By Dan Neil

Once, a long time ago, I competed in the Baja 1000, the infamous desert race down the Baja California Peninsula, from Ensenada to La Paz. Once was plenty. I soiled my racing suit. I developed hypothermia and severe dehydration and hallucinated as if I had eaten jimson weed. I barfed in my closed-face helmet six times. When our Class 1 buggy crossed the finish line, 10 hours behind the winners, I was wearing a garland of lightly used Mexican food around my neck.

I saw a lot of crazy things through the steel mesh windshield of that machine -- an open-framed, rear-engine camel cricket with 30 inches of wheel travel at each corner. Among the most amazing were lunatics tackling the same race, the same bone-jarring trails and drenching river crossings, in lightly modified production cars and trucks: the stock class.

God help them, I thought. And, as a follow-up: How?

In the long, gritty, grimy history of the Baja 1000, only one vehicle in the production four-wheeler class has won Baja: In 1969, a Ford Bronco prepared by Bill Stroppe & Associates of Long Beach, Calif., took first overall. In 1971 and 1972, the Stroppe team won again, this time in a modified two-seater, with Parnelli Jones driving and Stroppe in the navigator seat, hanging on for dear life.

In a line repeated by many, Stroppe reportedly once compared the Baja 1000 experience to being in a 24-hour plane crash.

Like Carroll Shelby, who led Ford to four wins at Le Mans, Stroppe had a long-term arrangement with Ford Motor Company, developing Broncos for desert racing and building road-legal "Baja Broncos" for special clients, including President Richard Nixon.

And yet while Shelby remains a household name, to most people Stroppe's looks suspiciously like a typo. Ford's marketing mavens would like to change that.

Which brings us to our guest: the 2025 Ford Bronco Stroppe Special Edition, a particularly jumped-up version of Ford's charismatic adventure SUV festooned in Stroppe racing livery.

The Stroppe replaces the Wildtrak in a crowded portfolio of seven Bronco models, with a rainbow of available options and prices ranging from $37,995 to $90,035, MSRP. The flagship four-door Bronco Raptor can easily exceed $100,000.

With an opening bid of $75,635, Stroppe Edition doesn't exactly strike a blow for affordability, either, and that's before customers walk through a long list of desirable options and dealer-installed accessories, including variations of the removable roof.

The hardware is real: The Bronco's independent front and solid-axle rear suspension is steadied with what Ford calls the HOSS 3.0 package, including Fox shocks with internal bypass dampers. The Stroppe package also includes a lift kit for higher ground clearance (11.5 inches) and heavy-duty steering rack and tie-rod ends. Nice. I hate it when the steering rack goes spang!

Other expedition gear includes the front sway-bar disconnect system, which can be extremely handy when you find yourself jailed between boulders on the trail.

Powered by a husky twin-turbocharged 2.7-liter V6 (330 hp, 410 lb-ft) and a 10-speed automatic transmission, the Stroppe driveline provides front and rear locking differentials for your rock-humping convenience, masterminded by a multimodal terrain system Ford calls G.O.A.T. ("Goes Over Any Type of Terrain," if you can believe it.) The high-stepping Stroppe has a maximum wading depth of 33.5 inches.

The one hurdle the Stroppe Edition can't get over is cognitive dissonance. In the real world, these brightly colored Tonka toys will live as pampered collectibles, far from cactus and creosote. Taking one off-road would be like eating cereal with a Jubilee Year commemorative spoon.

I'm glad we're not here to celebrate Stroppe's color sense. The modern approximations of Stroppe's classic livery -- the stark-raving "Code Orange," "Atlas Blue" and "Oxford White" -- will guarantee low driving mileage for years to come. Honey, those are not your colors.

Other collectible signifiers include the Oxford White grille with the blaze-orange Bronco wordmark in the center. In case you missed it there, the wordmark sprawls across the rear quarter panels. Should you need further clarification, the front quarter-panels display "Stroppe Edition" emblems. On the rear tailgate to the right is a decal of a bucking bronco. Near the left rear fender, another decal denotes the presence of the "Sasquatch" off-road equipment package. This thing has more badges than General Zhukov's dress uniform.

You will also know it by the gloss-black 17-inch spoked wheels and matte-black beadlocks, the likes of which Bill Stroppe had no ken.

North Carolina's motorsports calendar is woefully short on desert racing. We'll try to do better. In my time with the Stroppe I used it as a daily driver, running errands around town and looking like a recruiting scout for the Denver Broncos.

Lofted on the 35-inch mud-and-snow tires, atop an added 3 inches of suspension lift, this Bronco rides extra tall in the saddle. And soft.

The kinematics allow a lot of body roll in corners and a light swaying in highway-speed maneuvering. The knobby tires' sidewalls roll under in sharp cornering, pretty much as you would expect.

The steady thrum of tire-on-asphalt seeped through our vehicle's polycarbonate removable top. The fuel economy -- a mere 18 mpg, combined -- is extra outrageous.

No one who considers such a machine should be surprised by wind noise, buffeting and dirigible-like handling. It's the nature of these beasts.

Even for gearheads, the name Bill Stroppe is a bit obscure. The truth is, the bench of desert-racing heroes isn't very deep. The Stroppe initiative hints at how dependent the adventure-truck category is on narrative, the myths, lore and legends of heritage -- what might be called the Walter Mitty effect.

In some sense the Stroppe Edition doesn't get really real until it changes hands at a Barrett-Jackson auction or on bringatrailer.com. If Ford's marketers have done their job, enthusiasts will bid up the resale value, and Bill Stroppe, the legend, will have been born.

If not, you can always paint it.

2025 Ford Bronco Stroppe Special Edition

Base price $75,635

Price, as tested $77,665

Powertrain 2.7-liter turbocharged DOHC V6; 10-speed automatic transmission; standard 4WDe with front and rear locking differentials

Power/torque 330 hp at 5,250 rpm/410 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm

Towing capacity 3,500 pounds

Length/wheelbase/width/height 173.7/100.4/79.3/75.2 inches

Curb weight 4,781 pounds

0-60 mph 8 seconds (est.)

EPA estimated fuel economy 17/18/18 mpg, city/highway/combined

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 25, 2025 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.