The first thing you think of when you think of Brabus is probably the G63 Widestar, or the XLP, or something similarly insane.
Actually, there’s a whole range of options from Brabus which are far more understated – many of our customers prefer that more ‘under-the-radar’ approach and this particular customer fell firmly in that camp!
He came to us with his daily driver Mercedes E63 S AMG and asked us to beef it up a bit, without going overboard – luckily Brabus’ approach to the E63 is very sympathetic to the AMG design language and ultimately results in something that isn’t shouty and in your face. It’s more of an “if you know, you know” car for petrolheads.
First, we started with the carbon fibre. Brabus have designed a stunning front chin spoiler which spans underneath the entire front bumper, we then paired this with two carbon fibre surrounds for the air intakes on the front bumper. Again, it looks very much like something that AMG could have designed, had they turned the wick up a bit!
Towards the back of the car we installed Brabus’ carbon fibre rear spoiler lip which accentuates the muscular design of the E63 without being overboard. Finally, we replaced the rear diffuser with Brabus’ own carbon diffuser which features an F1 style central fog light – the thing to note here is that you cannot buy either the diffuser or the exhaust on their own, they must be purchased together.
The shape and location of the Brabus exhaust tips mean that the Brabus exhaust will not fit to the standard diffuser, and the corollary of that is that the original exhaust’s tips will not fit to the Brabus diffuser. All this to say, the customer specced the exhaust too! It leans more to the side of performance and preservation of the daily driveability of the car than obnoxious volumes and scaring pedestrians – as we’ve established, Brabus view on this car was to add the final 10%, not to turn the car into something else entirely.
The real takeaway here is, if you’re going to do it you might as well throw the kitchen sink at it and do it properly – why do a half Brabus conversion of your car?!
The next item the customer opted for was the 700hp PowerXtra kit, this is a piggyback device which you wire into the loom and it essentially remaps the car – getting an incredible 700hp and 950Nm of torque from the twin-turbocharged V8.
Finally, the pièce de resistance – the 21” Monoblock Y “Platinum Edition” wheels. These are excruciatingly beautiful wheels which utilise a very eye-catching, but timeless design to really accentuate the performance pedigree of the E63S. The standard car looks a little bit underwheeled on the original 20” wheels, but the slight increase in size that Brabus provides is the perfect icing on the cake for a very sympathetic, understated modification to one of the all time great German muscle cars.
The brief from the customer was OEM+, and it seems fairly clear that that is exactly what he received, a car he can get in and use every day – but that people in the know will notice and appreciate!