The Mercedes-Benz Unimog is (and has always been), very simply, one of the most accomplished off-road machines ever built. From its strange wheel hubs to the design of its chassis, everything about its design is there to work.

It’s as happy slashing long grass at the side of the road as it is plowing snow, and it’s as happy having its PTO shaft milked for pumping water as it is pulling light farm implements through the earth.

What makes that job easier is that the driver can flick a lever and push the steering column across to the other side of the cabin. That means he can drive out to the worksite in a left-hand drive vehicle, then move over to sit atop the business end of whatever attachment he’s using, then move back to go home.

That has meant that it’s an expensively engineered machine that accepts few compromises and, at between €100,000 and €130,000, it has priced the pretenders out of the market. If you don’t absolutely need a Unimog, you just don’t buy one.

But for one of Europe’s most-aggressive tuning houses, all of that simplicity and over-engineering just turned the Unimog U500 series into a canvas waiting to be painted.

More famous for stuffing all manner of crazy engines inside Mercedes-Benz (and even Smart) passenger cars, Brabus took to the Unimog with all its traditional fervor. It stripped things that looked heavy and gave it enough visual horsepower to make sure it never goes missing in traffic.

But it didn’t give it any more power and, somehow, it made it much worse.

How could that go wrong?
There were a few flaws in Brabus’ original argument. For starters, replacing the cabin’s plastic bits with light-weight carbon fiber is a bit like drinking diet cola after eating a cheeseburger and a chocolate cake. The standard U500 is a 5.5-ton proposition and they’ve trimmed about 40 pounds out of it…

And after that, they started adding things in. For starters, leather is heavier than the stock vinyl, and after being Brabused, almost all of the Unimog’s surfaces are coated in cowhide. Almost all really means anything that hasn’t already been coated in carbon-fiber. It’s beautiful leather, for sure, and it is stitched as well as you’d expect in a Rolls-Royce but, well, this is a Unimog.

If that wasn’t enough, Brabus picked the Command System multi-media unit out of the S-Class, so it features satellite navigation (traditional Unimog users can read forestry maps), a CD changer with a massive subwoofer (traditional Unimog users prefer to sing lumberjack songs) and a compass (traditional Unimog users check their watches against the sun during the day and use the stars at night).

Bodywork gone crazy
It’s pretty obvious from the outside, too, that this is a Terry Try-Hard Unimog. It’s only available in black and, in place of the tray, there’s a body kit that makes it look like a miniature sports pickup. Except that it looks incongruously strange.

Perhaps its proportions would make more sense if they hadn’t used the shortest 132-inch wheelbase. Perhaps if its chromed rollover bar was a little smaller or the sides of its stainless-steel checker-plate tray were a little lower. Or perhaps “obvious” and “faintly ridiculous” were what they were after all along.

You need to unpin the drop-down ladder at the back to climb into the cargo area, but it’s got 190 lbs. worth of spare Michelin 445/65-R22.5 in the middle of it, so you can’t actually fit anything useful in the tray. The roll bar is about five inches in diameter and connects to an enormous vertical roll bar – enormous, yes, but it’s hard to imagine it would have a chance of actually being beneficial when it rolls over.

But how much gristle does it have?
Brabus, though, isn’t famous for body kits. It’s famous for power. Lots of it.

Yet the Unimog is one of the least-powerful machines Brabus has ever built. It has only 282-horsepower from the monster, 6.4-liter, six-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, which is about what Brabus would normally use as a starter motor for its high-compression, tire-torching machinery.

But the secret of the Unimog isn’t power. This machine has 826 lb-ft. of torque, which is roughly the combined output of two Lamborghini Murcielago V12s. And this massive wave of torque arrives almost from the instant you turn the key.

Immediately, it settles into a deep, smooth growl. The cabin is well insulated against vibrations and the six-cylinder layout makes it surprisingly smooth.

Click the eight-speed automatic gearbox into first and the Unimog jerks off hastily. The gears are very short and you push the tiny shift lever forward a lot, because the rev range isn’t huge, regardless of the strength. You can leave it in its automatic mode and it’ll be more comfortable, but the manual mode lets you fiddle around with its phenomenal torque band and listen to the strong turbo whistle.

On the highway, it has a lot of low pitched tire roar, but surprisingly little wind noise. Is the 85km/h (52 mph) limit in Germany too slow for the wind? In the Middle East, where Unimogs are allowed to run at 110 km/h (70 mph), it might be different.

It’s so strong that at its 85km/h limit it’s pulling only 1,800 revs in eighth gear. There is plenty of engine left, but that doesn’t mean running at its maximum speed is a particularly nice thing to do.

The shorter wheelbase and springs designed to carry a seven-tonne load don’t make for happy bedfellows when approximately none of that load is back there. It’s not pleasant at all. The front end rides bumps well, but the driver gets pitched forward very, very hard by a less-compliant rear end, sprung for a load the bodykit is not capable of carrying.

It’s just not possible to be smooth in the Brabus Unimog because it exaggerates every input. Steering, gearshift, throttle applications, everything is put under the magnifying glass – in a bad way – and you end up with so much head toss that your neck can hurt the next day. As a Formula 1 or motocross training tool, it would be peerless.

Off-road warrior or pretender?
All the pretty (cough cough) bodywork means you won’t take it down tight, tree-lined tracks, but that doesn’t mean the Unimog’s inherently superb off-road ability has been compromised.
It hasn’t. It still has the Unimog’s signature high-mounted differentials (20 inches off the ground) and drop-down wheel hubs for peerless ground clearance, it still has fully lockable differentials front and rear and you can still adjust the tire pressure on the run from inside the cabin.

While most people in the Middle East (which is where the only Brabus Unimog ever sold has gone) might think 32 inches of wading depth might be enough, you can even order it with an optional 47-inch swimming ability. And, more importantly, you can get it with a very low-range ratio to give you 16 forward gears (the low-range ratio gives you speeds from 1km/h to 15km/h) and 14 reverse gears.

Leftlane’s bottom line
While every sense tells you it’s a foolish waste of money, the Brabus Black Series Unimog does have its benefits.

You can drive along looking at comparatively puny cars (like S-Classes and normal SUVs) on the highway and you know you could pick them up and carry them if you wanted to. It’s perversely pleasing.

If you had a massive boat (or just a massive trailer) it would be dead cool as a tow rig, too.

But, costing a full €90,000 more than the standard U500 Unimog, the Brabus Unimog goes beyond the faintly ridiculous. It’s completely ridiculous. But it’s seriously, kookily, cool.

While the Brabus Unimog doesn’t make much sense, the standard Unimog does. There are two basic types, the U3000, U4000 and U5000, which are the more-traditional types and then there’s the the U500.

The bigger, more-masculine thousand series are astonishingly strong machines that never die and can be refurbished ad infinitum, much like a 747 or a ferry.

They ride better, go better, are just as useful off-road and carry more weight. And they cost more.

Words by Michael Taylor. Photos courtesy Mercedes-Benz.

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