- Ford’s CEO has hinted that it’s building a right-hand drive Bronco SUV that could sell in markets like Australia and the UK.
- Jim Farley told Car Magazine that “the big Bronco will do right-hand drive and I think it’s worth a try.”
- The Bronco is already exported to mainland Europe in its original left-hand drive form.
US sales figures for the Ford Bronco have taken a slide this year, but comments made recently by the automaker’s CEO suggest he has a plan to keep the Michigan production lines busy. That plan would involve making the retro SUV available in right-hand drive.
Ford already exports the Bronco to mainland Europe, which, like the US, drives on the right. But it previously opted out of building a right-hand drive version on cost grounds, meaning the SUV isn’t available in the UK, Australia, Japan, and South Africa, who all drive on the left.
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Jim Farley didn’t outright confirm that a right-hook Bronco is coming, but it certainly sounds like that’s the case when you hear what he told one UK media outlet.
‘The big Bronco will do right-hand drive and I think it’s worth a try,’ Farley said in a sit-down interview with Britain’s Car Magazine, his wording acknowledging that the Bronco shares its platform with the Ranger pickup, which is sold in the UK and Australia with the steering wheel on the right.
If the Bronco did get a steering-wheel swap, the SUV would be positioned in UK and Australian markets against the Land Rover Defender, the irony of which isn’t lost on Farley, whose firm sold the Land Rover brand to Tata in 2008.
‘We had a break-up with a marriage there,’ he told Car. ‘The next step is to go dating again, right?’
If the Bronco did get a right-hand drive option it wouldn’t be the first Blue Oval American icon to make the switch. Ford engineered the sixth-generation 2015 Mustang for both left- and right-hand drive applications from the start. RHD Broncos would likley be built at Ford’s Michigan Assembly plant in the US rather than at the Nanchang facility in China which services the Asian market.
