Ford moves Bronco reveal date from O.J. Simpson’s birthday

As popular as the Ford Bronco has become in the years since it left the market, and as highly anticipated as the new 2021 Ford Bronco is, there is a specter that hangs over the nameplate: that of O.J. Simpson, whose televised car chase in a white second-generation Bronco in 1994 transfixed the nation and whose later acquittal in the murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, appalled it. Simpson later was convicted in a wrongful death civil suit.

So it must have been deeply embarrassing to Ford when it was pointed out that the recently announced reveal date for the all-new Bronco, July 9, was the Juice’s birthday. The only date that could have been worse would have been June 17, the date of the car chase. Evidently, the July 9 date was embarrassing enough that Ford has now moved the reveal again, explicitly to avoid the O.J. connection. The change was announced by Ford communications VP Mark Truby on Twitter:

Surely, Ford would have preferred not to acknowledge the O.J. connection at all and might have been able to do that were it not for this blunder. Among those critical of the previous date were members of the United Auto Workers. Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, a representative from UAW Local 862 called on Ford to add an anti-domestic violence element to the Bronco launch. Initially, Ford resisted calls to move the date, with a spokesman saying “the date is purely coincidental.” Now, perhaps, Ford can move beyond the controversy.

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