THE CAR INQUISITION
Five years after taking over Brabus, Constantin Buschmann is pushing the tuner into more varied markets.
Constantin Buschmann’s life seems to be the stuff of dreams. Born into German tuning royalty as a result of his father founding Brabus, Buschmann was just 34 years old when he became the firm’s CEO and now lives the sort of glamorous, carfuelled Insta-life that could make Lewis Hamilton jealous.
But as with every social-media profile, that element of the story is only skin deep. In reality, Buschmann has had to grow up fast. His father Bodo Buschmann, who owned the company for 41 years, died suddenly in 2018, leaving Constantin to deal with his grief and also plan a future for one of the most famous names in the tuning world.
The fact that we’re still talking about Brabus five years later shows that the plan came off. Buschmann has pushed the brand into ever more diverse markets, maintaining its heartland of tuning Mercedes-Benz and Smart (like the Smart #1 Brabus, above) while also morphing into motorbikes (in a tie-up with KTM) and even powerboats.
Brabus has always had a reputation for the extreme, but it’s clear that Buschmann is pushing it further. In 2022 the Crawler was unveiled, a bespoke off-road buggy for people with a lot of sand in their back garden. While riffing on Mercedes G-Class styling, it’s entirely a Brabus, with all the risks and rewards inherent in doing your own thing.
I SAY TO THE TEAM: IF WE DON’T FAIL ENOUGH, WE DON’T EXPERIMENT ENOUGH
‘When you look at the company’s mission now, it is what we call a Brabus one-second-wow. Whether someone stands in front of a Brabus Rocket for the first time, or a Six-by-Six or Shadow 900, it’s very clear they are Brabus products. There’s a design language carry-over that works. They support your individuality.’
He’s unconstrained by the history of the brand. ‘There are a few more ingredients that we consider important for the recipe of creating a onesecond-wow. And the interesting thing is what does it not contain? It does not contain a car, it does not contain four wheels. It does not contain a steering wheel. That’s given the company a new focus.’
In this new existence, just because Brabus didn’t do something in the past is no longer a reason why it won’t do it in the future. ‘Customers were coming to us and saying, “I love your cars. I know your sales guy. I have a 911 – please can you work on it.” We always said no because we work on Mercedes-Benz. And I thought is there a reason we’re not doing it? If you as a company say you’re not doing it because you’ve never done it is not good enough.’
Is Brabus stretching itself too thin? ‘If we don’t pay attent
