| The list of rugged options and gewgaws on the Ford Bronco revealed last week is stupefying. Equally perplexing, however, were the features that won't be on the rig. It lacks an electric motor, a sentient self-driving system and enough space for an aggressive Home Depot run, let alone a soccer practice carpool. It is, in short, a vehicle almost entirely at-odds with where transportation is heading in the 21st century. For Ford, however, that's a feature, not a bug. Make no mistake, the rangy little truck appears to be a shoot-the-moon, damn-the-torpedoes product strategy. But Ford, desperate for a win, has turned to something far more reliable than focus group think and pragmatic packaging of features. It has dialed up a cult favorite. The Bronco has been out of the Ford lineup since the Clinton administration, but its legend has only grown in that time. Seminal, Skittle-colored Broncos from the 1960s and 1970s now fetch six-figures from Instagram influencers (and J-Lo). Indeed, it was a group of diehards within Ford -- known as the Bronco Underground -- that kept plans for the rig alive for decades, iterating and evolving them at times in secret. For years now, strange, dark corners of social media have been abuzz with chatter about "the new Bronco." Here's the thing about cult followings in the corporate world: they are seldom born from sound business decisions. In fact, quite the opposite. The products we love beyond reason tend to come from illogical strategy. Tesla may be the best example. The company has been fueled by a series of PR stunts and wacky communication strategy. Every time Elon Musk does something absurd — selling flamethrowers, hawking silky shorts to troll short-sellers, conflagrating Twitter fights — the Tesla congregation grows larger and more devoted. Consider too, Patagonia encouraging would-be customers not to buy its gear. Or In-N-Out Burger cutting spuds into French fries on-site. A company making such zany decisions seems fallible, human in a way. That resonates with consumers, especially now when they are increasingly at the whims of McKinsey consultants and data-chewing algorithms. The most successful cult brands create a sort of flywheel effect, wherein customer evangelism essentially co-opts -- or entirely replaces -- traditional sales and marketing. The Bronco arguably has that kind of mojo. The relatively tiny truck was originally pitched as "the first four-wheel-drive sports car" -- whatever that means. The stubby machine was designed to crawl up boulder-fields on massive tires, yet also promised as a highway cruiser. The incongruity only seemed to increase the appeal. Drivers, meanwhile, are among the most irrational of consumers. How else to explain why Americans buy 13 F-150 pickups for every Toyota Prius? Consider the Jeep Wrangler, the only other rig on the market remotely like the Bronco. Last year, Fiat-Chrysler sold one of these mechanical spider crickets about every two minutes; only one other Jeep did more business. The Wrangler is one of the prime reasons Jeep has quadrupled U.S. sales in the past decade and become the workhorse gear in Fiat-Chrysler's growth strategy. No doubt, Ford's "Bronco Underground" ran these numbers by the C-suite time and again in recent years. Ultimately, the Bronco got the green light because the company finally figured out the financial engineering. The platform of the machine — an elaborate and capital-dense chunk of hardware — will be borrowed from either the Escape, a vanilla SUV, or the Ranger, Ford's small pick-up. For the first time in years, the supply-chain synergies lined up and the unit economics penciled neatly. For consumers, the financial equation is trickier, but not the emotional math. People, generally, are terrified to make mistakes on major life decisions and rightly so. They agonize over buying the wrong house, choosing the wrong spouse, enrolling in the wrong college. Buying the wrong vehicle, however, isn't going to ruin anyone's life. The Bronco offers a reckless tonic in these troubled times -- it's a spontaneous trip to Vegas, a third cocktail on an unremarkable weeknight. Buying one probably isn't a great idea, which is why it's going to feel so good, to so many. At least, that's what Ford is banking on. In the hours after the company pulled the drop-cloth off, the Bronco web site slowed to a crawl as it processed a crush of traffic from would-be customers putting down $100 deposits and "building" their own Bronco to spec. The "First Edition" was sold out within days. Giddy-up.  Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, July 20, 2020. Subscribe now. | 
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