This Ford Bronco Suspension Flex Test video is a follow-up to my earlier Ford Bronco Suspension Walkaround Video. That previous video shows the nuts and bolts of what the Ford engineering team did to reinvent the Bronco. This Suspension Flex Test video shows how well that suspension articulates in a frame twist situation that's similar to what you might encounter off-road.

The new Ford Bronco is a body-on-frame SUV as it has been in the past, but this all new version has independent suspension in the front, which has led to all sorts of debate. This test aims to see just how much the new Bronco can flex.

This new Bronco comes in six trim levels: Base, Big Bend, Black Diamond, Outer Banks, Badlands and Wildtrak. This video depicts a special (and now sold out) seventh model that was offered to early buyers called First Edition. It's basically a blend of the Badlands and Wildtrak, with the larger 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6 engine. From the Badlands it gets a stabilizer disconnect mechanism, and from the Wildtrak it gets the 35" tires from the Sasquatch package and locking front and rear differentials. The Badlands normally comes with 33" tires that allowed the engineers to permit the Bilstein shocks to extend farther for more suspension travel, but the presence of 35" tires here made it necessary for compression travel to be limited by about an inch to keep the big tires from rubbing.

A lot of enthusiasts are griping about the independent front suspension here, and for maximum flex in a situation like this, they have a point. But solid axles are sub-optimal when it comes to daily-drive ride comfort, steering precision, and the possibility of the rare but much-discussed "death wobble" problem. To this point, their only Jeep Wrangler alternative has been the Toyota 4Runner. That's a great vehicle, but it doesn’t offer the open-air experience you get when you remove a Jeep Wrangler’s top and doors. The new Bronco seems to offer buyers the best aspects of both. It’s roof and doors come off to give owners the open-air experience of a Wrangler, but its independent front suspension makes it ride and steer more comfortably around town.

Why am I doing this? I geek out over suspension stuff. I'm a former suspension development engineer that worked for years on truck and SUV suspension development projects for two automakers at their remote desert proving grounds. Later on, I somehow stumbled into auto journalism, and for several years I created a popular photo feature called a Suspension Walkaround for Inside Line, a now-defunct offshoot of Edmunds.com (no relation). Today I have resumed writing these features under the name Suspension Deep Dive for Autoblog. Between the two outlets, over 100 of them have been published. Along the way I managed to grow a good-sized fan base, and one question I often heard was, “When are you going to make video versions?”

I never seemed to have the time, the equipment, or the confidence to get in front of the camera, but I got over that by hosting at least 80 professionally-produced videos over three years on the Edmunds You Tube channel. If you like it, please tell your friends, click subscribe, share links, give it a like and check out the other videos on my channel, which is simply called Dan Edmunds. You can also type in the channel’s alias: SuspensionTuna. And I take requests. I can't promise that I can get my hands on any car or truck, but the odds are good. And the more views I get, the more horsepower I'll have when requesting cars to examine.