Here’s the overwhelming first impression the 2021 Ford Bronco Sport makes upon first climbing aboard: “Whoa, this thing feels big and substantial.” The long, broad, largely horizontal hood with is raised “fender sights” along the outboard edges lend a real sense of size and substance that make you doubt the fact that this trucklet in fact measures 7.8 inches shorter in length than the Ford Escape it’s based on, with a 1.6-inch shorter wheelbase. In fact, the two vehicles’ front overhangs are identical; it’s the Sport’s tail that’s bobbed. The Bronco Sport’s “Safari-Step” roof is 4.1 to 5.3 inches taller than the Escape’s, which enables higher, more upright seating in both rows, and this further “heightens” the impression of Bronco Sport bigness. Baby Bronco, indeed.
Style and SubstanceAn interesting mix of textures and materials comprise the dash and door panels. The instrument binnacle hood, which extends to behind the screen, is hard plastic with [...]
A scientific report from the University of Washington published in the journal Science (via a report in The Seattle Times) has linked 6PPD, a near-universal chemical added to tires as a preservative, with the death of coho salmon in the Northwest. And it’s not just a couple of salmon here and there. In some runs, between 40 and 90 percent of the salmon die before spawning due to the symptoms that researchers were exploring, independent of other causes of fish mortality. This issue affects a great deal of the area studied: the Puget Sound. And the culprit, the researchers concluded, is an obscure chemical found in tire dust that is washing into watersheds.
Tires naturally shed tiny particles on the road as they wear down. In this case, this dust then runs into salmon-bearing streams and rivers through road runoff and storm drains. To reproduce the effect, the researchers steeped some very small particles from [...]
We had to wait decades for the return of the Ford Bronco SUV, and now we’re going to have to wait a little bit longer. Ford has confirmed to MotorTrend the coronavirus pandemic and its associated chaos has caused a supply-chain issue that will push the 2021 Bronco launch to the end of next summer rather than this coming spring, as originally planned.
A spokesman told us, “Ford is committed to building Broncos with the quality our customers expect and deserve.” Ford declined to name the affected suppliers.
As travel restrictions lifted, we hit the road in our 2020 Toyota Supra, and we’ve added more than 5,000 city and highway miles since the first update. As a result, our once-empty-road fuel economy (27 mpg average) is now more representative of real-world driving at 25 mpg. The EPA estimates 26 combined, so we’re close. A couple long drives that nearly drained the tank proved the Supra can be quite miserly, returning 30 to 31 mpg.
Supra at the TrackNot only are we driving more, we had an opportunity to run to our test facility to see how this 3.0 Premium measures up against two “Launch Editions” we tested last year. There’s no difference in hardware, only a 21-pound weight difference, so we didn’t expect a difference in performance. We were right; identical 0–60 mph times (3.9 seconds), the same quarter-mile times (12.5 seconds) and trap speeds were all within a half mph of [...]
If there’s a vehicle that had us conflicted, it was the previous Jaguar F-Pace SVR. Its brutally entertaining supercharged V-8 thrilled, but the interior was…unimpressive. And that’s a real issue in its segment of big-sticker SUVs with jaw-slacking performance, as such models are now in abundance. The F-Pace SVR had the moves but not the refinement. The 2021 Jaguar F-Pace SVR is here, and the stuff that ain’t broken isn’t fixed, but there’s welcome news inside the luxury SUV.
We covered the gist of the massive interior makeover in our First Look at of the non-SVR 2021 F-Pace models—a much more intensive facelift than you’d expect from a typical mid-cycle refresh. Frankly, the Jaguar needed it. It was hard to overlook the cabin’s subpar quality and its baffling ergonomic choices. Who puts window switches way up high on the door lip, near the side-view mirrors? The lackluster design and lack of attention to ergonomic detail [...]
