The Ford Bronco is the hit vehicle of the decade, and in this episode, we test a version that is smack in the middle of the lineup. The Bronco Badlands is engineered for serious off-roading with 33-inch all-terrain tires on 17-inch aluminum wheels as just a hint of what it offers. Our two-door test vehicle had the special seven-speed manual with the ultra-low crawler gear to enable some very Old School off-roading.

At the same time, even the most gung-ho off-roader has to drive on the pavement for a percentage of the time. So how the $58,000 Badlands trim negotiated the wilds of suburban South California proved just as important — and probably more daunting — as any off-road trek. We’ll tell you how it all went coming up.

Also coming up in the road test segment, Co-Host Chris Teague and his family spent a week with a $120,000 2023 Cadillac Escalade. The big SUV’s level of luxury is off the charts with more video screens than a Buffalo Wild Wings on an NFL Sunday. Did Chris Teague’s daughters really do somersaults and cartwheels in the Cadillac? We’ll check into those claims in this edition of the show.

If you plan to buy a car in the next two or three years you’ll want to hear the interview with our special guest. Mike Darrow is President of TrueCar and an absolute expert on the car-buying process. He has some very educated advice about what to do in the current situation in which vehicle inventory has conspired to make car buying both difficult and expensive. TrueCar has some solutions for you.

In the news, we’ll have the results of an illuminating new survey that attempts to answer the question: do Americans really want electric cars?

At the same time, Steve Center, a key car company executive at Kia, is speaking plainly about the effects of the federal legislation passed this summer that changed the way tax incentives are determined for electric vehicles. We’ll have the details of what he said and why he said it.

All that and plenty more coming upon this edition of “America on the Road.”