Brabus Just Built a 1,000-HP Tribute to the Founder Who Never Got to Drive It
A Vision Two Decades in the Making
Brabus has unveiled the Bodo Cabriolet at Pebble Beach, the open-top version of the Bodo Gran Turismo coupe it debuted at Lake Como's FuoriConcorso back in May. Both cars carry the first name of Bodo Buschmann, the company's founder, who built Brabus out of a small workshop behind his family's dealership in 1977 and ran it until his death in 2018 at age 62. His son Constantin, who has led the company since, has described the Cabriolet as the fulfilment of an idea he and his father discussed nearly two decades ago: an unmistakable, attitude-forward Gran Turismo built entirely in Brabus's own image, rather than as a tuned Mercedes or Aston Martin.
Mechanically, the Cabriolet is built on the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, the same relationship the closed-roof Bodo has with the standard Vanquish coupe. Brabus strips the donor down to its platform and drivetrain, then rebuilds it with a coachbuilt, full carbon-fibre body, active aerodynamics and a 2+2 cabin trimmed by the brand's in-house Masterpiece atelier. Where the coupe launched in a brooding Piano Black, the roadster arrives in white with smoked headlight clusters — a deliberate contrast Brabus says was part of Bodo Buschmann's original sketches for the car.
The Numbers, and Why Only 77 Exist
Under the vented clamshell hood sits a hand-built 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 — the same Vanquish-sourced unit Brabus tunes elsewhere in its range — turned up to 1,000 hp (735 kW) and 1,200 Nm of torque. That's enough for a 0-100 km/h time of 3.0 seconds and an electronically limited top speed of 360 km/h (223 mph), figures identical to the coupe despite the open top and added chassis bracing. Brabus is building the Cabriolet as its own limited series of 77 cars, separate from the coupe's 77-unit run, with a base price of EUR 1,077,000 before options.
A tribute car built by a son for a father is a specific kind of story, but the market logic behind it is familiar to anyone selling ultra-limited builds in the GCC: a run of 77 tied to a name rather than a model number is precisely the kind of provenance Gulf collectors have shown they'll pay a premium for once the last allocation is gone. Dubai's Brabus-modified fleet already leans heavily on Mercedes-AMG and Rolls-Royce; a V12, Aston Martin-based Gran Turismo sold in a run this small gives the region's tuning culture a genuinely new shape to chase.