ZERO LABS BRONCO
A classic American 4x4 with zero emissions and Rolls-Royce build quality? What next? Vegan pork?
This beautifully fettled Bronco restomod is not like the others. Hint – it’s guilt-free
sketch““Road”isamitegenerousasadescription,really.It’sarockyveinsketched lightly across the ankles of a small-ish mountain. A carriageway busy with everything but traffic, all dust and rocks, and brush that grumpily scrapes itself up out of the dirt as if angry about its own existence. The sun is starting its low pass, which means this vintage Ford Bronco is chased by a blocky shadow a millisecond in second place the whole way, a silhouette softened by the light trail of dust we’re ploughing in our wake as we climb.
We crawl over rocks in low-range, picking lightly at the trail, gently pulling ourselves ever higher until the view reveals itself and we pull to a stop, absorbing the view like taking in a breath, a view painted in muted watercolours across the horizon. It’s a scene that could be pulled from the Sixties, given the age of the car we’re driving. Except when you listen, and look closer. Because one, the Bronco is near silent, even when it’s moving, and two, if you spare this Ford any more than a cursory glance, you’ll realise that this car is the same as a Sixties Bronco in the same way that a cat is a horse. Same basic design architecture, wildly difffferent outcome.
It goes deeper than the modern paint. Or the millimetric carbon-fifibre panel gaps that are decidedly unBronco in both material and fifinish. The re-made body that soothes away some of the original Bronco’s more awkward production necessities. It goes further than the hardcore and respected Currie Enterprises difffferentials you can see peeping out from underneath the car front and back, or the Fox Racing suspension that you glimpse. Further even than an interior that you could happily mount on a wall as modern art:flfloating centre console modelled on an Eames chair, manual gearstick as tactile a piece of engineering as you could hope for. Because this is a Zero Labs Ford Bronco. It is difffferent because it is re-engineered from the ground up. And it is silent because it is electric.
Heresy? Depends on your point of view. Because Zero Labs is currently knocking out fully electric, heavy-restomod classic Ford Broncos, neatly plaiting two of the hottest trends in automotive into a vehicle that’s about as on-trend as it’s possible to get without involving a vegan Kardashian wearing nothing but a pair of Yeezys. And without spoiling the end of the story too much, it is utterly, completely beguiling. To explain why, it’s probably best to start at the beginning. With Adam. But not that one.
“You have to look at the future as if it’s already happened. Your unconscious doesn’t recognise time. You can’t be anchored in the present. I have to believe this has already happened… that this Bronco is already the past. Hope isn’t how ‘it’ happens. You have to live in the future.”