German tuning company Brabus over the years has created several over-the-top, mad machines based on the Mercedes G-Wagen, including the pickup version and the tarmac-ripping V12-powered G-Class. However, the newest Brabus G-Wagen-based offering is so outrageously wild that it makes everything we’ve seen to date seem regular. Meet the Brabus 900 Crawler, a ludicrous AMG G63 dune buggy with 888 horsepower. Describing it as the “ultimate desert dunes racer,” Brabus created the Crawler to celebrate its 45th birthday. Just look at it! The beastly machine is more of a racing bubby slapped with a G-Wagen’s fascia. In fact, it features a purpose-built high-strength tubular frame chassis that has nothing in common with the actual G-Wagen.
The bodywork of the Brabus 900 Crawler is made out of exposed carbon fiber. The buggy also gets a carbon-fiber roof with an integrated LED light bar and a wing at the back, but it doesn’t have doors and windows. Brabus has equipped the Crawler with portal axles to enhance the vehicle’s go-anywhere capabilities along with revised suspension that comes with bespoke height-adjustable struts with 6.3 inches of spring travel. As a result, the dune-bashing beast has a massive ground clearance of 20.8 inches. One-piece forged wheels shod with meaty 40×13.50 R20 off-road tires round out the off-road-focused package.
Powering the ultimate desert racer is G63’s twin-turbo V8. However, the displacement has been bumped to 4.5 liters, thanks to which the engine produces a whopping 888 horsepower and 922 lb-ft of torque. In fact, Brabus had to electronically limit the torque output to 774 lb-ft so that the V8 doesn’t end up blowing up the Crawler’s nine-speed automatic gearbox. Despite its massive off-road tires and long-travel suspension set-up, Brabus says the dune buggy can go from 0 to 62 mph in only 3.4 seconds.
The top speed is understandably limited to 100mph. Brabus will build only 15 examples of the Crawler that carries a price tag of €749,000 before the value-added tax (VAT), which loosely converts to around $800,000. In case you’re interested, remember that the Brabus 900 Crawler is not road-legal.
