Well, I was always into classic cars, so was my dad growing up and I used to see back
keys, these long lines of hot rods and what are those cars, the shapes and the colors,
it just had so much story and so much more heart than even the contemporary vehicles
I was seeing then in the 70s.
All my artistic focus sort of converged in automotive because all the aspects of everything
else that I've always enjoyed artistically, they all come together in chorus and transportation.
So when Ford reached out to us and asked if we'd be interested in building a singular
icon Bronco, we jumped at the opportunity and actually decided to do all the engineering
to make it our next new model.
It starts out stupid simple, literally with a pad and a pencil and we start walking the
truck and really getting intimate with it and our thoughts on the ideas of what we could
reinvent and redesign.
Well, anytime, you know, such a small company, when you take on such a task as this, we definitely
need help, so it's really always about not just me and my team skillset, but being able
to really invite other companies or individuals to help us.
Nike had vowed their support for us and said, you know, on your next big R&D effort, give
us a call, let us know, we'd like to participate.
To work together on a project that they can see go from, you know, concept and sketch
through to a done product in under a year, we jumped at the opportunity and Nike put
together a 10-man team that assisted us all the way through to the fabrication of those
components, mostly in stainless.
With our FJ and our CJ, we're able to have the bodies manufactured in aluminum brand
use.
That gives us a lot more control over the process and all the changes in their products.
The unique challenge with the Bronco, though, is that we literally are buying premium condition
original uncut vintage Broncos and we bring them in and we liberate the body assembly from
the original chassis, but we reuse all of the sheet metal and then add to that a high
end restoration of the vintage body.
The range of appeal excites me.
They're approachable, they're tactile, there's something that draws people together and obviously
a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're dealing with shapes and designs that
are already part of the collective culture and they're ingrained in our hearts and minds
and our memories.
Bronco has some sort of life experience and we've noticed with the Bronco that they seem
to be even more deeply ingrained in everyone's history and life than the FJ or the CJ does.
So there's this Americana aspect of the Bronco that just motivates and excites people.
We want to build stuff we're proud of.
We want to build vehicles that we really see will last for decades, a revival of a classic
industrial design that's just so missing from modern high volume transportation.
Design inspiration is really like everywhere.
There's so many interesting resources that are just ripe to be rethought, revisited, reapplied.
This is a passion driven company and I think the Bronco, the processes that we go through
in creating it are pretty intensive because you have the restoration as well as the re-engineering
and the redesign all put together in this monster's package.
It's definitely a labor of love.
