Oof: new Brabus Rocket is hyper GT shooting brake
The 1,000hp GTS is here. Bring some friends
It doesn’t get more Brabus, says the blurb about the new Rocket GTS. And for once that doesn’t feel like an overstatement. The new car is a 1,000hp, 2+2 ‘hyper gran turismo shooting brake’, after all, with an exposed carbon fibre body. It’ll do 197mph and you’re not going to get much change from a million quid. Without building a Brabus version of the Eurofighter Typhoon, it’s hard to see where the firm goes from here in terms of next-level curveballs.
We’re assuming it’s built atop the current Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance on account of its hybrid powertrain (Brabus doesn’t actually specify) and nor does the firm indulge us in much technical detail about how it has constructed the new Rocket - except to say that it has been through the much the same CAD, CFD modelling and wind tunnel optimisation that a new OEM derivative would, and that all its bodywork is produced in an autoclave and finished with a high-gloss sealer.
Make of the shooting brake look what you will (we assume it genuinely does improve the rear-seat usability of the GT - again, Brabus does not concern itself with such trivialities, except to provide pictures of the obviously bigger boot) but know that with its new arches taken into account, the Rocket is 198.5cm wide before you get to its wing mirrors. So it’s probably not one for the lockup. Its maker inevitably uses some of the space created to accommodate those custom-made, five-spoke Brabus Monoblock P rims, which are 21-inch at the front and 22-inch at the back, the latter with 335-section tyres.
To be fair, you’ll be wanting a sizeable contact patch when there’s an aggregated 1,342lb ft of peak torque to manage. The Rocket moniker indicates that this is Brabus working on the limit of what it thinks is possible; hence the GTS gets the uprated 4.5-litre twin-turbo V8, its increased capacity contributing 796hp and (remarkably) 922lb ft of torque to the total. As a reminder, the ‘standard’ engine develops 612hp. It is sufficiently potent that the tuner has opted to leave the electric drive unit on the rear axle well alone; it contributes the same 204hp via its own two-speed gearbox.
Naturally the GTS remains all-wheel drive and retains (it seems) the conventional nine-speed automatic. The Brabus high performance exhaust system, in titanium with its own catalysts and particulate filters, is decidedly unconventional - not least because it features look-at-me red lighting. That ought to provoke plenty of comment from passersby (possibly some closed-hand waving, too), although they’ll need to be quick: the GTS is said to get to 62mph in just 2.6 seconds and breeze through 124mph in 9.5. If you refrain from doing that too much, you might see 18.2mpg combined fuel economy.
Inside, of course, Brabus will bend to your wishes, but it is presented with huge swathes of ‘slate gray’ soft leather alongside plenty of Alcantara and the same high-end exposed composite used in the body. The GTS is available to order now, priced from 789,000 euros (around £657k) although that’s exclusive of Germany’s 19 per cent VAT rate. Brabus says the new model is limited edition, but doesn’t clarify what exactly that means. Most likely it will hinge on customer demand. Let’s use the forum comments to gauge that.
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