Half a century ago, it was hard to be all things to all people with any variety of four-wheel-drive truck. Were you driving a Cowboy Cadillac, soft and plush, stuffed full of modern conveniences? Or was it a brash rock-crawler, well-suited for surmounting seemingly impossible obstacles? You wouldn’t want your carpet caked with mud and dust; you wouldn’t want to drive something so hardcore on the road. The division between fancy and raw had been shrinking since the launch of fleetside bed fenders in the ’50s, which (unsurprisingly) is where most buyers’ tastes and desires lay. Ford’s Bronco had once been part of shrinking that divide.
Like a jeep, but fancier, was the 1966 Bronco’s sturdy body-on-frame construction but with (if you so chose) a hard top and metal doors that shut. Advertising called it a “new kind of sports car!” but peppered its copy with references to
