This thing can plough a field or fly an airplane

So, the new Brabus showroom from Naza has opened up in Bangsar Baru. If you told me 10 years ago that this piece of land would be some developed building, I would have laughed at your face. And now, I laugh at myself cause this building is huge!

Now I've never really been a fan of Brabus, basically they take a good ol' Merc and tune it up into a big mean monster. Don't get me wrong though... I like tuning. It's precisely those mini tweaks and added horsepower that you can squeeze from the engine to give it a little more extra boost.

So here's what I found on Wikipedia:

"Brabus's primary focus is to achieve maximum engine performance through the increase of both horsepower and torque. Customers can either buy cars straight from Brabus or send in their Mercedes to be customized and/or overhauled. If a customer orders a car from Brabus, Brabus buys the particular car from Mercedes and then modifies it in-house according to the customer's requests. Brabus actually has no price list for its upgrades since the modifications vary so much, but realistically anyone who needs to ask probably cannot afford the level of upgrades provided."

Amazing isn't it? So you get to buy a precustomized model or get them to customize a brand new one for you. Hmmm, I wonder if Naza offers this? Or do they just bring in parellel imports that have been modified?

so, enough of that. How would you recognize one if you saw it on the road? First there's the signature black. You could get it in Silver, though I've only seen a handful. The other signature look would be the twin foglamps on this nice example of a CL.



Now not long ago, Clarkson tested on of these babies. This is the Mercedes SL 65 also known as the T65 S. Yes, this baby has a bi-turbo 12 cylinder engine. It develops a massive 715bhp and get this, 1,100Nm of torque! This thing can plough a field or fly an airplane. Plunk one of these engines into a light aircraft and you'll be flying from KL to Vietnam. Amazing isnt' it? The torque had to be electronically limited to stop it from tearing the whole gearbox apart.






So what do you get? A super cool coupe/convertible, ultra cool black paint job and a car that you can basically fly within APAC. Funny why they don't mention the consumption. Maybe it's because the engine is so thirsty that when you're gunning it at full throttle, you'll run out of gas before you hit Thailand.