G What?! The Brabus 900 Crawler is a 900bhp desert racer with the face of a G Wagen

And you thought Brabus’ mainstream modified Mercedes’ were crazy creations. This is the all-new Brabus 900 Crawler. Built to celebrate the Bottrop-based tuner’s 45th birthday, it’s a non-road legal desert racer made with a high-strength tubular frame chassis and bearing the face of a G Wagen. Weren’t expecting that today, were you?

The Crawler (slightly creepy name) will be limited to just 15 cars built over the next three years, and each one will get a Mercedes-sourced twin-turbo V8 bored out to 4.5-litres and turned up to 888bhp and 1345Nm of torque. 

The wild Brabus-spec G Wagen body is crafted from exposed carbon fibre, and up on that separate roof section is a rear spoiler and a lightbar. Because everything needs a lightbar. 

There’s permanent four-wheel drive (of course) and a nine-speed auto gearbox, plus giant off-road tyres and portal axles front and rear for 53cm of ground clearance. Should help you clamber over all those obstacles in the um… desert. There’s a Brabus-developed suspension setup too with 160mm of spring travel and four-way adjustable shocks.

Anyway, Brabus reckons that even with all of the off-road goodies, the two-tonne Crawler should manage the 0-100km/h sprint in 3.4 seconds. No word on how quick it’ll go on sand, but we wouldn’t bet on it being much slower. Top speed is limited to 160km/h to protect the tyres. 

The interior (if you can call it that) is made up of four racy-looking carbon fibre Recaros that are clad in a bright red Silvertex fabric that Brabus tends to use on its boats. There’s a Mercedes steering wheel and dial display in there too, as well as a GPS-based off-road nav system for proper desert rallying.

TEXT Greg Potts