As early as the 1970's, Ford Motor Company knew that the new Ford Bronco II ( Ford Bronco 2 Bronco ii, Bronco ll &/or Bronco2 ) a hybrid truck / passenger type vehicle would be a winner. What Ford didn't even consider was the rollover problem that they were creating for themselves. With the popularity of the AMC Jeep CJ-7, the idea for the Ford Bronco immerged. Ford officials knew that they must act quickly as news of General Motors producing a similar type vehicle had already leaked out, and Ford was intent on beating GM to the punch. GM was to introduce a new concept off road passenger vehicle known as the Blazer in the fall lineup for 1982. Therefore not to loose market share, Ford hurried it's own concept vehicle through development and testing. Ford in their haste to beat GM, decided against the advise of it's own engineers and decided to use an existing chassis of the small pickup known as the Ford Ranger. The use of this chassis was just the start of many bad corporate and engineering decisions that costs 100's of lives and 100's of millions of dollars in lawsuits against Ford.

By deciding to use the Ford Ranger platform, Ford could save many months of development time and millions in engineering and testing. Ford however became concerned when early tests of the prototype showed high rollover risks. In fact just two months after Ford approved the Bronco for development, the problems and the bad press about the Jeep CJ came to light on the television show " 60 Minutes". In that Jeep rollover episode, test revealed the Jeep CJ starting to tip over in a J-Turn at a modest speed of just 22 miles an hour. Ford's own engineering were aware of the Jeep's problem and worked to greatly improve upon Jeep's rollover ratings. However by spring of 1981, Ford's engineers knew that they had a rollover problem. At a Arizona test track, the Bronco with 15 inch wheels and large tires, rolled over in a 35 mph J-turn test with severe rollover roof crush. Immediately Ford's lawyers started to attend all development and engineering meetings. In this way, Ford thought that they could better prevent damaging evidence from being produced  and possibly in an attempt to cover engineering meeting with the shroud of  the attorney-client privilege and to help develop warning labels and manuals that would somewhat warn the consumer, without scaring off the customer.

In order to keep the Bronco from rolling over, they discussed the need to widen the vehicle about wider but that would hurt the fuel economy so they talked about the use of lower tires to reduce the center of gravity, but consumers like the big wheel -15 inch tire better, Ford thought. Later in a Ford presentation to the top executives, it was discussed  that the problem with the Bronco rolling over couldn't be fixed  and that they said "do what you can to fine tune it." Even with these newest changes, the Bronco ll was doomed.  Later on August 13, 1982 in another test for the senior legal team, the Bronco ll lifted off from the ground in a 43 mph test. Ford's legal team started preparing for the worst. The legal team started to "gather" damaging documents and tests to help "close the loop" of the document trail. Strangely enough, a number of very damning documents were "somehow" lost or destroyed, even a copy of the then current policy manual on document destruction was also "lost or destroyed". One last ditch effort by Ford to lower the center of gravity was by enlarging the gas tank and by putting a heavier tank protection plate beneath the tank and slightly wider wheels. While it lowered the center of gravity (COG), there was no difference in terms of its rollover propensity or safety. Then in Jan. 1983 a computer program at Ford, predicted the rollover problem at speeds as low as 32 mph. In months to follow, even  a Ford engineer rolled a Bronco on a test track when he hit the brake during a U-Turn and at a speed of only 20 mph. Ford's itself, estimated  141 "first event" rollovers deaths would occur a year for every one million Ford Bronco II's that were sold.

BRONCO II ROLLOVER STATISTICS