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The Ford Bronco was originally conceived and designed for rugged outdoor types, a two-door means of escaping the busy cities of mid-century America into nature.
But it had already been tamed and polished for suburbanites with cruise control and air conditioning in 1994, when OJ Simpson crouched in the back seat of one such car with a gun to his temple while patrol cars followed him for about two hours in the California twilight.
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The model was discontinued two years later. But the Bronco – or at least this white Bronco – became one of America’s most famous automobiles after the slow-speed chase that took place on television screens before an audience of millions – a moment that was indelibly etched in the nation’s cultural memory.
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“Kids born in the 2000s know themselves that this is OJ,” Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said of his students. “It’s just as prominent as me showing the Twin Towers burning. Because of all the contextual associations we applied to it, it definitely became etched in the zeitgeist.”
The Bronco owned by Simpson, who died Wednesday, is now in a crime museum in Tennessee, parked next to a Volkswagen Beetle driven by serial killer Ted Bundy.
White Ford Bronco is also the name of a band that plays cover songs from the 1990s, from artists ranging from Metallica to Will Smith to the Spice Girls.
Singer and guitarist Diego Valencia, 41, said he was thinking about band names in 2008 when a colleague suggested it to him.
“With something like ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ you might lose some people,” Valencia said. “But that was the most ’90s thing ever.”
The name “White Ford Bronco” is not a tribute to Simpson, Valencia said, but rather a nod to the moment “Where were you in June 1994?”
MARKETED TO HUNTERS AND FISHERMEN
The Bronco rolled off the assembly line in 1966 as one of the first sport utility vehicles, said Todd Zuercher, auto historian and author of the 2019 book “Ford Bronco: A History of Ford’s Legendary 4×4.”
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“Back then it was all about getting outside, escaping the hustle and bustle of urban life and going into the hinterland,” Zuercher said.
The vehicle was marketed to hunters and fishermen, but also to families for exploring, Zürcher said. The Bronco was an improvement over competing models like the Jeep CJ-5 and International Scout because it featured a hardtop, a heater, and perhaps even a radio.
SUVs have become larger and more luxurious over the years, Zuercher said, and at the time of the Simpson chase, the Bronco was in its fifth generation.
Simpson also owned a Bronco, but it was confiscated as evidence after blood was found in it. The police pursuit involved a 1993 XLT model that belonged to his friend, former teammate and driver that night, Al “AC” Cowlings.
“He checked out.”
Simpson was charged with murder after his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death. Simpson did not surrender to police as promised and was declared a fugitive on June 17, 1994.
He was later spotted with Cowlings in the Bronco, sparking a 60-mile (96-kilometer) police chase through Southern California. More than 90 million Americans watched, thunderstruck, as television helicopters delivered live footage of the action. Thousands of other highways and city streets lined the former star, who ran back as the bizarre motorcade passed.
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Cowlings said he only had one thing on his mind: keeping Simpson alive.
“He wanted to check out,” Cowlings told The Associated Press in 1996. “OJ and I definitely didn’t want to escape. I was trying to save a friend.”
With a family photo in hand, Simpson was eventually lured out of the Bronco and stood in the driveway of his Brentwood home. Police found a gun, Simpson’s passport, a fake beard and thousands of dollars in cash and checks in the vehicle.
The make of the vehicle seemed to add to the drama.
“If it was a Jeep Wrangler, it could have been almost any of us,” said Collins, the marketing professor. “But because it was a white Ford Bronco, it stood out. It was a distinctive vehicle with this very distinctive person, OJ. It was still on the mark.”
Soccer moms didn’t drive Broncos
There was speculation that the chase hastened the Bronco’s demise or, alternatively, that it led to an increase in sales.
Zuercher, the auto historian, said the Bronco was already on its last legs at that point. As a two-door SUV, it couldn’t compete with the family-friendly and extremely popular four-door models. The Ford Explorer, for example, was a complete success when it was released in 1990.
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“Most soccer moms in the 1990s didn’t drive Ford Broncos,” Zuercher said. “After the OJ chase, there were two more model years, and then the Bronco was gone for 25 years.”
The chase Bronco was later purchased by three men, one of whom was Simpson’s former agent, ESPN reported in 2016. It spent years in, among other places, a Los Angeles parking garage before finding a home at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
In addition to the Simpson Bronco and Bundy’s Beetle, the museum also houses a 1933 Essex Terraplane that belonged to gangster John Dillinger and a 1934 Ford prop car that was used in the bloody death scene at the end of the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde.” .
Taylor Smart, the museum’s marketing director, said there is still an air of mystery surrounding the search for orange juice that captivates people, particularly the question: “Why did it even happen?”
The museum shows 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 their cell phones to take snapshots of a piece of American history.
“A lot of people can name the exact bar they were in that day 30 years ago,” Smart said. “It was this shared experience with many across America. Everyone has a story to tell about where they were and what they were doing when the white Bronco chase began.”
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