Yahoo Autos This AMG SL-Based Brabus Clownshoe Has 985 Horsepower
The two-door shooting brake has always been rare, but in recent years, the concept gas gone completely extinct. A roadster-wagon is not a particularly popular body style among modern automakers; beautiful concepts like BMW's long-roofed take on a Z4 pop up from time to time, but don't reach production. That means the burden falls to customization houses, like legendary Mercedes-Benz tuner Brabus. The tuning house's Rocket GTS takes the clownshoe shape to the SL 63 E-Performance — the ultra-powerful hybrid variant of the Mercedes-AMG roadster.
Unfortunately for fans of the BMW M Coupe and Ferrari FF, the SL does not make quite as clean a shooting brake as those cars. Because it's based on an all-wheel-drive 2+2 roadster rather than something with more radical proportions like the last generation of AMG GT, the SL-based Rocket GTS looks like an awkward merging of incompatible ideas. The roof almost looks borrowed from a completely different car, a facy made more confusing by the integration of an interpretation of BMW's signature Hofmeister Kink along the rear window.
Like the exterior, the interior is heavy on carbon fiber and light on the luxuries that make the SL-Class a charming grand tourer. The black-and-gray cabin looks industrial, mixing the materials seen inside a race car with the massive screens of a modern Mercedes.
As this is a custom car, the modest 801 hp output of the stock SL 63 E-Performance simply isn't enough. Brabus has fixed the problem by boring AMG's 4.0-liter turbocharged V-8 out to 4.4 liters, bringing engine output up to 785 hp and combined system output up to 985 hp. In order to protect the car's AMG-sourced nine-speed transmission, a theoretical peak system output of 1342 lb-ft of torque is limited to just 1194 lb-ft of torque in practice.
There are drawbacks and some strange design choices, but at the end of the day, this is a sports car that is also a wagon. That alone makes it charming, even if the wide body and bare carbon are a far cry from the tasteful look of a Volvo P1800. If you want your own Brabus Rocket GTS, the brand's website has a tool for requesting one. Pricing is not listed, but the build is likely very expensive on top of the already high $207,000 MSRP for an SL E-Performance donor car.
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