Unbridled: We Drive a 1,000-HP Ford Bronco and a King of Hammers–Winning Truck!

It’s amazing how capable a Ford Bronco is. Capable of billy-goating up rutted hills, fording streams, rock crawling, and mudding, there are few obstacles a base Bronco can’t tackle. But that pesky human desire for more—coupled with the need to be the masters of our domains—exists. For consumers, Ford hopes the Bronco Black Diamond or Bronco Raptor can scratch that itch. But for adrenaline junkies like racer Loren Healy, built Broncos like the King of the Hammers–winning Bronco 4600 and the one-off 1,000-hp Bronco “El Bandito” might suffice. Ford brought us out to its Las Vegas Off-Roadeo location to get a taste of what, exactly, that “more” from a Bronco feels like.

Located about 25 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, Ford’s Nevada Bronco Off-Roadeo (one of five; Ford also has locations in New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah) is nestled up into Potosi Mountain’s slopes, the site of a famous World War II–era plane wreck and various lead mining concerns dating back to New Spain. Surrounded by centuries-old desert two-tracks, Joshua trees, slot canyons, and rocks, it’s the perfect place to get acquainted with two seriously impressive—but very different—breeds of Broncos.

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What’s Bigger Than a Sasquatch?

The Bronco 4600 has much in common with the two-door Bronco Black Diamond Sasquatch you can buy from your local Ford dealers. Named for the King of the Hammers’ “stock” 4600 class, the Bronco 4600 retains the frame, body, engine (in this case the optional 330-hp, 415-lb-ft 2.7-liter twin-turbo V-6), 10-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive transfer case, and 35-inch tires of civilian Bronco Sasquatches.

Its main modifications include a roll cage, upgraded brakes, a front portal axle, rear air-locking differential, and Fox coilover shocks with remote reservoirs and pneumatic bumpstops at all four corners for both rock crawling and high-speed desert running (though there are far more changes, which you can read about here).

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This Bronco 4600 was driven by King of the Hammers legend Healy, who piloted it to a first-place finish in 2023. Strapped in with Healy riding shotgun, we were let loose in the Off-Roadeo’s high speed Raptor and technical Baja courses. Our route was a great reminder of what helps make King of the Hammers such a challenging race, varying from tight, technical washes and off-camber climbs up boulders, tabletop jumps, and moguls. Vehicle traits that make an off-roader good at more technical elements—such as a short wheelbase and high-riding body—make it a more challenging drive on faster, more dynamic terrain and vice versa. The fact that racers such as Healy can process that duality at race pace is wildly impressive, especially considering how unforgiving deserts can be.

Those compromises certainly arise during our spin in the Bronco 4600—chiefly in high-speed bowls or hairpins when the quick hydraulic steering, short wheelbase, and high center of gravity conspire against unexpecting drivers, or on the tabletop jumps where we tended to land nose first, yet that same duality makes the 4600 such a thrilling drive—like a two-door Bronco Raptor.

Set up with a prominently placed brake pedal for left-foot braking and with the twin-turbo V-6 locked into the Bronco’s Baja mode, the Ford feels surprisingly responsive once you’re aware of its quirks, with near instantaneous throttle response, easy-to-modulate brakes with plenty of stopping power, and reactive steering. It’s a thrill to rotate it on throttle through hairpins, weasel through narrow crevices, and pick our way among boulder-strewn fields—so much so that’d we’d have been content to keep finding faster and more technical terrain to drive through if we didn’t have El Bandito waiting.

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Meeting the Bandit

Unlike the Bronco 4600, “El Bandito”—named for “the outlaws of yesteryear that would roam Mexico and the American Southwest”— wasn’t built to meet any racing body’s rule book. Instead, it was meant to live up to the name of Healy’s and partner Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s Fun-Haver Off-Road brand. This Baja-inspired Bronco started life as a pre-production two-door Bronco destined for the crusher, but was stripped down to its cab; mated to a tube frame; fitted with a Baja Bronco’s front- and rear end; and then stuffed with the same axles, diffs, transfer case, 42-inch wheel and tire package, and suspension package (Fox Shox coilovers, bypasses, and bumpstops with 20-inch front and 25-inch rear travel) as the pair’s Utra4 4400 Unlimited race trucks.

Unlike the race trucks, however, the Bronco El Bandito is powered by an engine you won’t find in your neighbor’s Bronco—a 5.2-liter supercharged V-8 courtesy of the Mustang GT500 paired with a four-speed manually shifted automatic. Not content with the factory’s 760-hp tune, the Fun-Haver team swapped out the factory’s supercharger in favor of a 3.8-liter Whipple unit, boosting power to about 1,000 tire-roasting horsepower.

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The results are intoxicating, overwhelming, psychotic, and fantastic all at once. El Bandito’s sheer size, lack of visibility, and outright power make it intimidating to drive at first. It’s quicker than you think it’d be, more responsive to braking and steering inputs than the Bronco 4600, and has so much suspension travel and tire that it floats over obstacles that look impassible.

After a few laps around our makeshift Baja course, we found ourselves getting more comfortable with El Bandito. Pretty soon we could string together a few clean laps as we got into the rhythm of things: pinning the throttle on the straights, dabbing the brakes to load the nose before turning in, powering out, and ensuring the suspension is unloaded by throttle or brake input before hitting an obstacle—or jump.

It was amazing how softly El Bandito landed after repeated launches from the tabletop. Having jumped just about every factory high-speed off-roader in existence, it was jarring—or, should we say, the opposite—the way this custom Bronco returned to Earth, especially considering it felt like El Bandito’s nariz was pointed straight down after every leap. A braver driver might’ve been able to land El Bandito square with more speed, but that wasn’t this author.

What El Bandito Is Really Capable Of

Luckily, Healy was on hand to give us a taste of what El Bandito could really do—and in that two laps it was abundantly clear that we were nowhere near even scratching the surface of what this Baja-bred Bronco is really capable of with a racer behind the wheel. And, rather than working up to race pace, Healy just went for it.

We pulled out of the paddock on the quarry’s rim, and Healy firewalled the throttle as we dropped down into the bowl. Waiting at the bottom was a berm we’d previously gingerly crawled over before lining up with the tabletop; Healy simply plowed through it like it didn’t exist, relying on the Bronco’s child-sized tires and suspension to sort it out. He then yanked the hand brake (oh, did we not mention the hydraulic drift brake?), pointed El Bandito’s nose toward the tabletop as we spat sand out of our mouth, and sent El Bandito skyward over the jump—the sounds of rock and gravel clanging off its underside replaced by wind and a supercharged V-8 exiting via a single exhaust pipe behind our head.

The landing was surprisingly gentle. As suspected, Healy brought the Bronco down square on all fours and raced off through the rest of the course. It was impressive watching him work from up close. Despite El Bandito’s size, he knew how to make it feel like it like a smaller car, relying on the suspension to eat up washes and banks, brakes to load the nose, and the throttle to get it spun around corners. We got lulled into a false sense of comfort as he tore through the track in likely a third of the time it took us to tackle it.

The second time through, Healy drifted El Bandito sideways along sweeping left-hand bend carved into a dune, pointed to the next straight, and then instead of proceeding as expected, grabbed the handbrake for a quick 180-degree turn, and went full throttle up the 65-degree or so embankment. We have no idea how fast we hit that incline—El Bandito doesn’t have a speedo—but once we launched off that ridge, it didn’t feel like we’d ever come down. We just floated there, weightless, the supercharged monster spinning freely in front of us, as loose objects in the cab floated up and away from us waiting for that inevitable reunion with the ground.

We landed hard, rear wheels first, the massive hydraulic jounce bumpers turning what would be a totaling event in a stock Bronco Raptor into one that felt like we were rear-ended in a parking lot. It was terrifying and thrilling, all at once. As we set off again, all we could do was laugh—which at the heart of that is the entire point of El Bandito.

The Bronco, in general, too. There are more sensible and efficient (space and otherwise) SUVs on the road—like Ford’s own Bronco Sport—but the regular Bronco is one of the few SUVs on the road that provide its drivers with a tangible sense of fun, whether it be getting dusty in the desert or just driving over parking curbs for fun. While El Bandito is likely a bit much for your commute, you and I can scratch that same itch in any Bronco Sasquatch or Raptor.