Thursday 1st May 2008
'You torquing to me?'973lb ft of torque. That’s how much the new Brabus R230 develops. Quite a lot isn’t it?
Brabus SL
New Brabus SL has monster torque
'You torquing to me?'
Luckily, to stop the Earth’s crust being torn off every time the lights turn green (and to preserve the car’s five-speed auto), the company has limited the torque to ‘just’ 811lb ft.
At the heart of the modest-sounding R230 is the tuner’s twin-turbo V12 and there is a range of suspension and brake upgrades.
It is of course all fitted into the new facelifted SL, which was only unveiled at the beginning of this year.
Peak power is 730hp and that means that the car will do 0-62mph in 4.0 seconds, which in a way doesn’t really sound quick enough.
We suspect that to say the car struggles to put the power down would be a huge understatement.
Other modifications include a stainless steel exhaust, LED running lights in a new bumper, and a rear diffuser.
The car has been lowered by 25mm and 375mm discs (ventilated and cross-drilled) have been added up front bit with six-piston calipers (355mm in the back).
No word on price but if you need to ask…
Discussion
I saw a rerun of Top gear with the pre facelifted SL Brabus and that looked a right laugh as the stig was taking it round the test track, it was twitching all the time as the computers tried to keep it on the straight and narrow.
But the POOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
But the POOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
williamssam said:
I don't get this whole "it produces x lbft but it's limited to y lbft" Surely the amount of torque it produces is that which it is sold with? Any manufacturer can just crank the boost up to maximum and state how much torque it can produce.
I agree.The engine in my car can produce 300bhp. But they've sold it producing 220bhp.
PERHAPS, here's a thought actually that's just occured to me while typing, if the engine produces 937 lbf torque but is electroincally limited to 811, perhaps that it is electronically limited (as opposed to just mechaniclly tuned to 811) that it means the torque curve throughout the rest of the revs is a lot flatter; rememebr, that 937 is only peak.
So perhaps that's it; it means the curve is flatter across the rest of the range?!
It that plus cost effective reliability. These Brabus cars get more ridiculous every year. Why don't they spend their r&d to create the worlds best traction control, but I guess that would be too time consuming and expensive. Its all about making loads of profit from rich people who don't know much about cars...
TonyHetherington said:
williamssam said:
I don't get this whole "it produces x lbft but it's limited to y lbft" Surely the amount of torque it produces is that which it is sold with? Any manufacturer can just crank the boost up to maximum and state how much torque it can produce.
I agree.The engine in my car can produce 300bhp. But they've sold it producing 220bhp.
PERHAPS, here's a thought actually that's just occured to me while typing, if the engine produces 937 lbf torque but is electroincally limited to 811, perhaps that it is electronically limited (as opposed to just mechaniclly tuned to 811) that it means the torque curve throughout the rest of the revs is a lot flatter; rememebr, that 937 is only peak.
So perhaps that's it; it means the curve is flatter across the rest of the range?!
mainline said:
Yet another overpowered overpriced Mercedes, that's what the world needs.
You bet it does, I'd love one. Their only mistake...........to put that ugly front end on it. If you've ever driven a car with seemingly limitless torque you'll know what it all means. It is no more evil to drive than a performance front drive turbodiesel, they are truly evil things in the wet traction control or no traction control. Edited by gumsie on Thursday 1st May 12:20
chumleyuk said:
It that plus cost effective reliability. These Brabus cars get more ridiculous every year. Why don't they spend their r&d to create the worlds best traction control, but I guess that would be too time consuming and expensive. Its all about making loads of profit from rich people who don't know much about cars...
Oh really? I thought they were charity who expect to build perfectly balanced lightweight, well styled RWD track cars to give to poor, struggling car enthusiasts out of the kindness of their hearts, how dare those b
ds start making a profit from providing rich people with stuff they dont need and will only use twice. All this talk of 0-60 times is pretty meanless. It's on the move times that are impressive. It's surely going to obliterate pretty much everything short of a Veyron from 60-150mph?! It's actually a saftety feature as you are less exposed to danger when overtaking......that's what I'll be telling the insurance company anyway....
I dont really see the point with this car! 0-60 in 4 seconds. A VX220 Turbo can do that with 200bhp. I know thats at the complete other end of the spectrum but at least it does what it says on the Tin. Im sure its very quick but not quick enough if you take into account how much it would cost to run etc, not that that would matter to the kind of people to buy it as you said. It kind of seems like they might as well have restriced it a lot more or used a less powerfull engine altogether that would probably give similar performance figures.
Sheriff JWPepper said:
Anyone else tired of hearing of 'the engine's capable of producing xxx torque but we've had to rein it in for the sake of the gearbox'?
I'm take a wild guess here but I suspect that there's a bit missing from the press release, and that (like quite a few more humble cars) the torque restriction only applies through the first couple of gears to give the transmission, tyres, and traction control a slightly easier time of things at launch (and if you've got enough grunt to light the rear wheels up at will as I suspect this thing will any more would be wasted anyway...As for whether the world needs another MonsterMerc, well, there are plenty of things the world doesn't strictly need but which make me smile anyway and I think this probably comes under that heading. Sometimes "because we can" is all the reason you need
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JG
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