#scuba New $53,000 Ford Bronco Everglades has a snorkel: How it protects engine – Detroit Free Press

February 10, 2022 - Comment

No, this isn’t a James Bond getaway vehicle. It’s the new 2022 Ford Bronco Everglades, an SUV built with a snorkel that’s scheduled to debut at the Chicago Auto Show on Thursday. The snorkel is designed and engineered by Ford. And it comes straight from the factory, having withstood endurance testing. For subscribers: She is chief engineer of the


No, this isn’t a James Bond getaway vehicle.

It’s the new 2022 Ford Bronco Everglades, an SUV built with a snorkel that’s scheduled to debut at the Chicago Auto Show on Thursday.

The snorkel is designed and engineered by Ford. And it comes straight from the factory, having withstood endurance testing.

For subscribers: She is chief engineer of the Ford Bronco Everglades, pushing innovation and change

You’ll find the snorkel attached to the passenger side A-pillar of the special-edition Bronco, sort of on the hood above the front right tire. Roll down the window on a warm day and your passenger can reach out and touch it. 

So now you can set aside any fear or concern you might have about your engine flooding or conking out or whatever crossing a creek or stream or driving through swampland or through floodwaters.

Deep wading, also known as fording, requires a snorkel that reaches above the water surface for air supply. Design changes on the Bronco Everglades allow for wading in water 36.4 inches deep and offers enhanced vehicle protection. 

“You have a lower risk of drawing water into the engine with a snorkel, so you have reduced risk of damage or failure on the trail,” Jamie Groves, Bronco engineering manager, told the Free Press.

Just ‘breathe’

“The snorkel is where we’re drawing air to feed the engine. Engines need a lot of air to breathe, basically, to combust the fuel you put into the engine,” Groves said. “You draw a lot of air in, especially with these high-powered, turbo-charged engines. So normally that air comes in through the car grille openings in the front of the vehicle. On the base Bronco, the ’21 model year Bronco, we’ve got a very high inlet through the grille that helps us get through deep water. The snorkel just takes that to the next level.” 

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Even though the base Bronco can wade in almost 3 feet of water, navigating a riverbank can still create hazards, Groves said. The first thing that goes into the river is the nose of that truck, so even if a driver can make it across the flat part of the river, if you “nose in” and dunk the intake to the engine that’s behind the grille, straight into the river, you’ve just sucked water into the engine.

“Engines don’t like water. You can destroy an engine in two seconds by pulling a bunch of water into the air intake,” Groves said. “That’s a really catastrophic failure we’re avoiding with the snorkel. You move that intake way up high, above the driver’s head basically, even if you stick the nose of the truck right down into the river when you’re driving into it, you’re not going to seize the engine.”

And while other vehicles may add snorkels — they’re not coming installed at the factory of a major automaker. It is a wildly popular item among adventurers.

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But this snorkel isn’t just for water.

It’s for dust and snow, too. Especially for convoy action.

‘Never seen anything like it’

“What we’ve got with our snorkel is quite original,” Paul Wraith, chief designer for Bronco, told the Free Press. “You think a snorkel is all about wading, like a swimming snorkel, right? But it’s actually even more useful driving in dusty and snowy conditions, where you want the vehicle to ingest clean air.”

How air is drawn into the vehicle depends on the direction of the snorkel. So while the intake faces forward when it emerges from production, the head can actually be adjusted to face forward or rearward. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it myself, to be able to change the intake on the front or the back,” Wraith said. “If you’re driving in clean air, you’d want the front snorkel open, like when you’re driving down the freeway. If you’re driving in snowy conditions, like a blizzard, that intake would just fill up with snow. You want to draw the air in from the rear. And if you’re driving in really dusty conditions, as you know the back of your vehicle gets covered in dust and the front of the vehicle is really clean, you want it to intake air from the front. This is something high-end, elite snorkels do.” 

The Bronco snorkel is best turned rearward to avoid pulling in mud that’s flying above the front tires or sand for drivers “shooting rooster tails out in the dunes,” Groves said.

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Not only does the four-door Bronco Everglades have a snorkel but it also has a winch that can pull 10,000 pounds attached to the front bumper plus a 100-foot synthetic line, which aids escape from any potential crisis situation. This may help pull someone out of a ditch or pull a Bronco up rocks while climbing. 

“Everglades is a vehicle that can really push you further into the wild,” Jolanta Coffey, Bronco chief engineer, told the Free Press. “It can give you more confidence in a wider range of terrains. So you get greater water wading, better performance in different environments, a winch that comes standard so if you get into a tough spot you can get out. It allows people to push the boundaries and it all comes packaged for you.”

More: She is chief engineer of the Ford Bronco Everglades, pushing innovation and change

Having the snorkel and winch come directly from the factory, as opposed to specialty part add-ons from third party companies, allows buyers to know all elements have been fine-tuned by engineers to maximize performance, she said.

These features come standard on Everglades only. 

“No one else is doing that,” Coffey told the Free Press. “I think our most direct competitors would do this as an accessory but not as we’ve offered it — integrated and tested for safety and durability.”

Desert Sand

So the winch, for example, is developed so that the air bags are all tuned and calibrated to work with having “this big 100-plus chunk of mass up on the front bumper,” Groves said. “So you get the benefits of having a Ford-engineered solution as opposed to just going to your local off-road shop and having them bolt parts to your truck.”

The Bronco Everglades comes standard with a protective safari bar and steel bash plates that protect the undercarriage of the vehicle from rocks and stumps and other hazards, along with 17-inch Carbonized Gray-painted alloy wheels with 35-inch Goodyear mud-terrain tires. There’s a molded-in-color hardtop and roof rack with crossbars. Vinyl seats and rubberized flooring make for easy cleaning, Ford says.

“We want to make sure we’re leaning into the heritage, where we enhance the capability of the vehicle and the durability of the vehicle,” Coffey said.

Everglades color options include Desert Sand, Eruption Green, Area 51, Shadow Black and Cactus Gray.

“There is no such thing as as sort of a standard Bronco,” Wraith said. “They’re all snowflakes. They’ll all be changed, modified, converted. That’s the industry norm.”

The Bronco Everglades has a 2.3-liter EcoBoost engine with 300 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque, “the most torque from a four-cylinder gas engine in its class,” according to Ford. The four-wheel drive vehicle has a 10-speed automatic transmission.

Go ahead, run deep

Anytime a major auto manufacturer includes what’s typically after-market equipment from the factory, “it’s a pretty powerful statement about their faith in the vehicle’s ability to do extreme things,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst for the iseecars.com shopping site.

“If you put a snorkel on a vehicle, it can go through even deeper water and not risk damaging the engine. This is about perception and reputation of a vehicle. And it’s all part of warranty coverage now,” he said. “Ford is saying, ‘Go ahead and run through extra deep water and pull other people who get stuck with a winch or up a steep hill.’ These are high-profile, image enhancing statements by Ford.”

Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive, said the Everglades is intended to do one thing: “It captures attention.”

Ordering begins in March, exclusively for existing Bronco reservation holders and for those who have placed orders for a basic Bronco but want to upgrade, if their Bronco hasn’t been processed for production. The Bronco Everglades, which includes Sasquatch Package features, starts at $53,000 with $1,495 in delivery fees added.

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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: phoward@freepress.com or 313-618-1034. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.

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