MARYVILLE, Tenn – Adding a Sasquatch Pack to the 2025 Ford Bronco Sport sounds a bit silly at first. If you really want off-road capabilities, just buy the regular Broncoright? Well, that’s still the answer I would give you, but the Bronco sport is undeniably more appealing this year to the lightweight off-road enthusiast who may not want to deal with the compromises of a body-on-frame, single-sided, off-road vehicle SUV.
You can find out the full story about what Ford has changed here for 2025but besides telling what’s new, ford let’s fly the Sasquatch in prototype form. It was only about 20 minutes on the company’s Tennessee Off-Road Ownershipbut it was enough to discover that the Sasquatch will surprise you with the kind of terrain it can scramble over.
The Sasquatch builds on the Badlands, one of two trim levels it can be added to, but we’ll get to the other in a moment. The list of added features is long. Ford packs Bilstein shock absorbers with position-sensitive damping and piggyback reservoirs that better absorb more extreme, high-speed events. New front and rear springs raise ground clearance by 0.6 inches over the Badlands to a very Subaru-esque 8.7 inches, and extends suspension travel by the same amount. Trim-specific 29-inch Goodyear Territory all-terrain tires are standard and have been developed specifically for this model with a much more aggressive tread pattern – they certainly look the part. Protection has been significantly improved with a front brush guard, front and rear bumpers with steel bash plates, even more underbody protection and additional, stronger recovery points. These bumpers are now modular too, with the ability to fit a range of accessories including light bars, dune flags and more.
All of the above is in addition to the extra equipment on the Badlands, which means most of it (with one major exception) has also been added to the other Sasquatchable Bronco Sport: the Outer Banks. That includes the dual-clutch transmission, torque-vectoring rear-wheel drive, and locking rear differential that were previously exclusive to the Badlands. It does not, however, include the upgraded 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. The Outer Banks continues to have the 1.5-liter turbocharged three-cylinder, but regardless of the powertrain (both of which get a slight downgrade in overall output due to emissions requirements), Ford says the rear differential has been upgraded for 2025 with increased thermal capacity. That’s especially good for anyone who wants to play off-road.
In addition to the same extra Sasquatch equipment, the Outer Banks version gets a full inch of ground clearance over the regular variant for a total of 8.8 inches (that’s right, it tops the Badlands by a tenth of an inch), and similarly larger jumps in approach, departure, and breakover angles. In short, it’s a much bigger deal for the Outer Banks.
That said, perhaps unsurprisingly, Ford put us in the Badlands with the Sasquatch package. On the recently rain-soaked muddy trails of southern Tennessee, the little Bronco Sport slipped and slid through both mild and moderate off-road events. Its 8.7 inches of ground clearance allow it to negotiate obstacles that simply wouldn’t seem within the realm of possibility for such a small, unibody intersectionSome of the obstacles that were meant to challenge the suspension’s articulation (of which there is little) instead highlighted the new rear shock absorbers, which showed off their ability to bring the Bronco Sport back down to earth without sending shock waves through the cabin. That said, Ford wouldn’t give us anything the Bronco Sport couldn’t do in such a short time behind the wheel, and we didn’t get a chance to see how these more extreme off-road components translate to on-road use (we had the same complaint about the Ford F-150 Raptor And Ranger Raptor drives for the first time).
The thicker off-road tires can lead to a louder driving experience on the highway and worse brakes distances. It was essentially impossible to read how the new Bilstein rear dampers would fare on the road, but we have high hopes given the damping technology involved. Ford engineers tell us the goal was not to compromise on-road behavior with these off-road upgrades, but we’ll have to wait and see what the end result is with further driving time.
What’s easy to see is how much of an upgrade the 2025 Bronco Sport’s new tech is. The new 13.2-inch Sync 4 infotainment system sitting alongside the all-digital 12.3-inch instrument cluster is a huge upgrade over the mediocre-to-meh tech suite it had before. Animations and responses are both smooth and quick. The instrument cluster that adapts to the specific drive mode is a neat trick to get you in the mood for the type of terrain you’ll be tackling. Plus, the upgraded trail cameras that display data at any speed while driving off-road couldn’t be better executed, now with guidelines for your two front tires and a high-resolution video feed.
We even tried out the new one-pedal drive mode, which lets you control the Bronco Sport’s speed during slower sections using just the throttle, sort of like an EV with regenerative braking. The aim is to make off-roading more accessible to novices, allowing you to pay more attention to the trail and your steering rather than hopping between the throttle and brake.
It’s difficult to draw many (if any) hard conclusions about a prototype vehicle after only a short period of time spent exclusively off-road, especially while we’re still waiting on official pricing, which could make a big difference in how strongly we recommend the package. Whether or not we’d opt for the Sasquatch also depends a lot on how it handles on the asphalt, as that’s likely where a Bronco Sport will spend the majority of its time. For those torn between the big Bronco and the small Bronco Sport for fear that the Sport won’t be capable enough for your use case, this Sasquatch could be the version that tips the scales. There’s no denying that this is going to be the trim level of choice for the “power user,” and even if you don’t take full advantage of its extra capabilities, there’s no denying that the Sasquatch is now officially the coolest-looking Bronco Sport of them all.