Stick With It: Bronco’s burly Sasquatch trim now comes with 7-speed manual

Article content

Unless you’ve been living under an especially large and virulent rock, you’ll know the new Ford Bronco has captured the attention of off-road gearheads from Kamloops to Kapuskasing. At its launch, certain corners of the internet noticed the burly Sasquatch package was not able to be paired with the truck’s 7-speed manual transmission. Ford promised to rectify that situation, and did so this week.

News about this addition for the Ford lineup appeared on Wednesday and promptly got lost in the flood of coverage coming out of this year’s L.A. Auto Show. In fact, it was tweeted by none other than Ford top brass Jim Farley; it’s been confirmed by our friends at Ford of Canada that we will be able to spec this combination as well, no matter what the build-and-price tool says as of this writing.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Stick With It: Bronco’s burly Sasquatch trim now comes with 7-speed manual Back to video

The vaunted Sasquatch package adds a wealth of off-road gear like jumbo tires, beadlock-capable wheels, electronic locking front and rear diffs, plus Bilstein dampers and a slight lift. It also adds several thousand dollars to the Bronco’s sticker price depending on which trim level one is building.

Article content

Nevertheless, pairing these features with a manual transmission gives the Bronco yet one more arrow in its quiver, an arsenal Ford is using to annoy the Jeep Wrangler and steal some of its lunch money.

It’s worth noting the manual transmission is only available with the 2.3L EcoBoost and not the six-pot engine. Still, with 300 horses on tap, it’s not like this four-banger is much of a slouch in terms of power. What will be interesting is drivers of these rigs will now have the ability to use the Bronco’s crawler gear (denoted by a ‘C’ on the shift knob pattern, and essentially a first gear with an even higher ratio) in concert with Sasquatch gear.

These modern manuals are light years away from sticks of old, by the way. Your author remembers trying to wrestle a modified manual-shift TJ up a rocky obstacle and wishing he had extra legs with which to operate the accelerator, brake, and clutch pedals simultaneously. It wasn’t long before a lever-style paddle – directly connected to the throttle cable – was added to the shift knob.

Given the crawler gear ratio and abundance of torque on hand in the 2.3L EcoBoost, that won’t be necessary in the 2022 Bronco.