How O.J. Simpson burned the Ford Bronco into America’s collective memory
The Ford Bronco was originally conceived and designed for rugged outdoorsmen, a two-door way to escape to nature from the bustling cities of mid-century America.
But it had already been tamed and polished for the suburbs, with cruise control and air conditioning, in 1994 when OJ Simpson cowered in the back, a gun to his temple, as patrol cars followed him for about two hours in the California twilight.
The model was discontinued two years later. But the Bronco – or at least that white Bronco – became one of America’s most iconic cars after the slow-speed chase on the freeways of Los Angeles that played out on TV screens in front of an audience of millions, a moment indelible in the country’s history was burned. cultural memory.
“Kids born in the 2000s even know this is OJ,” Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said of his students. ‘It’s just as salient if I show the Twin Towers on fire. It is definitively etched in the spirit of the times, because of all the contextual associations we added to it.”
The Bronco that Simpson, who died Wednesday, rode in now sits in a crime museum in Tennessee, parked next to a Volkswagen Beetle driven by serial killer Ted Bundy.
White Ford Bronco is also the name of a band that plays 1990s covers, from artists from Metallica to Will Smith to the Spice Girls.
Singer and guitarist Diego Valencia, 41, said he was brainstorming band names in 2008 when a colleague suggested it.
“With something like ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Beverly Hills 90210,’ you might lose some people,” Valencia said. “But that was the most ’90s thing ever.”
The name White Ford Bronco is not a tribute to Simpson, Valencia said, but a nod to that moment of “where were you in June 1994?”
The Bronco rolled off the assembly line in 1966 as one of the first SUVs, says Todd Zuercher, automotive historian and author of the 2019 book “Ford Bronco: A History of Ford’s Legendary 4×4.”
“The whole thing back then was to get out, get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and get inland,” Zuercher said.
The vehicle was marketed for hunters and fishermen, as well as for families to explore, Zuercher said. The Bronco was an improvement over competing models, such as the Jeep CJ-5 and the International Scout, because it had a hardtop, heater, and perhaps even a radio.
SUVs became larger and more luxurious over the years, Zuercher said, and by the time of the Simpson car chase, the Bronco was in its fifth generation.
Simpson also owned a Bronco, but it was seized as evidence after blood was found in it. The one involved in the police chase was a 1993 XLT model owned by his friend, former teammate and the driver that night, Al “AC” Cowlings.
Simpson was charged with murder after his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death. Simpson failed to surrender to police as promised and was declared a fugitive on June 17, 1994.
He was later spotted in the Bronco with Cowlings, leading to a 60-mile police chase through Southern California. More than 90 million Americans watched in amazement as TV helicopters provided live footage of the action. Thousands of others lined highways and city streets, some cheering on the former star as the bizarre motorcade passed by.
Cowlings said he only wanted to do one thing: keep Simpson alive.
“He was checking out,” Cowlings told The Associated Press in 1996. “There’s no way OJ and I were trying to escape. I was trying to save a friend.”
With a family photo in his hand, Simpson was eventually lured out of the Bronco and turned himself in in the driveway of his Brentwood home. Police found a gun, Simpson’s passport, a fake beard and thousands of dollars in cash and checks in the vehicle.
The make of the vehicle seemed to add to the drama.
“If it had been a Jeep Wrangler, almost all of it could have been ours,” said Collins, the marketing professor. “But because it was a white Ford Bronco, it stood out. It was a distinctive vehicle with a very distinctive person, OJ. It was still on the brand.
There is speculation that the chase hastened the Bronco’s demise, or that it led to an increase in sales.
Auto historian Zuercher said the Bronco was already on its last legs at that point. As a two-door SUV, it couldn’t compete with four-door models that were family-friendly and extremely popular. For example, the Ford Explorer was a big hit when it was released in 1990.
“Most soccer moms from the 1990s didn’t drive a Ford Bronco,” Zuercher says. “There were two more model years after the OJ chase, and then the Bronco was gone for 25 years.”
The car chase Bronco was later purchased by three men, one of whom was Simpson’s former agent, ESPN reported in 2016. The Bronco spent years in places including a Los Angeles parking garage before finding a home at Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
In addition to the Simpson Bronco and Bundy’s Beetle, the museum is also home to a 1933 Essex Terraplane that belonged to gangster John Dillinger and a 1934 Ford prop car used in the bloody death scene at the end of the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde.”
Taylor Smart, the museum’s marketing director, said there is still an air of mystery surrounding the OJ chase that captivates people, particularly the question: Why did it actually happen?
The museum replays the chase on TV screens in the room where the iconic Bronco is parked behind a barrier, allowing visitors to relive the drama while taking snapshots of a piece of American history with cell phones.
“A lot of people can name the exact bar they were at” on that day 30 years ago, Smart said. “It was this shared experience with many across America. Everyone has a story to tell about where they were, what they were doing, when that white Bronco chase started.