Ford Patents Built-In Bronco Door Storage — Could This Finally Solve the Door-Off Problem?
Taking the doors off a Ford Bronco is one of the best parts of owning one. Figuring out what to do with those doors afterward? That's another story.
Ford may have an answer.
A newly published Ford patent describes an integrated cargo-area storage system for removable door components, potentially giving future Bronco owners a much cleaner way to take their doors off and carry them along for the ride.
And for those of us who actually use our Broncos with the doors off, this could be a genuinely useful idea.
Take the Doors Off — And Bring Them With You
The patent, titled “Vehicle Door Module Storage System,” was filed February 28, 2025, and published September 3, 2026 as U.S. Patent Application US20260257541A1.
The basic concept uses a support beam mounted inside the vehicle's cargo area. Removable portions of the doors can then attach to that support structure and be carried inside the Bronco.
Instead of taking your doors off at home and leaving them sitting in the garage, Ford's concept could allow you to bring the removed pieces with you.
That's where this gets interesting.
Imagine heading out on a beautiful morning, pulling the doors off and hitting the trail. A few hours later, the temperature drops or a storm rolls in.
Rather than wishing your doors were 50 miles away in the garage, they're riding with you.
Bronco Already Has Onboard Door Storage — But This Is Different
It's worth pointing out that Ford already offers onboard door-storage bags for the four-door Bronco.
The current system uses padded bags and a retention harness to secure the removed doors inside the cargo area.
Ford's owner's manual even specifies the order in which all four standard Bronco doors should be loaded: driver-side rear, driver-side front, passenger-side front and passenger-side rear.
The newly patented idea appears to take the concept further by integrating a physical mounting/support system into the vehicle itself, rather than relying primarily on bags and straps.
That could potentially make carrying removed door sections faster, more organized and more secure.
Ford Seems Very Interested in Reinventing the Bronco Door
This isn't the only recent Ford patent involving removable doors.
Ford has also explored a system involving wireless removable doors, with the idea of reducing some of the physical connections that currently have to be disconnected when removing a Bronco door.
Put the ideas together and you can see an interesting direction Ford engineers are exploring:
Make the doors easier to remove. Make them easier to store. And make it easier to take them with you.
For a vehicle designed around open-air driving, that makes a lot of sense.
Could This Be Intended for the Next-Generation Bronco?
That's the million-dollar question.
Patent drawings should never be treated as confirmation of a future production vehicle. Automakers routinely patent ideas that never make it into a showroom.
Ford itself makes that clear, saying patent applications protect new ideas and shouldn't automatically be interpreted as future product plans.
But the timing is certainly interesting.
Several recently published Ford patents have included drawings of a boxy off-road SUV that has generated speculation about a future-generation Bronco. Other recent patents have explored removable-door technology, sleeping arrangements and other adventure-oriented features.
Whether we're looking at individual experiments or pieces of a much larger future Bronco strategy remains to be seen.
BroncoBusting Take
This is one patent we'd actually like to see Ford build.
Bronco owners love removing their doors, but storing and transporting four large painted doors isn't exactly convenient. They're bulky, they're expensive, and nobody wants to scratch one.
If Ford can design the next Bronco so that removable door components have a dedicated factory-engineered storage location inside the vehicle, that's the type of innovation that improves the Bronco without taking away what makes a Bronco a Bronco.
Even better would be combining this idea with Ford's other removable-door concepts.
Pull up to the trail. Release the doors. Store them securely in the Bronco. Hit the trail.
Weather changes?
Put them back on.
Now that's a Bronco feature we'd use.
What Do You Think?
Would built-in door storage make you more likely to take your Bronco's doors off?
And here's the bigger question: Is Ford simply protecting another engineering idea, or are these recent patents beginning to show us what Ford has planned for the next-generation Bronco?
Let us know what you think in the BroncoBusting.com forums.
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