2021 Ford Bronco Earns iF Design Gold Award

According to professionally accomplished voters of an international design award, the all-new 2021 Ford Bronco isn’t just Built Wild™. It’s iF Design Award identifies the Bronco two- and four-door models as an outstanding design for consumers, as well as within the design community. The iF International Forum Design GmbH, a design organization based in Germany, has awarded products for design excellence annually since 1953 – noting that design winners like Bronco stand out from the competition, elevating a brand and reaching new target groups. “This award really shines a light on what a multi-dimensioned vehicle this is,” said Paul Wraith, Bronco chief designer. “Our team’s focus when designing Bronco was getting our users out deep into the landscape exploring, which led to some breakout product design. We’re so excited the innovations the committee loved about the Bronco are the same things our customers will love about it. It’s great to see the world of high-design meeting the wild.” Since reservation-to-order conversions began in January, Bronco brand, Ford’s new outdoor brand of Built Wild 4x4 vehicles, has converted more than 125,000 orders from the more than 190,000 Bronco two-door and four-door reservations in the U.S. and Canada. Just as important, the new 4x4 brand is seeing strong customers conquests, with more than 70 percent of customers new to Ford. For Wraith and the Bronco design team, the award validates their efforts to create a modern off-road SUV while maintaining the design simplicity of the first-generation Bronco models (1966-1977). Visual cues such as a single-piece grille, round headlamp bisected by a bar with the Bronco name, front fender trail sights, and redacted surface language free of superfluous styling or detail were highlighted by iF Design jurors. Read iF Design’s full Bronco review. “Many products are relatively simple objects, from a design standpoint,” Wraith said. “Vehicles are not. With Bronco, they looked at a number of things, from the modularity and the cleverness of the doors storing in back, to the larger notion of bringing back an icon.” Among its comments, the iF Design jurors said the all-new Bronco brings “the thrill of its iconic forebear in the 2020s” and “marries the functional with the emotional, creating an off-road driving experience as close to riding bare-back as any car can.”