The World’s Best Off-Roader Is Now $10K Cheaper As Ford Tries To Dethrone The Mighty Jeep Wrangler

Now that Ford has dropped the Ford Bronco Raptor’s base price by $10,000 (!), I just can’t take it anymore. I have to say something: The Ford Bronco Raptor is a severely underrated off-road beast, and it’s time to give it its flowers as Ford preps to do the impossible: dethrone the mighty Jeep Wrangler.

You know what I keep seeing on YouTube? Videos about Ford Bronco Raptors not selling, and big discounts.

Videos like this one:

And this one:

And this one:

Obviously, many of the videos are from random folks with YouTube channels, but that Ford Bronco Raptors can be had for under MSRP is no secret. In fact, our Lewin Day wrote about it in October in an article titled “A Dealer Is Selling A Ford Bronco Raptor For $17,000 Off And It’s Not A Fluke.”

Here’s the editor’s note I threw into Lewin’s story:

[Editor’s Note: The Ford Bronco Raptor, at $80,000, is an absolute steal in my eyes. It is truly one of the greatest off-road machines ever sold, and the fact that it’s even in the five-digit range given its capabilities is amazing to me. Sure, its V6 engine is a little boring, but its ability to perform at an elite level on a variety of off-road terrains makes it, in some ways, superior to rivals like the Jeep Wrangler and Ineos Grenadier. I also have to note that The Autopian’s sister company, Galpin, has the best Ford dealership in the country. -DT].

Now, according to Car and Driver, the Bronco Raptor’s actual base price — not the price after discounts — is $80 grand. The car site writes in its article “2025 Ford Bronco Prices Adjusted, Raptor Base Price Drops by $10K”:

The burly Raptor model is the biggest mover with a reported $10,040 decrease, taking its base price from $90,035 to $79,995. That’s a massive reduction, and it takes the Bronco Raptor’s cost back towards where it was in 2023, before its pricing took a massive jump for the 2024 model year. The other Bronco receiving a discount is another enthusiast-focused model, the Badlands, which in four-door specification sees its price go down by $1000 to $50,385.

This is a white-hot deal because — as I say in the headline — the Ford Bronco Raptor is the best off-road vehicle in the world.

And I realize that’s blasphemous from someone who was an engineer on the Jeep Wrangler JL program, but what it comes down to is the Raptor’s diverse resume of off-road skills. It can rock-crawl with elite company — I’m not just talking stock Jeep Wranglers, I’m talkin’ built JLs on one-tons and 37s. It can stay with high-speed desert-runners on dunes that would leave a Jeep Wrangler driver’s spinal cord twisted into the shape of a pretzel. The Bronco Raptor can do it all:

The Bronco Raptor’s biggest weakness is its size, and I will say that a two-Door Wrangler might be as capable as the Bronco Raptor overall. But again, that Wrangler on dunes is not going to cut it.

I generally am unimpressed by vehicles that gain their off-road capability through shear tire-size, and let’s be honest: That’s partly what the Bronco does with those massive 37s. But it’s the short overhangs, the underbody protection, the locking differentials, the sway bar disconnect, and just the general execution of the suspension and entire system that blows me away. It’s truly an offroad supercar capable of competent handling on pretty much any terrain — including the road.

Eighty grand seams like a relative steal for all that capability, though it’s worth noting that you can buy a Jeep Wrangler 392 for $100,000, and that has a V8 instead of a frankly un-noteworthy EcoBoost V6.  A 20 grand delta, though, is huge, and it’s just another way that Ford is planning on going for the Jeep Wrangler’s jugular.

And it looks like it’s going to pull that off, which would be an absolutely amazing feat.

The Jeep Wrangler has been Chrysler’s cash cow ever since the Wrangler four-door debuted for the 2007 model-year, and for over a decade Jeep just raked in >200,000 annual sales and had no competition. Ford smartly launched the Bronco for the 2021 model-year, and execution was perfect. It leaned on the nameplate’s rich but dated heritage, the styling is retro but not too much so, the roof and doors came off, the price was competitive, and the suspension was independent.

That last point was key, in my view, because offering a solid front axle would have meant that all the Bronco could have been was as good as the Wrangler. But going independent – and giving up a bit of articulation and maybe a bit of durability — allowed the vehicle to give up maybe 15% rock-crawling capability, while increasing high-speed dune running by 50% and on-road handling by 50% (I’m pulling these percentages out of thin air). It was clearly worth it.

The Ford Bronco is a masterfully-done machine during a time when Ford just could not miss. This, the Maverick, the Mach-E, the Ranger, the F-150 Lightning — the company was on a tear product-wise, and it all bears fruit. The Ford Bronco may just dethrone the Jeep Wrangler; FoMoCo sold over 14,000 Broncos in March, while the Wrangler was closer to 13,000 per Goodcarbadcar. And though the Wrangler had a stronger beginning of the year, the Bronco is crushing it lately, with over 14,400 sales in May.

It will be close, which is amazing if you think about it. The Wrangler four-door has been out for 18 years, and the Bronco for just four.