Imagine dropping the top and hitting the trail in your short-wheelbase 4WD, while you listen to your V10 engine rumble. Ford considered resurrecting the Bronco nameplate 20 years earlier with this glorious Super-Duty-based beast. At least one Ford exec decided the most ’Merican of SUVs was too good to pass up, and we can only hope he’s still driving his prototype today.

When the Late Model Restoration YouTube team toured the Ford Heritage Collection, a one-of-a-kind SUV stood out. In 1998, Ford was exploring the idea of a V10-powered Bronco reboot. It asked a custom vehicle builder to chop down a Super Duty. They cut, welded, and shortened the wheelbase of a lifted V10 with a manual transmission.

The basic XL-trim truck got bright yellow paint, a black fiberglass removable hardtop, a roll cage, and not much else. And the result was glorious. It was a perfect Y2K-era interpretation of the rip-roaring Ford Bronco formula.

One of my favorite features of this one-off SUV is that somehow, its rear-hinged rear doors still work. They’re shortened and basically useless. But they’re such an icon of the Super Duty trucks I remember from when I was a kid that it really brings this SUV together. Of course, it also has an off-road bumper, hitch, bumper-mounted spare, and some serious mudding tires.

The Super Duty Bronco that never was

The Super Duty Bronco was basically hidden away in Ford’s design center until the automaker moved it to the Heritage Collection. But reportedly, one Ford executive was so taken with the SUV that he asked the company that assembled it to build a road-legal version he could drive.

Ford never put the Super Duty Bronco prototype into production. But two years later, it did release a Super Duty SUV: the three-row Excursion. And in 2021, the Bronco returned as a midsize SUV on the Ford Ranger chassis. Check out the SUV in question, and the entire Heritage Collection, in the video embedded below: