In the early 1990s, Ford’s then-new Explorer stood out from the growing pack of sport-utility vehicles with a particularly unusual feature: a trim level. Specifically, an upscale one called “Eddie Bauer,” inspired by the outdoor clothing company that was then in vogue. It proved quite the success, with the trim going on to become a staple of the carmaker’s lineup for more than a decade. More than 30 years later, Ford is once again teaming up with a fashionable maker of outerwear—Seattle-based Filson—to give one of its off-roaders an edge in a crowded, cutthroat market.
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
The Ford Bronco Filson has been thoroughly remastered, adding everything from a specially tuned version of the Bronco Raptor’s 3.0-liter EcoBoost V6 to fabrics and materials not found in any of the carmaker’s other vehicles. It even boasts additional sound insulation that reduces perceived wind noise by a fifth. It’s a more premium Bronco, although not a compromised one.
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
The collaboration between the 123-year-old carmaker and the 129-year-old outfitter on a version of the legendary off-roader came about somewhat serendipitously. Ford’s designers had pictures of Filson jackets and bags on their mood boards when penning the vehicle. When they called up the outfitter to start a conversation, Filson’s reply was unexpected: They were in the midst of rebuilding their own brand book and had said, “If Filson were a car, we’d be a vintage Bronco.”
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
When the two teams sat down to discuss a collaboration, it felt, according to Ford Global Design Director Paul Wraith, like a meeting of the minds. “We had already been thinking about what a higher-end Bronco could be, but we knew it couldn’t simply mean chrome, polished surfaces, or a traditional luxury treatment,” he says. “It had to feel true to Bronco.”
The Filson team felt the same way, Wraith explains. “That’s when it became clear this wasn’t two brands forcing something together. It was two brands recognizing a shared point of view.”
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
Tradition runs strong in the automotive world, though, so breaking away from some of the more clichéd signals of a premium trim level, such as shiny metal or piano-black plastic, took a little time. Wraith says renderings alone weren’t enough to convince everyone inside Ford that luxury could take a different form. The breakthrough came when the team built a physical vehicle. “Once people saw it, the debate changed,” he says. “They understood it immediately.”
That exercise helped establish a distinctly Bronco take on luxury. “The whole idea was that this vehicle should feel better with use, not worse,” Wraith says.
New Ford Bronco Filson saddle bag.
The most evident pieces of the team-up are inside the vehicle, where Ford has paired perforated quilted leather with woven fabric inspired by Filson’s rugged twill, along with leather-wrapped surfaces and brass accents. Rather than simply signaling luxury, the materials are meant to feel substantial and functional, not just decorative, much like the bags and clothing that outdoorspeople have turned to for over a century.
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
That thinking also extends to the Bronco’s storage, including removable door-mounted saddlebags that transform an existing utilitarian feature into something more considered.
“Their gear has this honesty to it,” Wraith notes. He points to the vehicle’s fitted door bag as a clear example of breaking from the norm in favor of something more functional, yet distinct: “It came from looking at Bronco’s existing door netting and asking, ‘What if this became something more useful, more crafted and more Filson?’”
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
Wraith says maintaining those core shared qualities would be essential to any future work between the brands. “The power of this collaboration is that it doesn’t feel like a one-off marketing exercise,” he says. “It feels like two brands that genuinely understand each other.”
Photography courtesy of Ford Motor Company
Could the F-150 pickup or the Expedition SUV see their own such variants in time? For now, Wraith says, the focus is on bringing the Bronco Filson to market; he isn’t revealing what might come next. But this sort of collaboration, he adds, “naturally opens the door to more thinking.”
“The important thing,” Wraith adds, “is that anything we do has to be as genuine as this.”
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