How 6 Days and 1,200 Miles at Baja Help Us Make a Better Bronco

Ford has been performing Bronco validation testing in the NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000 since its return to the lineup in 2021.

Ford Motor Company has some of the world’s best testing facilities and proving grounds, but those locations are no match for the lifetime’s worth of off-road testing our products can get in just six days of running on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula in the NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000. Competitors in the 1,200-mile off-road rally travel the full length of the peninsula, stopping overnight in different towns each night of the journey.

The NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000 is six days, but it represents a lifetime’s worth of off-roading on our Broncos.

Last year, as we have done since 2021, we took a nearly stock Bronco — either a Badlands or Wildtrak model — like the kind our customers can buy at a dealership and with only the required race safety equipment added, and performed validation testing on several new parts while finishing 58th place overall out of more than 150 vehicles who started the race. And soon, we’ll be headed back there.

We’re running our Broncos in the stock class, even finishing in the top-third of competitors.

I shared driving duties last year with Bronco Vehicle Engineering manager Jamie Groves. We split our time driving and navigating while also performing real-time data analysis and failure root cause analysis, creating solutions to any issues that might arise along the way.

The nature of the race allows our engineers time to analyze and repair any issues between stages, giving us real-time data and solutions.

Bronco SUVs have always been meant for Baja, going back to legendary off-roader Parnelli Jones, who won at NORRA in the 1960s in a Bronco. We wanted to make sure that we’re engineering a product that can meet all the traditional and future needs that our customers have and uphold what Bronco has always been. We run these Badlands and Wildtrak models as stock as possible.

One of our Bronco racers in seen here in the presence of Bronco off-road legends.

Off-road racing offers random and variable conditions that just can’t be reproduced elsewhere. These unique cases that arise through real-world scenarios are essential for validating vehicle durability and making sure our Bronco customers get an exciting, quality product that they can rely on out in the desert.

The unique conditions we see in Baja are essential for validating vehicle durability.

From an engineering standpoint, you want to control all the variables and have consistency — and off-roading is the complete opposite of that. You can’t even run over the same surface twice and get the same result, because the act of running over that surface has modified it. It provides all those fringe cases that we can’t necessarily model from an integration standpoint, and it provides the randomness of the input that’s required at a vehicle level to make sure we’re seeing what our customers see.

Our team completed the NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000 in 30 hours last year, good enough for a 58th-place overall finish out of more than 150 vehicles who started the race.

Unlike the better-known SCORE Baja 1000, which is a non-stop off-road race, the gauntlet of desert terrains in the NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000 includes stage rallying, which offers our team the chance to inspect the vehicle nightly and make any necessary maintenance. Last year, we completed the race in 30 hours, but it took some of our competitors anywhere from 20 hours to more than 60 hours to finish. The issues that arise over those 1,200 miles and the quick action our team uses to resolve them goes into each Bronco that rolls off the line at Michigan Assembly Plant.

Baja is just one location where we perform this kind of testing for our Broncos.

This type of punishment is not new. We’ve been doing this kind of off-road durability testing since the Bronco returned to our lineup in 2021, and the Baja Peninsula is just one location (with the infamous Johnson Valley in Southern California being another) where we take our iconic SUV for real-world testing. And for the last three years, we’ve been doing it in stock class.

This testing has helped us make improvements to various parts on our Broncos in recent years.

The terrain at NORRA’s Baja Mexican 1000 is similar to the course for Baja 1000, but not quite as rough. Still, there are a variety of rocks, sand, silt*, and even water** crossings. We’ve leveraged the havoc these features can bring to make a better Bronco for our customers.

Below are some of the areas where we’ve been testing and making improvements over the last few years (and our nickname for that year’s entry, because it’s bad luck to go racing through the desert without one!):

2021: “Elvis” (2.7-liter with 10-Speed Automatic Transmission — Badlands® model on 33-inch tires with HOSS 2.0 (High-Performance Off-Road Stability Suspension) with Bilstein™ Position Sensitive Dampers)

Everything — this was our first year

2022: “Pepper” (2.7-liter with 10-Speed Automatic Transmission)

2022.5 Model Year HOSS 3.0 (High-Performance Off-Road Stability Suspension) with FOX™ Internal Bypass Dampers on 35-inch tires with new steering gear
New 2.7-liter powertrain sub system

2023: “Pepper”

Prototype underbody shield upgrades
New brake control system and software

2024: “Eleanor” (2.3-liter with 7-Speed Manual Transmission — Hoss 3.0 with 35-inch tires)

All new 2.3-liter Modular Power Cylinder engine and first manual transmission
New R/T Goodyear™ 35-inch tires
New electronic brake booster

2025: “Sandy” (2.3-liter with 10-Speed Automatic Transmission — Hoss 3.0 with 35-inch tires)

First 2.3-liter with automatic transmission
Prototype front axle mount
Revised sway bar disconnect system
Prototype FOX tuning upgrade

It’s failures like those, which we haven’t necessarily seen in durability testing that we’ve run in Dearborn, that we can use to make purposeful changes to the production model. We also send traditional wear items such as shocks, bushings, and front lower control arms back to our suppliers so they can perform their own analysis.

Our engineers receive training from off-road drivers like Brad Lovell to prepare them for the race.

We are trained for driving the Baja route by none other than Ford Racing off-road driver Brad Lovell. But we also spend hundreds of miles in the passenger seat as navigators, a task that rivals that of driving. The weeklong journey through Baja also yields learnings about the interior of the Bronco. This can lead to improvements with the SUV’s camera and other off-road features.

Running at Baja is just one of the ways we’re making sure our products are made to help our customers pursue their passion. It’s something our customers can be proud of: that they own a product that could go race at Baja — and maybe even win — even if they aren’t going to use it that way. And if you do, you can trust that we’ve done our homework and that your vehicle is going to be reliable in extreme environments.

Seth Goslawski is the Off-Road and Trailer Tow team leader

* Always consult the Owner’s Manual before off-road driving, know your terrain and trail difficulty, and use appropriate safety gear.

** Always determine the water depth before attempting a crossing and proceed slowly. Refer to your Owner’s Manual for detailed information regarding driving through water.