The Mercedes-AMG S 63 E Performance is already a strange car when you think about it. It’s a huge luxury sedan with a plug-in hybrid system, all the comfort you would expect from an S-Class and 802 hp available from the factory. For most owners, finding another 200 hp would probably be quite far down the list of things that need improving.
BRABUS found them anyway.
Its 1000 ALL GRAY is based on the current S 63, and the name gives away both the power figure and most of the color palette. What isn’t immediately obvious is how much work went into getting there. BRABUS didn’t simply turn up the boost, change a few settings and send the car back out.
The standard Mercedes uses a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 together with a 190-hp electric motor at the rear. There’s also a 13.1-kWh battery and a separate two-speed transmission for the electric drive. That complicated hybrid hardware stays pretty much as Mercedes built it.
The V8 doesn’t.
BRABUS takes it from 4.0 to 4.5 liters, fits new turbochargers with larger compressor units and adds revised downpipes and its own exhaust hardware. Once the engine management has been recalibrated to suit, the V8 alone is making 810 hp and 1,250 Nm.
Combine that with the electric motor and you get the magic number: 1,000 hp.
Torque is even sillier. The complete system is capable of 1,820 Nm, although BRABUS limits the figure to 1,620 Nm in the car. That’s still an enormous amount, but there’s little point building a 1,000-hp S-Class if it spends its time breaking drivetrain components.
Predictably, it’s very fast. BRABUS quotes 3.1 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h, followed by 200 km/h in 9.7 seconds. The limiter finally steps in at 290 km/h.
Remember, we’re still talking about an S-Class here.
The rest of the conversion is less surprising if you’ve seen a few modern BRABUS builds. There is plenty of exposed carbon around the body, including aerodynamic pieces developed to keep the car stable at high speed, while the grey finish is carried through the exterior, wheels and cabin.
It could easily have become too much, especially with a car this big. Somehow it doesn’t.
Maybe that’s because the S-Class shape is still doing most of the work. BRABUS hasn’t hidden it under a massive rear wing or tried to make the sedan look like something built for a GT racing grid. You can tell immediately that this isn’t a normal S 63, but you can also tell immediately what it started life as.
Inside, BRABUS applies its familiar Masterpiece treatment. Leather covers just about everything you’d expect, with plenty of individual detailing and the same grey theme continuing through the cabin. It’s extravagant, although the standard Mercedes interior wasn’t exactly short of leather and technology to begin with.
For me, the 4.5-liter engine is still the fun part of the whole thing. We’re used to tuners finding more power through software, bigger turbos and exhaust changes, but increasing the actual displacement feels almost old-fashioned now.
Especially in a plug-in hybrid.
There’s a weird mixture of eras under the hood of this car. Mercedes supplies the battery, rear electric motor and all the clever electronics, then BRABUS comes along and decides the V8 needs another half-liter of displacement.
You have to admire the logic, even if there isn’t much logic to owning the thing.
Nobody looked at an 802-hp S 63 and thought it desperately needed another 198 hp. That’s not really how cars like the BRABUS 1000 happen in the first place.
Someone just wanted to see what happened next.
