Dream pickup? Only if you dream in horsepower and quilted blue leather
Welcome to the fever dream where torque meets theatre, and practicality takes a detour through pure indulgence. Behold the Brabus XLP 800 Adventure — a pickup truck in the most irreverent, extravagant sense of the word. This isn’t just any G-Class with a bed bolted on. No, this is Bottrop's baroque response to a question nobody dared to ask: what if your overland expedition vehicle had the soul of a supercar and the swagger of a Bond villain?
Brabus didn’t merely modify the Mercedes G63 AMG — they deconstructed it. Dismantled its essence and reimagined it with the subtlety of a space shuttle launch. The wheelbase was stretched by half a meter, the driveshaft extended accordingly, and the result is an automotive chimera that seems destined to star in an interplanetary action movie. Imagine summoning this thing as your Uber on Mars — you wouldn’t even question it.
Under its hood roars an upgraded V8 bi-turbo engine, now belting out 800 horsepower and a colossal 1000 Nm of torque. This tempest is channeled through Brabus’ bespoke suspension architecture, giving it an astonishing 470 mm of ground clearance. When the Emajõgi bursts its banks, you don’t detour — you wade through, rescuing kayakers as a side quest.
But the XLP 800 Adventure is not merely a mechanical colossus. It’s dressed for the part too — 22-inch Monoblock HD wheels, a 4.5-ton winch, and a sports exhaust system with a whimsical “Coming Home” mode for those nights when startling the neighbours seems impolite. And if you were expecting a utilitarian cockpit, prepare to be dramatically corrected.
The interior is a fever dream in azure leather — diamond-quilted, perforated, and utterly surreal. It feels less like an off-roader and more like sitting inside Zeus’ private jet. Rear passengers are treated to their own speedometer and G-force gauge, in case you're curious how quickly you’re carving through bogs and dunes like a caffeinated safari guide.
Zero to 100 km/h? 4.8 seconds. Top speed? A restrained 210 km/h — not because it lacks the firepower, but because it rides on tires better suited to scaling Everest than setting lap records at the Nürburgring.
For around €900,000, you could, theoretically, acquire a small island, complete with a lighthouse and a rowboat. But you wouldn’t get this. You wouldn’t get Brabus’ pickup — a delirious, thunderous ode to excess. And honestly, who's to say which would be the better story?
