Ford jumped into the off-road recreational vehicle market in a serious way for 1966 with the lovable but totally capable Bronco.

While the 1966 Ford Bronco was introduced to the public on August 11, 1965, the story naturally begins four years earlier, when the automaker made a careful study of the off-road market and laid the groundwork for a vehicle that was initially called the GOAT. The initials stood for Goes Over All Terrain.

A driving force behind the program was Ford vice president and engineering wizard Don Frey, known to all as one of the fathers of the Mustang. The simple, box-like styling was based on initial renderings by Ford stylist McKinley Thompson, while the name that was ultimately chosen, Bronco, was an obvious tie-in to the wildly popular Mustang. Now there was another pony in the Ford stable, this one designed for off-road fun. The Bronco was “a new kind of sports car!” the ads declared.

There were three body styles (above) for the ’66 rollout  the $2.386 roadster with no doors or top; the $2,479 Sports Utility aka Half Cab, which included a bolt-on steel top and roll-up side windows, and the $2,551 Wagonette with a full-length steel top. A bench seat was standard on all three, while front bucket seats and a small rear passenger seat were extra-cost options.Tops and other features were basically interchangeable.

The basic ladder frame was exclusive to the Bronco, and with its 92-in wheelbase the package offered significantly more room and ride comfort than the 81-in Jeep CJ-5. There was but one drivetrain at launch: a special version of the 170 Falcon CID six with solid lifters and 105 horsepower coupled to a three-speed manual gearbox.

Only four-wheel drive was offered—no 2WD versions—driving through a Ford 9-inch rear axle, a Dana 30 front axle with locking hubs, and a Dana 20 transfer case. On March 2, 1966 a 289 CID V8 with 200 hp became available, but an automatic transmission would not be offered until 1973. The original Bronco was a model of simplicity, a far cry from the fully equipped SUVs of the 21st  century.

Ford’s first dedicated sports-utility vehicle easily met its modest sales targets, selling nearly 24,000 units its first year. The bare-bones Roadster is the rarest of the three models with a mere 212 examples produced. Due to the low demand it was discontinued after 1968, while the Half Cab was dropped in 1972.

All told, around 207,000 first-generation Broncos were produced between 1966 and 1977. Few would have predicted this years ago, but today the original Bronco is considered every bit as collectible as that other pony-named vehicle in Don Frey’s stable, the Mustang.