2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch Wants To Prove You Wrong

The Ford Bronco Sport is a Ford Bronco, but it’s also not. It’s a mini Bronco, designed and named so that the Bronco’s big off-road reputation can help attract casual buyers. But it also makes you wonder: Is the Bronco Sport worthy of its name?

The 2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch is here to prove it.

The big Bronco is a rugged off-roader that competes with the Jeep Wrangler. It rides on a modified version of the Ford Ranger body-on-frame platform, making it more versatile for off-road driving. The Bronco Sport, meanwhile, is more geared toward on-road driving. It lacks all the luxury bells and whistles of the big Bronco, and is based on the Escape unibody crossover, which is more fuel-efficient and more car-like.

For 2025, the Bronco Sport comes standard with all-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic transmission. It also has five trim levels and two engine choices: a 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine that produces 180 horsepower and 200 pound-feet of torque, and a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 238 horsepower and 277 pound-feet of torque.

The Sasquatch off-road package comes from the big Bronco to the smaller Bronco Sport. The package is an optional extra on the top-level Outer Banks and Badlands trims for 2025, and features a dual-clutch rear-wheel drivetrain, a locking rear differential, steel underbody protection, Bilstein rear shocks, and 29-inch all-terrain tires.

Pros: Great Off-Road Hardware, Smart Software, Excellent Capability

The upgrades give the Bronco Sport Sasquatch a suspension with 8.3 inches of travel up front and 9.0 inches in the rear, as well as the ability to wade through water as deep as 23.6 inches. That’s quite good compared to the Bronco’s maximum depth of 33.5 inches.

Ford hasn't said how much the Sasquatch package will cost for the Bronco Sport, or how much the 2025 Bronco Sport will cost. But in 2024, the base price for the Bronco Sport Outer Banks is $35,500, the Bronco Sport Badlands is $40,000, and for the larger Bronco Badlands, the Sasquatch package will cost at least $5,000.

The 2025 Bronco Sport Sasquatch won’t be available until early next year, but Ford took us for a 15-minute drive on its new off-road course in Maryville, Tennessee. We drove a pre-production car on a course Ford chose—mud, potholed, and 20-degree banked—but the Sasquatch still felt pretty tough.

Motor1.com

Motor1.com

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch has seven driving modes: Normal, Eco, Sport, Slippery, Off-Road, Rally, and Rock Crawl. We only used three of these driving modes: Off-Road mostly, then Rock Crawl and Rally for a bit.

Rock Crawl locking differential. A dual-clutch rear-wheel drive unit has two clutch packs that control each rear wheel independently, allowing only one to drive the car if needed, and can also act as a locking differential. Locking differentials are common on off-road vehicles, driving the wheels simultaneously rather than turning the wheel with the least resistance, as an open differential does.

The Sasquatch’s special Off-Road mode has limited throttle response for bumpy terrain, while Rally mode makes the accelerator more responsive for faster driving. Like any good modern off-road vehicle, the Sasquatch’s Sport suspension absorbs bumps in Off-Road mode as it drives over the top of the car. I felt the uneven terrain under my feet, but it didn’t make my head shake. The vehicle is comfortable even when the ground beneath it is uncomfortable.

Cons: Interior is absorbent, doesn't feel as tough as expected

The car also has trail control (like cruise control, but for off-road) and one-pedal driving, both of which are meant to make crawling speeds easier by eliminating the need to move both pedals. Trail control kicks in at 1 mph, and one-pedal driving involves using only the accelerator pedal to speed up and slow down the car.

As soon as you lift your foot, the car brakes—and in these early models, the automatic braking feels like a jolt. I don’t mind how strong it is, but when I asked, Ford wouldn’t say whether the final production one-pedal braking would be stronger, the same, or weaker.

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch has handy features like front and rear retaining plates, an off-road camera to show you the terrain, recovery points at all four corners in case you get stuck while driving off-road, and grab bars near the side mirrors that Ford says are there to prevent the towbars from rubbing the paint. My favorite part, though, is the gauge cluster.

Motor1.com

Motor1.com

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch has a display in Off-Road mode that shows the angle of the car, so when I’m driving on bumpy roads or downhill, I can see how much of an angle I’m at. I got as high as 20 degrees on muddy roads, and it’s a fun way to interact with the terrain. When you get home, you can not only tell your friends that your car was at an angle on the muddy road—you can tell them that your car was at a 20-degree angle. That’s just so much cooler.

I didn’t have enough time in the Sasquatch to find any issues with the way it rides, and I didn’t get to drive it on the street—where it will likely spend most of its time. But I did notice some issues on the inside.

I sat in a Bronco Sport Badlands with a light gray interior, and all I could think about was mud. The Badlands has a thin cloth top that looks ready to absorb stains, and the seats have light-colored cloth sections around the shoulder blades that look the same. The big Bronco can also be had with a marine-grade vinyl interior and an interior water drainage system, but the baby Bronco doesn’t get that treatment (at least not yet).

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But even without all the big Bronco’s off-road features, the Bronco Sport Sasquatch is capable. It can do everything a normal person could want, and it can hold its own off-road.

The saddest part about the big Bronco, to me, is how many people will buy it and never use it for the things it’s really good for. They’ll drive it to school or the grocery store, leaving its incredible off-road capabilities unused and unrecognized. The Bronco Sport Sasquatch is more than enough for the average buyer, and after a few minutes in the car, it feels like it might be enough for the experienced off-roader.

The Bronco Sport has always been marketed as the baby Bronco, and the Sasquatch feels ready to live up to that reputation—in mud, potholes, water, or wherever you want to test it.