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So, if not the first-gen Bronco, what earned its big reputation? A bigger Bronco. In 1977, Chevy built 86,848 Blazers compared to Ford’s 13,693 Broncos. Ford postponed plans for an F-150-based Bronco in 1974 because of the Arab oil embargo. Starting in 1972, full-sized Blazer production numbers more than doubled those of the smaller Bronco. The Chevrolet K5 Blazer, which launched in 1969, was an even bigger issue in both size and sales.
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In 1974, the first Bronco’s best year, Ford built 25,824 units. Based on production numbers provided by Sam Fiorani at AutoForecast Solutions, during the first-gen Bronco’s 12-year production run, Ford built more Broncos than Jeep did CJ5s just three times, from 1969 to 1971. Nor was the first-gen Bronco a crushing sales hit. The Jeep CJ5 offered a radio in 1973, A/C in 1975. Ford didn't offer a radio or air conditioning until 1978. What the Bronco lacked was creature comforts.
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Magazine reviewers were generally favorable to the first Bronco, but there’s a reason the truck became a rural workhorse with an accessories catalog full of snowplows and posthole diggers. In addition to the brand name's English meaning, the word has another definition in its original Spanish: rough, rude. The Bronco gave those late 1960s customers what they wanted, but the Jeep was a low bar for comfort and space. As Todd Zuercher writes in his book Ford Bronco: A History of Ford’s Legendary 4x4, “The young warriors who had driven the Jeeps in World War II were now in their 40s and 50s and wanted a tough vehicle that could do everything a Jeep could do but with more comfort and more interior room.” The conversation around the Bronco revival has homed in on the original Bronco, built from 1966 to 1977, for good reason: the ur-Bronco was designed to joust with Jeep CJs, just like the two- and four-door Broncos debuting tomorrow will contend with the Wrangler.