The Ford Bronco was originally conceived and designed for rugged outdoorsmen, a two-door means of escape into nature from the busy cities of mid-century America.
But it was already tamed and polished for suburbanites, with cruise control and air conditioning, by 1994 when OJ Simpson curled up in one’s back, a gun to his temple, as patrol cars followed him for about two hours in the California dusk.
Two years later, the model was discontinued. But the Bronco—or at least this white Bronco—became one of America’s most iconic cars after the slow-speed chase that played out on TV screens in front of an audience of millions, a moment that was indelibly burned in the nation’s cultural memory.
“Kids who were born in the 2000s, even they know it’s OJ,” Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said of his students. “It’s as obvious as me showing the Twin Towers in flames. It definitely stuck with the zeitgeist because of all the contextual associations we applied to it.”
Bronco ridden by the Simpsons, who died on Wednesdaynow sits in a crime museum in Tennessee, parked near the Volkswagen Beetle that was driven by serial killer Ted Bundy.
White Ford Bronco is also the name of a band that plays covers of songs from the 1990s, by artists from Metallica to Will Smith and the Spice Girls.
Singer and guitarist Diego Valencia, 41, said he was considering band names in 2008 when a colleague suggested it.
“With something like ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ you might lose some people,” Valencia said. “But it was the best thing since the ’90s.”
The White Ford Bronco name is not a celebration of Simpson, Valencia said, but a nod to that “where were you in June 1994?”
INTENDED FOR HUNTERS AND FISHERS
The Bronco rolled off the assembly line in 1966 as one of the first sport utility vehicles, said Todd Zurcher, automotive historian and author of the 2019 book Ford Bronco: A Story of Ford’s Legendary 4×4.
“The whole thing back then was to get away and get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and go into the backcountry,” Zuercher said.
The vehicle was marketed to hunters and fishermen, but also to families for research, Zurcher said. The Bronco was an improvement over competing models like the Jeep CJ-5 and International Scout because it had a hardtop, a heater, and maybe even a radio.
SUVs have gotten progressively bigger and more luxurious over the years, Zuercher said, and at the time of Simpson’s pursuit, the Bronco was in its fifth generation.
Simpson also owned a Bronco, but it was seized as evidence after blood was found inside. The one involved in the police chase was a 1993 model XLT belonging to his friend, former teammate and driver that night, Al “AC” Cowlings.
“HE WAS LEAVING”
Simpson was accused of murder after his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death. Simpson failed to turn himself in to police as promised and was declared a fugitive on June 17, 1994.
He was later spotted in a Bronco with Cowlings, sparking a 60-mile (96-kilometer) police chase in Southern California. More than 90 million Americans watched in awe as television helicopters provided live pictures of the action. Thousands of other highways and city streets, some cheering for the former star, ran backwards as the strange motorcade passed them.
Cowlings said he had only one thing on his mind: keeping Simpson alive.
“He was signing off,” Cowlings told The Associated Press in 1996. “There’s no way OJ and I were trying to escape. I was trying to save a friend.
Clutching a family photo, Simpson was eventually pulled from the Bronco and surrendered in the driveway of his home in Brentwood. Police found a gun, Simpson’s passport, a fake beard and thousands of dollars in cash and checks in the car.
The make of the vehicle seemed to heighten the drama.
“If it was a Jeep Wrangler, it could almost be any of us,” said Collins, a marketing professor. “But because it was a white Ford Bronco, it stood out. It was a distinctive vehicle with that very distinctive man, OJ. It was still on brand.”
SOCCER MOMS DID NOT DRIVE BRONCOS
There has been speculation that the pursuit hastened the Bronco’s demise, or alternatively that it led to a spike in sales.
Zuercher, the automotive historian, said the Bronco was on its last legs at the time. As a two-door SUV, it could not compete with the four-door models, which were family friendly and extremely popular. The Ford Explorer, for example, was a smash hit when it came out in 1990.
“Most soccer moms from the ’90s didn’t drive Ford Broncos,” Zuercher said. “There were two more model years after the OJ chase, and then the Bronco was gone for 25 years.”
The Bronco chase car was later bought by three men, one of whom was a former Simpson agent, ESPN reported in 2016. It spent years in a Los Angeles parking lot, among other places, before finding a home at the Eastern Crime Museum at Alcatraz in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
In addition to the Simpsons Bronco and the Bundy Beetle, the museum also houses a 1933 Essex Terraplane that belonged to gangster John Dillinger and a 1934 Ford prop car used in the gory death scene at the end of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde “.
Taylor Smart, the museum’s marketing director, said there’s still an air of mystery about the OJ chase that captivates people, especially the question of why did it even happen?
The museum replays the chase on television screens in the room, where the iconic Bronco is parked behind a barrier, allowing visitors to relive the drama while using cellphones to take snapshots of a piece of American history.
“A lot of people can name the exact bar they were in” on that day 30 years ago, Smart said. “It was a shared experience with many people across America. Everyone has a story to tell about where they were, what they were doing when that white Bronco chase started.”
