Much like the Jeep Wrangler, the 2021 Ford Bronco is designed with customization in mind. The company is even offering more than 200 accessories for the Bronco when it hits showrooms, but powertrain upgrades might not be possible via aftermarket means. According to Ford, the ECU is very complicated, and, essentially, nobody should be playing around with ECU calibration. That means aftermarket companies might find the new Bronco to be untunable.

Ford Could Block Tuners from Altering the New Bronco

In some cases, tuners can deliver impressive horsepower gains without making any physical alterations at all – just by adjusting a turbo engine’s boost pressure, fuel delivery, engine timing, and the like. However, with the modernized computer control systems in cars – and how they are all interlinked – this is slowing becoming a thing of the past. In fact, physical upgrades also depend on ECU calibration, too. Think about this – if you bolt on a larger turbo (or add a turbo to a naturally aspirated engine), then you’ll naturally push more air into the engine. The engine’s control module, thus, needs to be updated to supply enough fuel to make the right air-to-fuel mixture of optimal performance.

And, this is where the Ford Bronco might end up being untunable at all. In a report published by Muscle Cars and Trucks, The Bronco’s Program Manager, Jeff Seaman, explains why the Bronco is untunable at the moment.

To prevent any random ECU changes made by anyone outside of the Ford family, the company has employed a number of cybersecurity and encryption measures. These, clearly, make it harder to manipulate the ECU and will make the life of tuning companies very hard. It’s the same story we heard about the C8 Corvette, which also suffers from a lack of tunability.

That said, Ford isn’t necessarily ruling out tuning altogether, as it is working with SEMA, which does authorize certain third parties to make calibration updates. But that’s a special situation and what that means for aftermarket companies remains to be seen.

So, the big takeaway is that a handful of tuning companies may eventually be able to make some calibrations, but there’s a good chance that they will be working very close with Ford – so much so that Ford may have to approve any calibration made before it happens. Either way, it’s going to be quite sometime before any real tuning program worth writing home about is available for the 2021 Ford Bronco.