2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch Prototype First Drive: The little beast
MARYVILLE, Tenn – Adding a Sasquatch package to the 2025 Ford Bronco Sport sounds a touch silly at first blush. If you truly want off-road capability, just go buy the regular Bronco, right? Well, yes, this is still the answer I’d give you, but the Bronco Sport is undeniably more tantalizing this year for the light off-roading crowd who might not want to deal with the compromises of a body-on-frame, single-minded, off-road SUV.
You can get the full skinny on what Ford’s changed for 2025 here, but alongside telling us about what’s new, Ford let us drive the Sasquatch in prototype form. It was only for about 20 minutes on the company’s Tennessee Off-Roadeo property, but it was enough to discover that the Sasquatch is going to surprise you with the type of terrain it can clamber over.
The Sasquatch builds upon the Badlands, one of two trim levels it can be added to, but we’ll get to the other in a minute. The list of added features is lengthy. Ford tacks on Bilstein rear shocks with position-sensitive damping and piggyback reservoirs that better absorb more extreme, high-speed events. New front and rear springs increase ground clearance by 0.6 inches over the Badlands to a very Subaru-like 8.7 inches, and extends suspension travel by the same amount. Trim-specific 29-inch Goodyear Territory all-terrain tires come standard and were developed specifically for this model with much more aggressive tread – they sure do look the part. Protection is ramped up significantly with a front brush guard, front and rear bumpers with steel bash plates, even more underbody skid plates, and additional, stronger recovery points. Said bumpers are now modular, too, with the ability to fit a range of accessories to them like light bars, dune flags and more.
All of the above comes in addition to the Badlands’ extra equipment, which means most of that (with one big exception) is also added to the other Sasquatchable Bronco Sport: the Outer Banks. That includes the twin-clutch, torque-vectoring rear drive unit and locking rear differential that had previously been exclusive to the Badlands. It does not include the 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine upgrade, however. The Outer Banks continues to have the 1.5-liter turbo three-cylinder, but regardless of powertrain (both of which receive a slight downgrade in total output due to emissions requirements), Ford says the rear differential is upgraded for 2025 with greater thermal capacity. That’s an especially good thing for anyone who cares to play off-road.
Besides having the same extra Sasquatch equipment, the Outer Banks version gains a full inch of ground clearance over the regular variant to a total of 8.8 inches (that’s correct, it has more than the Badlands by one tenth of an inch), and similarly greater jumps in approach, departure and breakover angles. In short, it’s a much bigger deal for the Outer Banks.
That said, perhaps unsurprisingly, Ford put us in a Badlands with the Sasquatch package. On the recently-rained-upon muddy trails of southern Tennessee, those all-terrain tires slipped and slid the little Bronco Sport through both mild and middling off-road events. The 8.7 inches of ground clearance allows you to clear obstacles that just don’t seem within the realm of possibility for such a small, unibody crossover. Some obstacles meant to challenge the suspension’s articulation (of which there is very little) instead highlighted the new rear dampers, showing off their ability to land the Bronco Sport back down on Earth without sending shockwaves through the cabin. That said, Ford wasn’t going to throw anything at us the Bronco Sport couldn’t do in such a short period of time behind the wheel, nor did we get a chance to see how these more extreme off-road parts translate to on-road usage (we had the same lament about the Ford F-150 Raptor and Ranger Raptor first drives).
The chunkier off-road tires could lead to a louder highway driving experience and worse braking distances. It was essentially impossible to get a read on how the new Bilstein rear dampers might fare on the road, but we have high hopes considering the damping technology in question. Ford engineers tell us the goal was to not compromise the on-road behavior with these off-road upgrades, but we’ll need to wait and see what the end result is with further drive time.
What is easily discernible is how much of an upgrade the new-for-2025 tech is inside the Bronco Sport. The new 13.2-inch Sync 4 infotainment system lined up alongside the 12.3-inch fully digital instrument panel is an enormous upgrade over the middling-to-meh tech suite it featured before. Animations and responses are both smooth and quick. The instrument panel adjusting to the specific drive mode is a sweet trick to get you in the mood for the type of terrain you’re tackling. Plus, the upgraded trail cameras that display at any speed while driving off-road couldn’t be executed any better, now with guidelines for your two front tires and a high-res video feed.
We even tried out the new one-pedal drive mode that allows you to control the speed of the Bronco Sport in slower sections with just the throttle pedal, acting a little like an EV with regenerative brakes. The goal is to make off-roading more approachable for the beginner, letting you divert greater attention to the trail and your steering instead of hopping between the throttle and brake.
It’s difficult to find many (or any) hard conclusions about a prototype vehicle after just a short stint exclusively on off-road trails, especially while we’re still waiting on official pricing that could make a big difference in how highly we may recommend the package. Whether or not we’d opt for the Sasquatch would also depend a lot on how it behaves on pavement, since that’s likely where a Bronco Sport is going to spend most of its time. For those on the fence between the big Bronco and the little Bronco Sport for fear of the Sport not being capable enough for your use case, this Sasquatch could be the version that tips it into favor. There’s no denying it’ll be the preferred trim for the “power user.” And even if you don’t use its added capability to the fullest, there’s no denying the Sasquatch is now officially the coolest-looking Bronco Sport of them all.
