The 2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch Is More Off-Roader Than Most People Will Ever Need

I didn’t expect to love the 2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch. Like many car enthusiasts, I underestimated the little crossover before ever I drove it. I joked that it was a Ford Escape, since the two share a platform, and I thought it was a marketing ploy: Ford made a big, hardcore, off-road Bronco and wanted to capitalize on the name downmarket, even if its baby sibling wasn’t nearly as capable.

But if this were a math test, my answer wouldn’t be listed in the multiple choice. That’s how wrong I was.

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch is way more off-roader than most people will ever need, and I no longer joke about it. I respect it.

Why This Little Off-Roader Exists

Ford originally launched the big Bronco in 1965 as a competitor to other utilitarian four-by-fours, including the International Harvester Scout and Jeep CJ. It had roots in military vehicles, but it was built for on- and off-road use.

The original Bronco got a baby sibling called the Bronco II, which was aimed at the compact-SUV market but didn’t last very long. It was based on the smaller Ford Ranger pickup, while the big Bronco was built on the F-Series truck platform at the time.

The big Bronco left the American market in June 1996, and more than two decades later, Ford launched the new, sixth-generation Bronco SUV to compete with the Jeep Wrangler on the hardcore off-roader market. With it came the Bronco Sport, a modern-day baby sibling. While the big Bronco rides on a modified version of the Ford Ranger body-on-frame platform, the Bronco Sport shares one with the unibody Escape crossover.

From 2025 onward, the Bronco Sport comes with an optional Sasquatch package — a more hardcore off-road treatment that’s been available for the big Bronco for years. The Bronco Sport Sasquatch has features like a twin-clutch rear-drive unit, a locking differential, steel underbody protection, Bilstein rear shock absorbers, and more.

The Bronco Sport is a smaller, more practical crossover that borrows some branding and talents from the big Bronco, ideally to make crossover buyers feel more capable and outdoorsy — even if they never use those capabilities. The Sasquatch treatment takes that mission even further.

2025 Ford Bronco Sport: The Basics

• Price: $29,995 (Bronco Sport base), Sasquatch (listed below)

• Engine: 1.5-liter, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine or 2.0-liter, four-cylinder EcoBoost engine

• Transmission: 8-speed automatic

• Drivetrain: All-wheel drive (AWD)

• Power: 180 horsepower and 200 pound-feet of torque (1.5L) or 250 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque (2.0L)

• Body Style: Five-seat unibody crossover

In 2025, the base model Bronco Sport starts at $29,995. Ford is adding the Sasquatch as an optional package on the top two trims, the Outer Banks and Badlands.

The Outer Banks model starts at $35,295, and has the 1.5-cylinder engine with 180 horsepower. The Sasquatch package costs an extra $3,535.

The Badlands starts at $40,115, and it has the 2.0-liter engine with 250 horsepower. On it, the Sasquatch package costs an extra $2,990.

What It Looks Like

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch rides on big, 29-inch all-terrain tires, with steel underbody protection and a front brush guard curling up toward its nose. It also comes in great colors: red, blue, forest green, light sand, and more. The more I think about Bronco Sport modifications and builds, the more I realize people will probably see these as super quirky on the used market in a few decades.

When the Bronco Sport debuted, I didn’t love the exterior. It looked like a big Bronco smashed up like a slab of ice cream on a cold stone. Something about it — the proportions, the styling — felt uncanny, like it was a Bronco derivative from a parallel timeline.

But the bigger the Bronco Sport and its tires get, the more I’m into it. The body and underbody protection make the Bronco Sport look more hardcore, transforming it from “normal crossover” to “mini off-roader.” And we all know that miniature models are almost always cuter.

What About The Inside?

Like the big Bronco, the inside of the Bronco Sport is utilitarian but not underwhelming. It’s the right amount of usability, comfort, and style. Many of the surfaces are hard, rubberized, and grippy, but not in a cheap way — in a “You’ll need to use this, so we made it usable” way.

I’m rarely worried I’m going to scratch or stain things in the Bronco Sport, aside from maybe the light-colored seat options, because everything can easily be sprayed or wiped off. That’s what you want from an adventure vehicle.

The infotainment screen in the Bronco Sport Sasquatch is big and responsive, and one of my favorite parts of the interior is the driver instrument cluster: Not only does it tell you helpful information like what angle your vehicle is at while you’re off-roading and rock-crawling, but also, every time you switch drive modes, a new Bronco Sport in a new environment — rocks, mud, sand, and more — splashes across the screen. It looks beautiful.

The only thing that could use a major change inside the Bronco Sport is the headliner color. Light-colored headliners are common in cheaper cars, whether they match the rest of the interior or not, and the headliners in the Sasquatches I drove were a light tannish-gray. Every time I looked at them, I thought: “If this car got dusty, muddy, or otherwise dirty, I’d hate to stain that.”

When you’re buying or driving an off-roader, you don’t want to think about stains. You want to think about exploring the Earth, no matter what nasty-colored substances you may splash through. Changing the color of the Bronco Sport’s headliner would go a long way.

How It Drives

I drove an early-model 2025 Bronco Sport Sasquatch off-road for the first time last year, but there was no on-road driving allowed yet. This year’s event was my first time on-road in the car, and it rode well on the highway. It was quiet and took bumps well, where you could feel them under you but also feel the car dampening them.

The 180-horsepower, 1.5-liter engine lacks power on the road, and you barely get a response when you stomp the gas pedal. But for rock-crawling and other low-speed activities, I didn’t notice it. The 250-horsepower, 2.0-liter engine isn’t fast but has adequate power, and it’s the one I’d recommend.

Off-road, the Bronco Sport Sasquatch can tackle a ton of terrain. That might be surprising to some, because the Bronco Sport is unibody — a car-like build where a vehicle’s body and frame are together. This creates a lighter, more efficient vehicle, but it lacks the flexibility of a body-on-frame vehicle. Off-roaders are traditionally body-on-frame because flexibility helps you tackle more terrain.

But we’re seeing more unibody off-roaders these days, like the Bronco Sport Sasquatch and Honda Passport Trailsport. The Sasquatch may not be body-on-frame, but it has a big off-road feature: a twin-clutch rear-drive unit.

The unit has two clutch packs, which control each rear wheel independently and allow them to move at their own speeds. That means if three of your wheels are without traction, a single rear one can propel the car forward on its own. Many normal cars have an open differential, which sends power to the wheel with the least resistance — spinning the wheel without traction and leaving you stuck.

The twin-clutch rear-drive unit can also act as a locking differential, which is a common feature on off-road vehicles. It ensures that the wheels are moving in lockstep, allowing you to get out of tricky situations that could otherwise leave your wheels spinning.

Ford took us to the desert in the Bronco Sport Sasquatch for lead-follow off-roading, and when you’re on a planned course, you know the company won’t take you anywhere the vehicle can’t handle. But the climbs and rock crawls we drove were steep enough to make me nervous as a novice off-roader, and before I drove the Bronco Sport for the first time, I never expected it to take certain rock crawls more confidently (and comfortably) than me.

Does the 2025 Ford Bronco Sport Sasquatch Fulfill Its Purpose?

Every time I drive the Bronco Sport Sasquatch, I remember how much I discounted the Bronco Sport at first, and how I thought it was just a cosplay Bronco. The Bronco Sport Sasquatch isn’t the big Bronco, but the truth is that a lot of people don’t need the big Bronco. The little guy is more off-roader than most people — including the ones who buy the big Bronco — will ever need.

The Bronco Sport Sasquatch is great for people who want off-road capabilities mixed with the comfort of a car. And should those people use their Bronco Sport to become even more hardcore off-roaders, the big Bronco will always be there in the future.