Driving the Zero Labs Ford Bronco Electric Restomod

“Road” feels like an overstatement. It’s more of a stony scar traced across the ankles of a modest mountain: a track full of everything except traffic-dust, loose rock, and scrub that seems to haul itself out of the soil in a foul mood, as though cross about being alive. The sun is dropping into its late-day run, and this old Ford Bronco is followed everywhere by a squared-off shadow, always a fraction behind, its outline softened by the dusty plume we’re dragging uphill.

We inch along in low range, easing over the stones and teasing our way up the trail until the landscape finally opens. We stop and take it in as you might draw a long breath: the horizon washed in muted watercolours. With the age of the vehicle beneath us, the whole scene could have been lifted straight from the Sixties-until you pay attention. Listen first, then look properly. For one thing, the Bronco is almost silent, even on the move. For another, a second glance makes it obvious this is “the same” as a Sixties Bronco in the way a cat is “the same” as a horse: shared basic architecture, utterly different result.

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**Words:* Tom Ford* // **Photography:* Rowan Horncastle*

What makes this Zero Labs Ford Bronco different

The story runs deeper than contemporary paintwork. Deeper than the precisely tight carbon-fibre panel gaps-so un-Bronco, both in what they’re made from and how they’re finished. Deeper, too, than a reworked bodyshell that tidies away some of the original Bronco’s more awkward production compromises. It goes beyond the tough, well-regarded Currie Enterprises differentials peeking out beneath the front and rear, and beyond the glimpses you catch of the Fox Racing suspension.

It even stretches past an interior you could hang in a gallery as modern art: a floating centre console shaped with Eames-chair inspiration, and a manual gear lever that feels like engineering made tactile. Because this isn’t simply a restored Bronco. This is a Zero Labs Ford Bronco-different because it’s been re-engineered from the ground up. And it’s quiet because it’s electric.

Blasphemy? That depends entirely on where you’re standing. Zero Labs is currently turning out fully electric, heavy-restomod classic Ford Broncos, braiding together two of the loudest currents in car culture into something so on-trend it’s almost parody-without needing a vegan Kardashian and a pair of Yeezys to complete the picture. And without giving too much away too early: it’s completely, irresistibly beguiling. To understand why, it helps to start at the start. With Adam. Just not that Adam.

“You have to look at the future as if it’s already happened. Your unconscious doesn’t recognise time. You can’t be anchored in the present. I have to believe this has already happened… that this Bronco is already the past. Hope isn’t how ‘it’ happens. You have to live in the future.”

Meeting Adam Roe at Zero Labs in Los Angeles

Wind back a few hours and Adam Roe-founder and CEO of Zero Labs Classic Electric Vehicles-is in full flow. It’s genuinely difficult to work out whether you’re listening to a visionary or an intriguingly unhinged mind. Perhaps it’s the jet lag, but I sit there with a glassy stare, trying to project thoughtful understanding and landing somewhere closer to “arrived at a duel of wits without a weapon”. With a smile that flickers like an old neon sign, Roe sweeps an arm around Zero Labs’ new manufacturing site next door to Elon Musk’s Space X in Los Angeles and asks, with a hint of uncertainty, “But it’s cool though, right?”

Yes-of course it’s cool. But as a woman named Kaylee glides by on a longboard, carrying a coffee the size of a fire extinguisher, it dawns on me that this is California at maximum volume. It isn’t only the office-to-office transport. The atmosphere is unmistakable: you can taste optimism at the back of your throat and feel it radiating off the people and the building itself. It’s as comforting as the Californian sunshine forcing its way through the window. It’s impressive and slightly… odd. Or, you know, jet lag.

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My gaze keeps drifting to a matte-grey Bronco waiting about 9 metres (30 ft) away. Visually, it nails the brief-and I’m silently pleading it isn’t just an Instagram-friendly shell. I can feel myself being pulled along by the Zero Labs energy, and it’ll be painful if the car turns out to be rubbish. It doesn’t help that I take to Roe immediately, because resisting him feels impossible. He’s not what you’d call a conventional automotive CEO: athletic-looking, in a black V-neck T-shirt, denim jacket and battered trainers, Adam Roe is the sort of person you can’t neatly file away. Is he a fashionable off-duty mechanic or a charming, laid-back millionaire? He could plausibly be either. In this case, perhaps both.

After 25 years in advertising and tech, Roe executed a dramatic business U-turn and chose to build classic EV conversions instead. These wouldn’t be simple refurbishments, but full re-engineering projects designed to put modern ease and everyday usability front and centre-while mixing in a generous measure of whimsy and art along the way, not unlike a certain famously successful Porsche “re-imagineer” based not far from here in California. To make it real, he assembled a small crew: designers, artists, fabricators, racing engineers, chassis specialists and tech minds-and built a company around them.

Zero Labs doesn’t feel like the typical small-volume atelier start-up. The workshop is brick-built, with the air of a stylish New York loft. Inside are multiple Broncos in various stages of strip-down and resurrection. The disassembly and refit work is almost surgical in its neatness, and the standard of finish is striking. There aren’t rows and rows of cars, but that’s partly the point: the Zero Labs Bronco is planned as a limited first run of around 150 vehicles. They’ll be hand-built, and the company will only take on donors that are already heading towards wreck territory-turning away any straight, tidy original that deserves to remain intact.

Even so, there’s room to grow, and the place has the feel of a band of misfits with a clear purpose. The Bronco won’t be the only project on the Laboratory bench. The intention is to keep improving the current specification and to keep updating existing cars as they go, rather than treating each build as a frozen one-off.

The engineering choices: battery, motor and chassis

Plenty of businesses renovate old Broncos, and many do it brilliantly, carefully refining the icon. Zero Labs, though, goes several stages further and removes the heart completely. True, the Bronco never had a truly mythical engine to mourn, but swapping in a 70kWh battery pack and a 434bhp, 277lb ft BorgWarner permanent-magnet motor is still a very clear declaration.

Then there’s the rest: carbon-fibre body panels, a bespoke chassis, an integrated roll-cage, modern comforts throughout, plus a heavy helping of artistry. That isn’t just signalling intent-it’s writing it across your forehead permanently and choosing never to wear a hat.

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Of course, it’s easy to set fire to time and capital by hurling money at a dream without having more than quirky chat and a shiny show car. Ambition like this is expensive. So after a thorough walk-round of the facility, we head out for a short run into the hills above Los Angeles to find out whether Zero Labs is more than good-looking content.

On the road and off it: driving the electric Bronco

The first few minutes are immediately impressive-if slightly unfamiliar. On tarmac, the Zero Labs Bronco delivers what I can only call an “authentically vague” feel: it steers and stops vastly better than a true period Bronco, yet it hasn’t been numbed by its modern powertrain. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but it isn’t meant that way. In fact, you come to appreciate that the experience hasn’t been overwhelmed by an EV set-up obsessed with 0–60mph.

This old shape moves along with satisfying urgency and feels assured in traffic-even if you need a moment to recalibrate around the manual gearbox. It’s not difficult, just different: an EV doesn’t have a stall speed, so (a) you don’t need to dip the clutch as you roll to a halt, and (b) you end up preselecting gears-clutch in, choose gear, clutch out, throttle.

Oddly, despite the unfamiliarity beneath the familiar silhouette, it feels right almost straight away. Keeping the manual ’box is a mildly eccentric decision, but it works-emotionally and mechanically. The ride is good, it corners well enough, and the quality of the hardware makes itself known almost instantly. The tuning isn’t some earth-shattering revelation, but the set-up can be tailored to your preferences, and that costly suspension is a big part of why.

More than anything, it’s simply a pleasure to sit in. It’s like a classic, roughly wrought vintage Ford that’s been examined with a jeweller’s loupe. Without meaning to sound perverse, you could happily spend ages just running your hands over the interior-feeling the heft and integrity of the parts, enjoying how seamlessly the upgrades have been integrated, from the vegan leather to the bamboo inlays. It’s intoxicating. The visual-and-tactile trick of the Zero Labs is that it all appears so natural you start to think it should always have been this way-if a Bronco could somehow have had a cabin more enticing than a Rolls-Royce.

Off-road, the good news continues. Properly dialled in, this would be a serious dirt companion. Electric torque delivery lets you thread your way across difficult ground with minimal wheelspin and very little brutishness, creeping quietly up awkward tracks while you listen to birdsong. It just makes sense. And with a range of around 190 miles (about 305 km) on a full charge, anyone living close to open country would find off-road days genuinely enjoyable.

No, it’s not the answer for hardcore overlanding, but it offers more real-world capability than many will expect. For my tastes, add a larger battery and aim for 250 miles of range, and you’d be set.

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The crucial point is that the car feels unmistakably real. Spend even a little time around Roe and you start to sense this isn’t a vanity brand destined to collapse when real-world production arrives. There’s a tangible, practical business competence in the background. And Roe gives the impression that fear of failure has been surgically removed.

The reality is that most ventures like this make a splash and then fade away, slowly cut down by the thousand small injuries of production life: margins versus costs, and the brutal investments that can turn even a wildly expensive one-off-starting at $160k for one of these, since you ask-into an unsustainable loss leader.

Zero Labs, however, has the nimble, polished feel you tend to get from a small, benevolent-dictatorship outfit where a sharp operator is firmly in charge. Roe talks about building an emotional bond with owners-about delivering everything you love, while stripping out the bits you don’t. He talks about blending our affection for old vehicles with a drivetrain that better suits modern life. What he and his team have produced isn’t a car you buy because you require it; it’s one you buy because you desire it. And if you spend even a short amount of time inside one-or alongside these people-that desire can turn into need remarkably quickly.

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