The Brabus 900 Crawler is a 900bhp desert racer with the face of a G Wagen

And you thought Brabus’ mainstream modified Mercedes’ were crazy creations. This is the all-new Brabus 900 Crawler. Built to celebrate the Bottrop-based tuner’s 45th birthday, it’s a non-road legal desert racer made with a high-strength tubular frame chassis and bearing the face of a G Wagen. Weren’t expecting that today, were you?

The Crawler (slightly creepy name) will be limited to just 15 cars built over the next three years, and each one will get a Mercedes-sourced twin-turbo V8 bored out to 4.5-litres and turned up to 888bhp and 922lb ft of torque. 

The wild Brabus-spec G Wagen body is crafted from exposed carbon fibre, and up on that separate roof section is a rear spoiler and a lightbar. Because everything needs a lightbar. 

There’s permanent four-wheel drive (of course) and a nine-speed auto gearbox, plus giant off-road tyres and portal axles front and rear for 53cm of ground clearance. Should help you clamber over all those obstacles in the um… desert. There’s a Brabus-developed suspension setup too with 160mm of spring travel and four-way adjustable shocks.

Anyway, Brabus reckons that even with all of the off-road goodies, the two-tonne Crawler should manage the 0-62mph sprint in 3.4 seconds. No word on how quick it’ll go on sand, but we wouldn’t bet on it being much slower. Top speed is limited to 100mph to protect the tyres. 

The interior (if you can call it that) is made up of four racy-looking carbon fibre Recaros that are clad in a bright red Silvertex fabric that Brabus tends to use on its boats. There’s a Mercedes steering wheel and dial display in there too, as well as a GPS-based off-road nav system for proper desert rallying. 

The price? A cool €749,000 (or roughly £633,000). Ouch.