It’s hard to believe that the sixth-gen Bronco has been on sale for five years now, and perhaps even harder to believe that Ford still won’t give it the one thing enthusiasts beg for the loudest: a V8. Even the range-topping Bronco Raptor makes do with a twin-turbo six. At this year’s SEMA Show, however, Dearborn served up the next best thing. Ford decided to swap out the most powerful crate engine ever created by an automaker into a one-off snow rig dubbed the Ford Bronco Frostwarden.
Dearborn’s Idea of a Snow Day
Ford imagined the Frostwarden as an Arctic search-and-rescue unit. The black-and-yellow “Snow Rescue Recovery” livery is backed up by a front winch, a roof-mounted spare and light bar, traction boards, tailgate-mounted fuel cans, and an exoskeleton-style cage that doubles as storage for recovery gear.
The cabin also got the same treatment,, and trades the showroom cloth for yellow-and-black leather and a Megazilla badge set into the steering wheel.
Ford handed the build to Tennessee’s Kincer Chassis back in February, and the finished engine went straight from the dyno into the engine bay. The rig wasn’t officially completed until October, giving Ford just a few weeks before its Vegas debut.
Forty-Twos and Portal Boxes
Keeping this much power useful in deep snow takes some real hardware, and Ford delivered. The Frostwarden rides on 42-inch BFGoodrich rubber wrapped around 18-inch Weld beadlocks. There’s also 74Weld portal boxes equipped on each corner which adds both ground clearance and torque multiplication in one shot.
Custom remote-reservoir Bilstein coilovers handle the damping, while a Dana 60 driveline and a 10R100 10-speed borrowed from the Super Duty keep all that grunt from grenading anything downstream.
Hellephant Hunting Season
The Megazilla 2.0 pairs Ford’s 7.3-liter Godzilla-derived V8 with a 3.0-liter Gen 6 Whipple twin-screw supercharger. And, naturally, Dearborn didn’t take the shortcut of lobbing a blower at the existing Megazilla and calling it a day. The engine gains a reinforced block, a camshaft ground specifically for boost, forged pistons, larger injectors, and a heavy-duty 10-rib belt drive.
The result is an absurd 1,200+ horsepower and over 1,000 lb-ft of torque on race fuel (nearly double the 612 horses of the naturally aspirated Megazilla). When Ford teased this engine back in January 2025, the stated target was “more than 1,000 horsepower.”
That also makes this, per Ford, the most powerful crate engine ever created by an automaker. For context, Mopar’s Hellephant has ruled the crate wars since 2018, and even its wildest C170 variant tops out at 1,025 horsepower and 945 lb-ft.
Spec Sheet
Model: Ford Bronco Frostwarden
Debut: 2026 SEMA Show
Engine: Megazilla 2.0 supercharged 7.3-liter V8
Supercharger: 3.0-liter Gen 6 Whipple twin-screw
Power: 1,200+ HP
Torque: 1,000+ lb-ft
Transmission: Ford 10R100 10-speed automatic
Tires: 42-inch BFGoodrich on 18-inch Weld beadlocks
Suspension: 74Weld portal boxes, custom Bilstein coilovers, Dana 60 driveline
Builder: Ford Racing x Kincer Chassis
Pricing & Availability
The Frostwarden itself is a one-off and will never see a showroom, though nearly everything bolted to it is available off the shelf. The Megazilla 2.0 is headed to the Ford Racing Parts catalog with pricing still under wraps. For reference, the naturally aspirated Megazilla currently lists at $25,295.
Recap
Ford Bronco Frostwarden
Ford stuffed its 1,200-horsepower Megazilla 2.0 crate engine into a one-off Arctic rescue Bronco riding portal axles and 42-inch tires at SEMA 2026.
