How Does the Ford Bronco Handle Snowy Winter Conditions? We Find Out!

Hey folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. We have already tested this new Ford Bronco in a number of different forms but the weather was warm so the water was flowing and it was quite muddy. We live in Canada though where 10 months out of the year we got snow on the ground so in this video we need to talk about what this Ford Bronco does out here in the winter time. By now I'm sure you've heard the powertrain specs on the Bronco so I'm not going to say them again. I'll just throw them up here. I want to talk about what makes this Bronco so good in the snow and it has everything to do with its off-road characteristics. 11.5 inches of ground clearance, over 40 degrees of approach, lockers in the front and the rear and of course with the Sasquatch package 35 inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires. These are M plus S rated although they do not have the three peak mountain snowflake But still, all of that means you're going to ride up above the snow, the tire is going to be able to really dig into the snow and then with those lockers you're going to get maximum traction and that's already enough talking about it. Let's go out there and hit the snow and see how it handles. That's as far as she's going in two wheel and you know what folks? This is not winter off-roading. This is realistic. This is literally the road down the street from my house. Sometimes you just kind of end up in the ditch because you thought it was a road and it wasn't. Okay so just the rear locks. Nah. Nah, you need the four wheel drive for sure. With the rear locks. Oh hello. That didn't work. Oh it's deep up here in your nose. Can you still back her out? It got you moving pretty good though. These tires really do chew through that snow. And that's the big advantage to having these big tires. There's nothing getting in the way. The tire can just do it's job and chew through. Look how deep that is. You're a snow plow now. How does it feel chugging through there? Lots of grip? Yeah, no, I mean it's good. Now if we were that deep on both sides of the vehicle, I wonder where the heck we'd end up. However, I'd rather be in this than in a Ford Focus. Fair enough. And folks, here comes another real world scenario. It's actually warm today. Two or three degrees Celsius. You can see it's getting so slushy. So let's see how the Bronco handles driving through this gnarly slush. Nice. Seriously deep. But once again, if nothing gets in the way of those tires, it'd do a real nice job chugging through. Now here we are driving in the Bronco on a nice wintery February day. Although actually, it's a bit weird today, right dad? It's like three degrees Celsius. So everything's really soft and melting and we got a lot of slushy kind of crap out here on the roads. But this is, you know, really typical for what we deal with. And you never know. In February, we could get rain, we can get snow. So it's nice to have a vehicle that's ready for it. So here on the Bronco, what do we really have that's making it winter ready? Well, we do have a slippery driving mode that's appreciated. Really slippery driving, most winter driving modes, their biggest advantage is they roll on the power kind of gradually, so you don't get a lot of wheel spin. That's the same thing we have here. Now of course, we have four wheel drive. I don't need to explain to you how that works. But one of the systems I really like is we have four auto here on the Bronco. So four auto essentially is going to sense slip out of the rear wheels, and then it will send the power forward. And we did a little demonstration. So here in the snowy parking lot, you can see it take off in two wheel drive with the traction control off. And as you can see, the rear end was just going all over the place. And dad really had to steer to keep that thing from going into the trees. Now put it into four auto with the traction control off, and here's the takeoff. And as you can see, you get a little slip out of the rear, quickly the front end hooks up. And although you still have the wheels spinning, the vehicle was tracking dead straight. Well, that was it. I mean, I didn't have to counter steer. It was just pulling it. That's the difference. And how quick did it feel to you? Did it feel like it reacted pretty quickly? Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was, there didn't seem to be any lag. So that's the beauty. You know, you don't want to ride around all the time in four wheel drive, you're going to end up binding up that system going around corners. So if you don't want to deal with any of that, you don't have to put it in four auto in the wintertime. And when you need it, it'll be there. I like the four auto system in a very real way. I think we were talking earlier that the all wheel drive systems that you find in most crossovers today, that's exactly what they are. They're a part time system that kicks in either with a set of clutches or sensors that's going to redistribute power when you need it. And frankly, if you live in our kind of climate, it's a really great thing to have. Now, the chief difference between all wheel drive that you will find in a SUV or a CUV and what you have here in this Bronco is that the all wheel drive systems will get you down a snowy, slushy plowed road, whereas the Bronco will go down long before the plow gets there. That's what makes it that much more impressive. Absolutely. And I think just to kind of expand on that point, the true difference, Dad, is you said it, a clutch pack, generally with all wheel drive, there is a clutch which eventually can either slip or overheat. Whereas when you have a real four wheel drive with a transfer case like we have here in the Bronco, something is going to break before the four wheel drive stops working. So that's the other thing. Like you said, if you're really buried in the snow bank. I've never broken a four wheel drive. Have you broken a four wheel drive? Well, let's not talk about it. OK. If you really get buried in a snow bank too, you want proper four wheel drive because you want to have that longevity and not worrying about some clutch pack burning out. That's why I love the lockers on this thing. And this is the kid in me resurfacing because I will always go a little too far. And then when I realize I'm in trouble, I've got lockers. They're my backups. They're what's going to get me out of what I got into. And apart from the fact that, you know, it's awfully cold where we live and this is really the only kind of fun that we get in the winter. Let's talk livability now with this Bronco and we're going to do one of the most Canadian things we can go tobogganing with my kids. So let's see how the Bronco works for that. First of all, let's open up the back end. I want to point out this hatch or this gate opens up well past 90 degrees and then the glass flips open quite high to high enough that I can actually stand under here and not worry about smacking my head. Then when it comes to cargo space, pretty decent amount. You can go old school like me with the wooden toboggan. New school like my little guy Otis with the dinosaur toboggan. And then of course we've also got the baby sleigh fully enclosed. And all three of them fit in there. No problem. So quite a bit of storage. Now let's see in the back seat what kind of kid storage we have. So this is my Harmony front facing child seat right here. And you can see it's not totally installed, but if it was, you're really only giving your kid a tiny bit of leg room unless you move forward. If this was a rear facing seat, no doubt this front passenger would have to move forward to accommodate. So yes, it's not a ton of leg room in the back of the Bronco, but there is quite a bit of child seat flexibility. We have lower latch anchors on both sides, so two sets. And then three top tethers all the way along this bench. Oh yeah, and one more important thing about child safety. Here in the Bronco, we do have rear side curtain airbags. One feature that's been missing from the Jeep Wrangler for a number of years now. Having lived with this Bronco for a week now, there is one thing we have noticed in the wintertime that's not great. And it has to do with these fenders. Now this is going to be the dramatic reenactment here, so bear with me. I'll pick up some snow. So picture this, after a full night of snow, this fender is absolutely filled up here. And you know what, it's not just snow, we've actually had some rain this week, so it was iced up. And then what happens when you open this door, you end up shoveling that fender off. And again, if it's just fluffy snow, not so bad. Sometimes it's really crunchy, crunching through the ice and maybe a little plastic cladding on the door might have helped. Anyways, just seems like a little bit of oversight when it comes to this back fender. So we've kind of already done the sort of fun stuff in this video, and we've done a lot of fun stuff with Broncos. We've gone off-road, and every time we go off-road, we're super impressed by the Bronco, and that's kind of let Dad and I maybe get too carried away. So with this Bronco, we really wanted to look at just livability. What is this vehicle truly like to own in a week-in, week-out basis? And sometimes that really exposes some of the little things, and I'll give you two of my impressions. One's positive, one's negative. The positive one is the drive. Unlike a Wrangler, we have independent front suspension here, and that's just one of the reasons why the Bronco is just an easy vehicle to drive. I would not say that about a Jeep Wrangler, but I would say that about this Ford Bronco. And then on the downside, the roof. It's loud in here. And again, I say this after driving tons of Wranglers, the Wrangler seems to be a little bit quieter. I don't know what Jeep does to make its open roof quieter than the Ford, but yeah, for some reason, the Bronco to me is just quite loud. And then you're also getting 35s, right, monster tires, which are kind of loud too. Those are my kind of feelings. You got any impressions that jump out at you? I agree with your two points, but then I wanna go a little further than that, which is simply to say that, you know, I've been driving this thing all week, and I've done the things that we all do. I went to get groceries, I went to the bank, you know, went to visit my mother-in-law. And it's nice on the highway, it's nice on the byway, it drives well, it's comfortable, the seating is comfortable, the controls are decent, it's got a nice mix of switches and gauges, and even though you've got a big sort of infotainment system, frankly, I don't feel that I ever really have to touch it. Everything I need is, like I said, is buttons and dials, which, quite frankly, I prefer. Backseat is decent, and there's a lot of really good storage further back than that. I mean, this is quite a sizable vehicle. Steve showed you a little bit earlier on how he's jamming his toboggan and his kids' toys back there. So that's a big thing too, because I'm forever in and out with usually stuff that my wife makes me take somewhere. And the rubber floor mats, the various different things in here, the clean surfaces, you know what? Yeah, that's the thing. I buy this as my daily driver. And I wouldn't have to really suffer for it, because honestly, for a long time, and again, we're going to go back to the Jeeps, not, say, for the last 10 years, but there was a time when you bought a Jeep and you were proud of it, but you suffered for it. And that's where I think the Bronco and Ford really did their homework. They looked at all those little quirky things and they said, you know what? We can do better. And they have. We have come to the end of this one, folks. So what's the verdict? Well, do you buy this Bronco to go off-road? Of course you do. You buy it to go off-road and do ridiculous things like eat a snowbank like that. But honestly, you can also buy this Bronco if you live in a climate like we have here in southern Ontario, because for half of the year, you're driving in slushy, snowy, miserable conditions. And when you have a vehicle like this, you're absolutely confident every single day. Well, folks, like I said, that's it for this one. Now please go below, let me know what you think of the Bronco while you're down there. Don't forget to hit like, hit subscribe, hit join to become a member, and then come right back here to Truck King to see what we're testing next. See ya. All right. Well, you got the Bronco stuck here, so you got to get back in and get it out. Yeah. Well, give me a step ladder, will ya? Jeez. Good thing you had that step on there. Okay. Good work. Gonna need the chiropractor. See how it comes off. How much snow we got stuck under it? Not as much as I expected, actually.