Ford’s 1,200-HP Bronco Is Built For Arctic Rescue

Megazilla 2.0 turns the Ford Bronco Frostwarden into a one-off Arctic rescue rig with serious hardware and crate-engine racing potential.

Photo by: Ford

By: Brian Potter

Nov 4, at 1:40am ET

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Ford built a 1,200-horsepower Bronco for a mission that does not exist yet, hauling rescue crews through snow too deep for anything else. The Ford Bronco Frostwarden debuted at the 2026 SEMA Show as a one-off search-and-rescue concept.

The truck exists to show off Ford's new Megazilla 2.0 crate engine, a supercharged 7.3-liter V8 that outmuscles anything the brand has sold in a box before. Underneath the show paint sits hardware built for actual winter extraction work.

One-Off Arctic Rescue Build

The Frostwarden started life as a pitch for an Arctic search-and-rescue rig, something imposing enough to match the engine Ford wanted to showcase. The team began work in February and pushed the physical build into high gear by June.

The rescue theme shows up everywhere on the truck. Off-road lights, a roof-mounted spare, a front tow winch, and a rear-mounted external fuel tank all point toward a vehicle meant to operate far from a gas station. It's wrapped in a black-and-yellow livery that reads more fire department than show floor.

Underneath, the Frostwarden rides on 42-inch BFGoodrich tires mounted to custom 18-inch Weld bead-lock wheels, lifted further by a 74Weld portal gear kit. Custom Bilstein dampers and a Dana 60 driveline, with a 10R100 transmission pulled from an F-Series Super Duty, carry the load underneath.

Inside, yellow-and-black upholstery continues the rescue-truck theme, and a Megazilla nameplate sits on the steering wheel as a reminder of what is under the hood. Ford has used similarly outlandish show trucks before, including the 900-hp F-150 Raptor R concept, to tease hardware long before it reaches a production catalog.

Megazilla 2.0 Delivers Over 1,200 Horsepower

The engine is the actual headline. Megazilla 2.0 pairs a 7.3-liter V8 block with a 3.0-liter Gen 6 Whipple supercharger, and the combination produces over 1,200 horsepower and more than 1,000 pound-feet of torque.

That is not a bolt-on supercharger kit dropped onto the existing Megazilla. Ford redesigned the internals for boosted duty: a stronger block, a supercharger-specific camshaft, upgraded pistons, larger fuel injectors, and a different belt drive and damper setup, all built around forced induction from the start.

The power output figures come from race fuel tested to the SAE J607 standard, and Ford has not published a separate pump-gas rating. Ford Racing Parts lists the engine under part number M-6007-MZ73MD.

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Ford has specified that Megazilla 2.0 is not tied to the Frostwarden alone. It's aimed at custom racing builds and classic-car conversions through the crate-engine catalog, separate from whatever becomes of the one-off truck itself.

No pricing has been announced for either the engine or a potential kit.