your drive modes, your trip, and your safety functions. And of course, your drive mode controller or your GOAT mode controller is this little rotary dial down here. Past that though, other than the obvious material choices, which again, feel like they're out of a $30,000 vehicle, not a $46,000 vehicle, are mostly logical. They're all harder plastics to suit this off-road lifestyle focused vehicle. So they're a little bit more ruggedized. The audio system as well, which is from Begg & Olufsen, is what you're expecting in this class of vehicle. Past that though, I think it's time for us to go put this thing up on the lift. In the shop with the Ford Bronco Sport Heritage Limited. So what do you need to know? Well, we did a video a couple years ago detailing what they attempted to accomplish with this vehicle. But here's a quick refresher. This is built on the C2 modular architecture by Ford. It can be scaled out to be things like the Ford Maverick or, of course, the Ford Escape. The Bronco Sports application is supposed to be off-road capable. And before you laugh and talk about how the only place this is going to be driven is Whole Foods, this is actually a surprisingly capable small little CUV. There are countless videos of people taking this on medium trails, and it does surprisingly well. What about the suspension architecture? Well, strut front, multi-link rear, essentially everything steel on this vehicle. When it comes to drive trains, you get two different ones. You can either get a 1.5 liter 3-cylinder turbocharged application, which we reviewed in the past. It's a gutless wonder, but it's cheap and it makes about 182 horsepower. It's paired to an 8-speed automatic, and it can only be had with an on-demand, more traditional all-wheel drive setup. This and the Badlands, which is the most expensive regular trim level, has the 2-liter 4-cylinder EcoBoost engine. It's a very common drivetrain that's used throughout the Ford lineup. In this car's case, it makes about 250 horsepower. It's paired to the same 8-speed automatic, but it can be had with a TBD or torque vectoring rear diff. It's essentially the same differential, changed and recalibrated from the old Focus RS. In this vehicle's case, it's meant to be off-road capable and get you out of sand and ruts. So it takes the available torque being sent to the rear, and can take 100% of that torque and either send it to the left or right wheels. When you get the Badlands or this Heritage Limited, you get skid plates and you get special tuning to the Haas suspension to, of course, deal with the all-terrain tires and the heavier weight of this vehicle. It weighs between 3,500 and about 3,700 pounds, and it tows not a whole lot. It's like 2,000 pounds. But past that though, I think it's time for us to go take this for a quick drive Listen to that EcoBoost, Mark. Two liters, some physical gears, a torque vectoring rear diff, and an astronomical asking price. What's not to like about this thing? This is the magic of re-skinning a Ford Escape, giving it a more modern look, more character, and then tacking on a huge price tag. Now, we already like the Maverick, just to be fair. If you like the Maverick, you have to automatically like this, but there's some problems with it, I think. We're talking about the Heritage. We already did the Bronco Sport, so you know what we think about it. The Heritage, I will say, you know, this is the equivalent of me taking a girl out on a date and she orders three appetizers, she orders three entrees, then I gotta buy her dessert, we get back to her house, we start peeling off the clothes, and I find out she's wearing an adult diaper filled with logs that I have to clean up on her. I'm getting bent over, I'm getting, I'm paying a lot more than what this is worth, the date, and I feel like that's the same thing as the Heritage Edition. They've tarted it up, put it bad, put badges on it, they've recreated the steel wheels on the old Escort wagon from the junkyard and painted them white. I mean, I get it, but nobody in their right mind should be paying this much money for this. Look, I agree with you. I think the Heritage element of this, in the limited trim, because you can get a regular Heritage in like the $30,000 range, the 1.5 liter, you know, the on-demand all-wheel drive system, and much like the regular Maverick, all the deficiencies you can have with like ride comfort and handling, you can forgive when you're $25,000 to $30,000. Yeah, and in the Bronco sports case, low $30,000. Yeah. I can forgive it, right? Right. At this price point, yes, the 2 liter is far more powerful than the 1.5 liter, and yes, the TVD is really, really capable, but if you're going to be spending over $40,000, you're going to be in the mid-40s, and if you want a real off-roader, you can buy a Wrangler, you can buy a real Bronco for that money. See, this is the thing that people don't quite understand, is like, how can you have a double standard of how can you like one thing that's cheap, but then you nitpick everything at a certain price, and this is why. This is a ---- box. That's what it feels like. It feels like it should be $30,000, and I'm okay with it at $30,000 because all this stuff, all the little things, the ride quality, the sound, this is a very echoey cabin as well. There's so much echo in this, but I will not excuse it above $40,000 because there's so many options. Yeah, with tax, you're like at $50,000. Yeah, it's nuts. So, let's talk about the things that this Heritage has that you can get on other trim levels that are less money that it does well because, you know, we're spending a large part of this video just complaining about price. Basic suspension tuning in this thing, it's fairly compliant. Yes, the suspension's specific to the 2.0-liter variants, but if you've got like a Badlands, which starts in the high 30s, you can get the same suspension tuning as this. The torque vectoring rear diff, does it help you in the corners, or is it just calibrated for off-road? It's really just calibrated for off-road. The way this is sprung is it's tall and wobbly. Again, it is a very capable little off-roader, but on the road, it's a bit ponderous in the front end, but the trans calibration is fine for the 2.0-liter. It's basically what you're expecting from the Ford products. The engine itself, all the power's down low, which helps it not feel like a total pig, and it returns reasonable fuel economy. The main thing is it gets regular, you can put regular gas in it, which if you're in like my combined with a slightly heavy right foot, again, this is not a vehicle you're going to want to romp on. Low 20s, high teens, which for a big, heavy, almost 4,000-pound vehicle that is an off-road focus, it's fine. I think if you got this, most of this experience for like $35,000, $36,000, $38,000, this serves as an interesting option versus something like the Crosstrek or the Stellantis piles are horrible, like the Renegade and the Cherokee. Let's be clear that this is the way they package this exterior, interior usability, a lot of the other things about it. When I said it was a shitbox, like it's not on the level of Jeep Renegade shitbox. This is a really cool car. I do like the presence of it. If you didn't tell me the price and you just threw it out at me, I'd be like, I could see the usage case for a lot of people that really like this kind of quirky, off-roady look, like older style boxy looking vehicle. It does it perfectly. What are the features on here that you can get on the lower trim levels? Like the torque vectoring rear diff and the engine, what trims is this available on outside of the Heritage? So just the badlands where you can get the torque vectoring rear diff, when you move down, basically anything below that, you get the eight-speed automatic with the on-demand all-wheel drive system and the 1.5 liter three-cylinder, but you can get the safety suite, the four 360, which does work well. You get the heated seats. Basically you can get all the ---- you can get in a Maverick and a regular Escape, just ruggedized to be that adventure-esque vehicle. And again, this is now a segment where if you go hiking, you carry dogs with you. I know you talk about it in the interior, but that's the immediate standout thing. This is a practical, usable tool for somebody that is doing outdoor stuff or has pets because there's much like the Maverick, you sacrifice the sound of it's very noisy cabin reverberation because everything's hard plastic, but you don't have to worry about the cleanup in here, which is really nice. Yep. With that though, Mark, I think we've sort of beat this vehicle to death. Let's head on to the final thoughts and wrap up this video. Final thoughts on the Ford Bronco Sport Heritage Limited. We've beat the main issue of this vehicle to death at this point. And unless you love the way this thing looks or you love the Ford Bronco Sport, you don't buy this trim level. That said, there are lots of positives about the CUV from its interesting styling to its ruggedized interior and its genuine off-road capability. This offer is a fairly unique vehicle in this segment. It's not just some blob like all the That said, you know, it's not as refined to drive as something like a CX-50 or a CX-5 or a RAV4. It just is that off-road-esque Bronco Sport. And if you like this vehicle and you like what it has to offer, this might be something to look at. With that, thanks for watching. Hope to see you soon.