Feed Your Inner Child With The 888bhp Brabus Rocket 900

Admit it: the 10-year-old in you is doing a little happy-dance right now. This is the gloriously excessive Brabus Rocket 900, and yes, it does have one of the most childishly awesome names ever given to a car.

It’s called that because it has 900 metric horsepower, or 888bhp in English, and goes like the proverbial Soyuz. Brabus, which has a long and hilarious history of tuning Mercedes cars to their extremes and beyond, has taken the 6.0-litre V12-powered Mercedes-AMG S65 Cabriolet and decided that, actually, it wasn’t fast enough. Someone in Bottrop might have had one beer too many this time…

The tuning process starts with more capacity. The V12 has been bored and stroked to 6.3 litres, with a special Brabus billet steel crankshaft and con-rod set. The exhaust manifolds are new, the new turbochargers are larger and there’s a free-breathing exhaust system making all the noise.

Peak power, if you can extract it without being killed, is yours at just 5500rpm. Peak torque, a truly terrifying 1106lb ft, comes in at 4200rpm… or at least it would if the gearbox could take it. Since it can’t, torque has been limited to 885lb ft. Damn.

Brabus has also added a limited-slip differential, which you’ll probably need rather more often than in most other cars, and whether the fabric roof is up or down the driver has options to control exhaust flaps that switch the sound “from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde.” We don’t doubt that.

Performance is epic. The 0-62mph sprint won’t break any records at 3.9 seconds – the car is quite heavy, after all – but it will monster onwards past 217mph, says Brabus. That’s as fast as the F1 cars were achieving at Monza even with a tow from a car in front. In a convertible.

New aerodynamic add-ons reduce lift, including front and rear spoilers that help to balance the car across both axles at high speed, reducing front axle lift – something fast Mercedes have long been guilty of. Special 21-inch Brabus forged wheels are capable of withstanding the high top speeds. All of these extras are also available on the aftermarket for any S63 or S65 owners looking to sharpen their cars’ look.

We also like the revised speedometer, which now reads all the way up to 250mph. That’s another box enthusiastically ticked by your inner child. Best not to ask about fuel economy or emissions, because they’re neither interesting nor helpful when you’d rather be busying yourself with altering your life plans to allow yourself to buy a used one in 30 years or so…