Filson is a company that makes outdoor gear meant to last a long time. Here, they’re being linked to the Bronco so the vehicle feels like part of an outdoors toolkit.
Dave Rivers is described as head of enthusiast vehicles for Ford, covering both Bronco and Mustang. That role matters because it connects the program’s engineering direction to the enthusiast-focused product strategy.
The Ford Mustang is a sports car made for stronger performance and a more exciting drive than a normal sedan. It’s a well-known model in Ford’s lineup. The podcast brings it up as part of the vehicles Ford is talking about.
Ed Krentz is Ford’s chief engineer for the Bronco. That usually means he’s responsible for the big technical decisions behind how the vehicle is designed and built.
Durability testing means the company deliberately puts the vehicle under hard use to see what might break. Then they fix those weak spots so the car lasts longer in real life.
Structural durability is about whether the vehicle’s main body structure can take repeated stress without getting damaged. They describe it as the basic level of testing before going even harder.
Johnson Valley is a rugged testing area in California. The hosts say they use it as a proving ground to test Bronco vehicles in tough, real-world-like conditions.
They’re saying they test until they find what breaks first, then they fix that. After that, they keep going to find the next weak spot so the vehicle gets better each time.
Twin-turbo means the engine uses two turbochargers to help it make more power. It helps the engine feel stronger when you need it, especially for off-road driving.
V6 is an engine type with six cylinders. In this segment, it’s important because they’re talking about a twin-turbo V6 that’s been used in other off-road Ford vehicles.
The Ford F-150 is a large pickup truck designed for hauling and everyday driving. The podcast mentions a 3.0-liter V6 twin-turbo engine, which is a way of making more power using forced induction. That matters because it affects how strong and responsive the truck feels.
The Ford Ranger is a midsize pickup truck, meaning it’s built to carry cargo and handle work or outdoor use. In the podcast, it’s mentioned alongside a more performance-focused version, and they talk about engine technology like twin turbos. That’s important because it changes how much power the truck can make and how it drives.
The Bronco Raptor is Ford’s tougher, off-road-oriented Bronco. Here, they’re using the Raptor’s long testing and development as proof that the new Bronco Pilsen’s setup should hold up.
Power and torque are the two main measures used to describe engine output. Torque is the twisting force that helps acceleration from low speeds, while power is related to how quickly the engine can keep making work as speed rises.
Fox shocks are special suspension parts that help the wheels move smoothly over bumps. In this episode, they’re talking about tuning them so the ride feels less jarring on regular roads.
35-inch tires are big off-road tires. They help the vehicle handle rough terrain better, and they can also affect how smooth the ride feels, so the suspension has to match.
A suspension package is the set of parts that control how the car rides over bumps. Here, they’re saying the setup is chosen to balance off-road ability with a smoother feel on pavement.
Wind noise is the loud whooshing sound you hear from air moving around the car. It gets worse when the vehicle has openings or removable roof parts, so engineers try to seal up gaps and manage airflow to quiet it down.
NVH is how smooth and quiet a car feels. It includes things like unwanted noise, shaking/vibration, and how rough the ride feels—so engineers try to reduce those for a more relaxing drive.
Term
variability
Here, “variability” means the sealing isn’t always the same in every situation. If a seal or gap changes slightly, wind can get in and create noise, so engineers try to make the sealing more consistent.
A digital rear view mirror is a screen that shows what’s behind you using a camera. It can help you see better when something like a rear-mounted spare tire blocks the normal mirror view.
The Ford Bronco is a rugged SUV built for off-roading. Here they’re talking about how the Bronco’s design—like the spare tire and off-road tires—changes what you can see and how easy it is to get in and out.
Instead of a normal mirror, this uses a camera mounted on the vehicle and shows the rear view on a screen. That way you can still see behind you even if the back is crowded with gear.
Image stability means the camera picture stays steady and clear, even when the vehicle is bouncing around. Off-road driving can shake things, so the system has to be designed to keep the view usable.
These are motorized steps on the side of the vehicle that come out to make it easier to climb in. They retract when you don’t need them, and they still have to work without hurting off-road ground clearance.
“Sasquatch tires” are the Bronco’s more aggressive off-road tires. They usually come with a taller, higher stance, which can make it harder to climb in unless there are steps or a running board.
Ground clearance is how much space there is between the bottom of the vehicle and the ground. More clearance helps you avoid hitting rocks or ruts when you’re off-road.
Retractable running boards are steps on the side of the vehicle that can fold out for easier entry. When you go off-road, they can fold away so they’re less likely to get in the way or get damaged.
Here, “off-road space” means the rough terrain area where the car has to clear obstacles. They’re saying the steps are designed to not be the first thing that gets hit or damaged.
“4x4” means the vehicle can drive all four wheels. They’re using it to describe the Bronco Filson as an off-road-focused SUV.
Concept
generational durability
“Generational durability” is basically a promise that the vehicle is built to last a long time. They’re saying it’s tough enough to hold up for years of use.
LIVE
Well, today we're not sitting in a car because the cars bring you to beautiful places like
this one in Seattle. This is the Sunclair Suncadia Resort. I'm here with Mike Levine
from Ford. So first, thank you for bringing us here. Yeah, absolutely. And so excited
to have you here and even more excited because we're out in the wilderness for the debut of
the of the new Bronco Philson. So this was when I got the invitation I was like, okay,
let me find out about this because I have to be honest, I never never knew about the brand
that it is. And I think that's the case for a lot of people. Yeah. And what's great is if you
are into exploring the wilderness and you're looking for really reliable gear, you know,
things that are going to wear in not wear out. It's Philson. Excellent. So tell us about it.
Who are we going to hear from because you have someone from marketing and someone from the actual
engineering team that work on this car, right? Yeah, so two of our leaders that you're going to hear
from the Bronco Philson program are going to be Dave Rivers. He's head of enthusiast vehicles for
Ford. So that includes Bronco and Mustang. And you're also going to hear from Ed Krentz,
who's chief engineer on Bronco.
You
know, Mike actually took four flights to get here from Peru today. Thanks for joining us. It's been
amazing to have you along the journey. You said you would never miss it. So thank you for being
here. Thanks for the chance to chat with everyone. Thank you for coming to Seattle and the Pacific
Northwest. We've got a great night tonight and then all day tomorrow planned for you. We're stoked
about this. Like if Mike says we've been working on Bronco together, you know, I'm fortunate as a
second generation Ford employee. Not only do I wake up and work with amazing men and women,
but I get to work on two of the most amazing brands probably in the universe. I think they are
anyways between Bronco and Mustang. And this has just been a project that has been in the works
for a little while relative to our relationship with Phil. So we're going to share more about that
with you between tonight and tomorrow. But as far as where we at with Bronco, so Bronco is having a
really great year in 2026. It's coming off our best year ever last year. And we're having, like I
said, a really good year this year. And all of it really is because of our owners. Our owners love
the brand. They love the product. They live the lifestyle. Many of you probably are owners.
And I would tell you that or have had exposure to the brand or know people that are Bronco
owners. But everything we do is through the eyes of our owners. And we're here to talk about additional
growth and growth of the brand through this collaboration with Philson, the Bronco Philson.
So we're going to share with you all the what's inspiring the inside of the vehicle
with some other things related to the Bronco Philson collaboration. Today we're going to just
give you a sneak peek on some of the product enhancements beyond just what we have from a
Bronco Philson standpoint. But if you may recall the our relationship with Philson started when
we revealed the Bronco Philson Wildland firefighting rig, which was a concept right after Bronco
launched in 2021, where we wanted to pay tribute to the hardworking men and women that fight wildland
fires every day. And we did it through this collaboration with the team at Philson. And it
was just resonated so much with our owners that we've been off studying it for quite a while.
You're going to hear from Paul Wraith, our head designer. He was part of the inspiration to the
relationship that we started with Philson. We'll talk a little more about that tomorrow. But for
purposes of tonight, let's talk about hardware. And to do that, and if you would, just maybe share
a little bit. Bronco is a billwild vehicle. It's it's tested and it is built for the most extreme
conditions. But if you would just talk a little bit about some of our durability testing.
Yeah, so we we run a standard for structural durability and all products go through. But that
is like the the entry level position for how we would torture test these vehicles. Our proving
ground our our test lab, if you will, is Johnson Valley, California. We are out there with development
teams around the clock, annually testing actual goal, whether or not isn't to meet a
bogey or pass. The actual goal is to find the next fuse in the system, the next thing that could break,
and continue to fix and improve the capability over time on these products. And then what is
the validation for having? Have we done enough? It tends to be racing, right? Racing informs
is the most ruling durability test that we can possibly run. Our development engineers are
pilot, one of the stock Broncos, they go three to 1000 annually. So we actually the people
that are testing the vehicles that are reforming the engineering decisions are also the drivers.
They're the last people that want to get stranded in in the Baja. So they're motivated to make sure
these vehicles are completely reliable and trustworthy. The Bronco Pilsen will be no
different. It'll be a test torture tested. It's built on a legacy or history of all those tests
that we run the date, but we continue to evolve and test. And as you'll find out, we have some
content here that we're going to want to ensure is entirely reliable. So you got durability testing
and you know Bronco Pilsen is a combination of American craftsmanship,
super capable, very highly durable in terms of a product offering. And along with like I mentioned
things on the inside, we've got a really awesome lineup of additional product content. One in
particular is powertrain. And so if you could just talk a little bit about what we're making
standard in terms of the engine under the hood. Yes, my my passion is around full disclosure,
my passion is around a great performance engine. You know, that's what we did on Mustang,
it's what we strive to do on all the increased products. So we have a tried and true twin turbo
V6 today, 2.7 liter. But we also have a tried and true 3 liter V6 twin turbo currently deployed
in our Raptor and Ranger Raptor products. That now becomes our standard engine and the Bronco
Pilsen. Now it's going to be very similar hardware, but it's going to be tuned specifically for this
application Raptor products. They go to desert and they figure out how to go fast. That is the only
equation they are trying to solve is must go fast. We are looking a bit more for a everyday
performance of well rounded effortless power, available torque for all the off road things
that we may get into. And also doing it in a way that's a little bit more, a little less aggressive
on the powertrain style as well. So really proud to bring an engine to the Bronco Pilsen
that has been again torture tested for about five years now of Bronco Raptor production
with all of our customers, all of the racing. It brings this vehicle to life. Nothing wrong
with the 2.7 liter, but adding a significant step up in power and torque is a real world
improvement. It's something you'll notice within a minute of being in the vehicle.
So I'm not going to talk about power and torque, but we are talking about a meaningful improvement
on 060. We don't want to talk about off road performance with Bronco, but it's just a way to
communicate acceleration. We're talking about a greater than a half a second improvement in
acceleration versus the 2.7. So it's a meaningful step up. We look forward to sharing the power
and torque numbers at a future date. So Bronco Pilsen premium bracket utility that takes Bronco
into a place that we haven't necessarily been so far answering questions that we've had from our
customers. Powertrain is one of them. There's some other ones in terms of overall refinement
and it comes standard with sat swatch on 35-inch tires and Fox shocks, but it's not the one that
we may have had in the past. You guys have then done some improvements in terms of the
right quality of the sat swatch package. Let's maybe talk a little about that.
Yes, so there's not really any interest in compromises of off road capability when we set
out to do this product. You definitely want to make the manners on road a little better,
but not at the expense of what the Broncos essence really is, which is an off road capable vehicle.
The obvious thing to do is to start with our most capable suspension package and tire package
that is standard. So the sat swatch package with the Fox position sensor dampers is standard.
What we have gone to listening to customers a little bit a lot is what we do. We get some
feedback at the roughness of the ride. Vehicles are sort of tuned for off road comfort. We took
the opportunity to tune it a little bit more for on road comfort and that's what we did with the
Fox tuning. We also stiffened the body of this product to give us a better ride as well. So we
poured it over again from the Raptor and the Seabull race. So that's standard content to provide
increased body structure, but the end goal was a less abrupt or abrasive ride than what you might
get in the vehicle that's specifically tuned for the off road space. So we've got premium rugged
capable utility that again our owners really want us to bring to market. A new powertrain,
an enhanced sat swatch package with another error we've had a lot of feedback on is wind noise.
And so you guys have gone to town to take on noise vibration harshness within the vehicle.
And this is going to be one of those ones where it's like you'll noticeably
sense how much quieter this Bronco is. Maybe share a little bit about what you guys did to our group
that to be the quietest Bronco that we'll have in our day. Yeah so one of the tenants of this
of the Bronco Philson as we as we sort of grow into the luxury space, premium space,
was to quiet down the cabin. Bronco customers are happy with the compromise of what they
gave with open air and some of the trade-offs that come with that, but there was an opportunity to
raise the bar on this and not sacrifice the open air capability or the modularity, but to do so
in a way that provided a less fatiguing sort of long-distance drive capability, the ability to
hold conversations with your passengers or even if your kids if you want to talk to them.
And there was no silver bullet. This was working in the engineering details. There
are about 20 different things that we touched on the vehicle in order to address how the
air went around the vehicle, how it sealed with variability being one of the things we were
trying to attack, as well as absorption. So when we do the vehicle walk-arounds tomorrow we can
point to some of the specific examples of what we did and what the effect was and what we were
trying to accomplish, but if you were to draw a line between sort of the rugged premium SUVs that
you would recognize and where we launched the Bronco in 21 model year, this vehicle from a
categories perspective is closer to the premium vehicles than it is to what we launched when we
set out in 21 model year. It is impactful change. You will notice it immediately. So we're going to
be quieter, more powerful, more refined, interior, two more things to touch on. Our owners packed
their Broncos with tons of gear. We also have a spare tire that's mounted on the back on the swing
gate. It can make disability a bit of a challenge. So you guys have taken that one out as well,
but with a digital rear view mirror, make sure to look at that. Yeah, so it's not uncommon in the
premium space to use the camera based rear view mirror. In many cases it's really just a nod to
premium or luxury for sake. In our case, if you don't know you're in a Bronco,
you will when you look in the rear view mirror and you get a full view of your spare tire.
Not to mention all the cargo you've been taking out for fly fishing or stacking the
Filson bags, which I love, love the Filson bags in the back of the vehicle. So visibility becomes
a compromise. The solution to that is digital based rear view mirror. We did launch
effectively the same customer content in the Raptor just last model year. The execution of
this is a little bit different, but it's the same effect from a customer perspective. But that'll
be standard content, real premium feature, solving challenges. Somebody made that as a fully loaded
Bronco today. So really excited about it. One of the interesting engineering challenges, unlike
doing a traditional on-road SUV, is image stability with the camera location. So we spend a lot of
effort on where to locate the camera. Does the camera get removed when you take parts off?
Does the camera vibrate when you're in the off-road space? So it wasn't quite as simple as just
going to buy the feature and put it in the vehicle. It was a significant amount of integration to make
sure it works in the environment that this product's intended to work in. And lastly, one of the
things we've heard about promoters is getting in and out can be a bit of a challenge, especially
about running boards. And another premium element of this product is it's going to have integrated
power running boards, which is the first time we're bringing that to Bronco. It's a major deal.
I know it took some engineering expertise, so maybe Sherrod lived about that.
Yeah, so this is one being a Sasquatch Bronco owner that I don't need to read customer
verbatim. I have a wife that is very, very clear about how difficult it is to get into a Bronco
with Sasquatch tires without any sort of step bar or running board. We've been working towards
improving that over time without, again, wanting to not wanting to give up any ground clearance or
capability. Fixed running boards are available. It can be a bit of a compromise. It can be
sacrificial on some trails, if you know what I mean. We did add the pillar and grab handle
with 26 model year, which is a significant improvement for aerodynamics. That'll be also,
as at all Broncos, including Bronco Filson. But yes, we think the retractable running boards
is the solution for this product. One, it helps you get in and out of the vehicle,
but two, it's not there to be sacrificial in the off-road space. So I think it's a really
elegant solution to try and test the solutions and do the retractable running boards and some
other Ford products. We do make some software improvements to make sure that you're not
driving around with running boards deployed at low speed off-road. So we've thought about the use
case again. I'm really excited about what this is going to do for the customer without any real
compromise in the off-road space. I guess just wrapping it up all for the customer. So just
listening a lot to feedback over the six model years that we've been in market and, you know,
just continually making improvements year after year. It's led to significant growth for us as a
brand. The Bronco Filson is the first time we're stepping into more of that premium,
drugged utility space in terms of the 4x4 category. American craftsmanship, highly durable. We call
it generational durability. We'll share more with you all tomorrow on that. The design team will
be with us when we talk more about the interior. And thanks so much all the improvements that you
did for our owners. I'm excited to talk more about it with you guys. Well, that's a lot of
information. A lot of cool things happening with Bronco since the debut what almost six years ago
now. And like keep improving it and people love it. My neighbor just, I got him a set of floor mats
and his car is beautiful. I was just looking at it with the new equipment and everything. And so
this is a new addition and I get a lot of people are going to be excited for it when it's going to
be out. Yeah, so ordering will be this fall and then it'll go on sale, start arriving at dealerships
early next year. Excellent. I hope to get and drive it sometime. Yeah, thanks Javier. Can't
wait to have you behind the wheel in the wilderness. Thank you. That's it for today's AI auto podcast
with Javier Moda. Hope you enjoyed the ride as much as we did. Tune in next time for more on
how AI is steering the wheel of tomorrow's autos. Drive safe, stay curious and catch you later.
About this episode
Hosts kick off with a wilderness debut for the Bronco Philson, tying Ford’s new off-road direction to Filson’s rugged, long-lasting outdoor heritage. Ford leaders and Bronco’s chief engineer discuss durability as an iterative process—standard structural checks followed by extreme “torture testing” at Johnson Valley to find the next failure point. The conversation then moves through the Philson’s twin-turbo V6 strategy, ride and NVH improvements, and practical tech like a digital rear-view camera and retractable power running boards.
In this episode, we’re joined by Ford to explore the First-Ever Bronco Filson Edition — a powerful collaboration where Bronco’s Built Wild spirit meets Filson’s legendary Unfailing Goods. This is more than a special edition — it’s a celebration of rugged adventure and field-tested excellence.
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