Ford rolling out new Bronco on OJ Simpson’s birthday. The reaction was ... spirited
Update: Ford spokesperson Mark Truby announced Friday, June 19, on Twitter that the company would push the Bronco release date back to July 13, saying the original release date “unintentionally coincided with O.J. Simpson’s birthday.”
After a highly anticipated wait, Ford Motor Co. announced it’s releasing the new Bronco on July 9 — which just so happens to be O.J. Simpson’s 73rd birthday.
The Bronco was infamously linked to Simpson’s halfhearted escape attempt after police charged him with murder in the early 1990s. Ford was none too pleased with the association at the time, the Detroit Free Press reported.
As for the new release date? “Purely coincidental,” Mike Levine, Ford North America product communications manager, told the Free Press.
“We’re going to reveal Bronco just like we said we would on July 9,” he said when the newspaper checked Monday to confirm the planned release date.
Simpson infamously tried to flee the authorities on the night of June 17, 1994 — exactly 26 years ago Wednesday — in the back of a white Bronco driven by his friend and former teammate, Al Cowlings, CNN reported. Simpson had just been charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Police followed the 1994 Ford Bronco more than 50 miles through Orange County, California, in what might have been the slowest car chase ever, according to the History Channel.
The low-speed chase lasted nearly two hours while some 95 million people tuned in to watch on their televisions, The New York Times reported a few days later.
Simpson turned himself in later that night and a federal jury acquitted him on both murder counts in 1995, according to media reports.
Still, the white Bronco lived in infamy — and the internet was quick to remind Ford of that.
Some applauded the car giant’s ... ingenuity, if not the humor.
Others weren’t buying it.
Most, however, were merely baffled by the “coincidence.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Ford rolling out new Bronco on OJ Simpson’s birthday. The reaction was ... spirited."
