The wild Brabus Bodo is a €1m+ reworking of the V12 Aston Martin Vanquish

It’s not a movie prop. What you’re looking at is called the Brabus Bodo, a million-euro, 1,000-horsepower (986bhp, if we’re being old-school), V12 ‘hyper GT’ with more theatre than the West End of London, and a disturbingly intimate relationship with the colour black. Named in honour of Brabus’ late founder Bodo Buschmann, it’s a statement piece from a company more famous for high-horsepower Mercedes Benz sleeper builds.

And yes, you can specify a Bodo in pretty much any colour you want, but chassis 01 apparently just went dark and stayed there, nestled on the event horizon of anti-colour. From a purely shock’n’awe perspective, it looks absolutely brilliant.

The bespoke body is entirely carbon fibre (black), slung over an aluminium chassis (probably painted black, though you can’t see it). Most of the interior is carbon fibre (black). The wheels are black. Some of the engine elements (airboxes and the front of the cam covers) are black carbon fibre, and have actual real gold freckles impregnated into the weave for no other reason than it looks cool, the kind of nonsensical detail that makes absolute sense. The interior is baby blue. Sorry, black. You get the idea.

The engine lives under the acreage of bonnet, stuffed so far back in the chassis that cylinder 11 looks as if it should warm your right knee, and consists of a 5.2-litre, twin-turbo V12 developing that headline 1,000hp and 885lb ft, providing a 0-62mph time in the low-threes for a car that weighs 1,910kg. Top speed is 224mph, enough to see off quite a few notionally faster supercars. And yet it’s a 2+2 (‘ish’, there’s not much human-sized room back there) with a boot, big, comfortable front seats and enough street presence to make the Batmobile look like a Cozy Coupe. An old-school, full-fat, rear-wheel drive V12 GT in a world that seems increasingly populated with low-calorie, efficient fast cars. There’s nothing wrong with an electrically-assisted V6 with big power, but a turbo V12 it ‘ain’t.

The Bodo isn’t a completely clean sheet, though. If some of the elements sound familiar, that’s because this car is the wayward son of an Aston Martin Vanquish - you can see it in the profile of the glass - re-worked from new. But the big Brabus gets a more menacing, squarer front end with a vented bonnet, the same tight windowline and an almost boat-tail rear that drops away to knee height. A rear that incorporates a pop-up spoiler in the almost 911-ish rear aero. But it’s the profile that’ll get you. It’s concept car exceptional, hunkered over 21in multi-spoke, dished Monoblocks with bespoke Continental tyres, reminiscent of the Mercedes Maybach Vision 6 (remember that?) or even the Maybach Excelero of 2005. Both leggy, low and slinky, outrageous concepts that have an almost gothic sense of occasion. A sense of theatre that the Bodo revels in.

The DNA of the Aston is more obvious on the inside; the dash top and surfacing is actually different, but the multimedia and switchgear is the same as you’d find in the Vanquish. Which makes sense, and adds the Apple CarPlay Ultra and all the usual luxuries you’d expect to find in a car that you might be tempted to use for trans-continental journeys. This is not a stripped-out racer, and it’s the better for it. The seats feel similar to the donor, but are Brabusised with new leathers and materials, there’s a new carbon hood to the driver’s display, all the dials and switches re-painted, a big thick wheel and long carbon paddles for the 8-speed ‘box — it genuinely does feel different. There’s even a large glass panoramic roof to stop it feeling too much like the coffin of a depressed vampire. Plus, there’s the view from the low windscreen out over the insanely long bonnet (exposed black carbon), that makes you want to point this thing at a very long straight to see if you can actually outrun your problems. Such is the performance, you might have a chance.

What we have here is a car that is neither merely ‘tuned’, nor completely in-house. A coachbuilt GT that expresses something new from an excellent set of underpinnings, the bones of something epic re-clothed in the flash of something more specific. It’s Couture car building; the same fabric, a more outrageous style. Of course, Brabus has almost/sort of been here before with the GTS Coupe, a full-carbon-bodied fixed-head coupe re-working of Mercedes’ SL63 E-Performance. That car also managed 1,000hp from an 800hp engine coupled with a couple of hundred electric horses, and also had completely bespoke bodywork bar things like lights and windscreen. But it somehow didn’t feel quite as theatrical as the Bodo. There’s also a GTC convertible version of that car, and one feels like once there’s a convertible base car for the Bodo, that would be a natural progression. 

That feels like what we’re seeing here - Brabus seeding the idea of change. Brabus has gone from a small ‘tuner’ dealership incorporated in 1977 to a large, well-resourced outfit that does big business with OEMs like Smart, tuning, modifying and refining various marques, from Porsches to Range Rovers, as well as its mainstay of ‘Benz products. That varies from a 900bhp S-Class with minimal external warning signs (usually black, natch), to peach-coloured Rangies on 23s. The GTS Coupe and Bodo elevate that idea to the idea of a fully coachbuilt vehicle, which in turn might beget a fully independent project. Indeed, Brabus actually produces its own chassis for the off-road only Brabus Crawler, even if the drivetrain is sourced from a G63.

The Bodo is the current star, mind. Even though it sounds faintly ridiculous, a million euros for a car that is likely to only ever run to 77 units (in honour of Brabus’ birth year), that looks this spectacular and is based on the proven mechanicals of a not-inexpensive GT, isn’t actually that much. Especially for a car that comes with a cast-iron guarantee; wherever you turn up, jaws are going to drop.

Price: 1 million euro (+ taxes etc, + options)
Engine: 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12
Power: 1000hp - 986bhp, 885lb ft of torque
Transmission: 8-spd auto transaxle, paddle-operated
Performance: 0-62mph in circa 3-seconds, 224mph top speed
Efficiency: circa >20mpg (combined), circa <312g/km C02 (AM Vanquish figures)
Weight: 1,910kg