Brabus has turned its latest attention to a car with the name of the man who helped found the company: the Brabus Bodo, a 986-horsepower grand tourer built around an Aston Martin Vanquish. The two-door car was unveiled as the tuner’s newest statement piece, with a 5.2-liter V-12 sourced from Mercedes-Benz sending every bit of its power to the rear wheels.
The numbers are the point. Brabus’s engineers rated the Bodo at 986 horsepower, giving it a claimed top speed of 224 mph and putting it in the territory of nearly 1000 horsepower. It costs the equivalent of roughly $1.16 million, a price that matches the scale of the project as much as the name on its flanks.
That name carries its own history. Bodo Buschmann co-founded BRABUS in 1977 and died in 2018, but his imprint still defines the company. He was the “Bus” in Brabus, and Klaus Brackmann sold his company shares to Buschmann for 100 Euros, a detail that has long been part of the firm’s origin story. Buschmann had long envisioned building a complete car bearing the company name, and the Bodo brings that idea into the open at last.
Brabus is a tuning house rather than an outright manufacturer like AMG, and the Bodo reflects that identity even as it pushes into full-car territory. Its proportions are described as a modern take on the C126-chassis Mercedes 560 SEC coupe, a shape that gives the car an old-school, long-hood presence. The cabin follows the same idea with black leather, suede and carbon fiber, plus a panoramic glass roof that softens the otherwise hard-edged brief.
The tension in the car is between nostalgia and excess. The Bodo is presented as a bold, old-school two-door grand tourer with modern power, yet it also wears 325-section-width ZR-rated tires out back to keep the rear-drive layout planted. That combination makes it less a revival than a declaration: Brabus can still build a machine that looks backward for its style and forward for its speed. The question now is not whether the company can make a statement car. It already has.
