Mercedes Luxury Machine Applefied by Brabus
Steve Jobs' car of choice is a Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG.
The Mercedes-Benz S class is arguably the best luxury, fat-cat sedan in the world. It's everything that that three-point star is known for in a glorious package.
Famed tuning house Brabus has taken a Mercedes S 600 and made what it calls the "iBusiness", which is an odd combination of automotive power and Apple technology.
What gives it the "iBusiness" name is all the Apple hardware inside. The centerpiece is a Mac Mini housed under the rear shelf in an electrically deployed drawer, and is connected to a 15.2-inch TFT display with 16:9 aspect ratio integrated into the headliner.
The entire Brabus multimedia system is controlled from the passenger seat or the rear compartment by two iPads that also control the car's standard COMAND system with all functions such as radio, navigation system and telephone.
While on the move the two iPad and the Bluetooth keyboards can be safely secured in the recesses of the rear leather-topped tables. The tables are electrically deployed from seatback consoles and are infinitely adjustable to any angle.
The music comes from a 64GB Apple iPod Touch and the sound is reproduced either by the sound system of the S-Class or by Sennheiser Noise Gard headphones. The whole car gets its internet via UMTS and HSDPA.
While all the techno bells and whistles are nice, this car also has go along with the show. The car is powered by a Brabus SV12 R Biturbo 750 engine that has a special crankshaft with longer stroke, forged pistons with larger diameter and increased cylinder bore bump displacement from standard 5.5 to 6.3 liters (336 to 385 cu. in.). In addition, the inlet and outlet ports of both cylinder heads are optimized for improved mixture flow. Four special camshafts also contribute to that same effect.
The Brabus engine specialists also fit the engine with larger turbochargers, a more efficient intercooling system and a stainless-steel high-performance quad exhaust system with free-flow metal catalysts. This pushes the rated power output to an awesome 750 hp (740 bhp) / 552 kW at 5,500 rpm. Its peak torque of 1,350 Nm (995 lb-ft) hits at 2,100 rpm.
The engine is mated to a modified five-speed automatic, which sounds a little dated, but no matter, this large car can hit 0 – 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.0 seconds and to 200 km/h (124 mph) in 11.9 seconds. The top speed is electronically limited to 340 km/h (211 mph).
Brabus Mercedes aren't cheap, and neither are Apple products, so we're not surprised that pricing wasn't one of the revealed features.
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Somebody, please, shoot this man. Desecrating a beautiful Mercedes like this is a downright insult.
Waste of time, waste of effort, waste of money.
You won't be going too far in this cruiser. 700+ HP, 900+ lb/ft of torque = 5-10mpg city... maybe 20 on the highway. How big could the gas tank be? This isn't a truck. 20 gallons maybe?
One could simply put a Macbook/iPad or other laptop/tablet of choice in their car and put their iPod or other MP3 player in their pocket. This has the same effect and is a lot cheaper.
Btw, would this have made headlines if they had used a regular, similar specced Android/W7 tablet and a W7 nettop? I don't think so, even if the end result would have at least as useful.
Finally, a Mercedes in the $10,000US range; The price of course, should go up as the unnecessary additions are removed - but that's of course any new owner could deal with the smug taint that's left behind.
Fantastic car. I work on high-end cars like these for a living. Can any of you so-called hardware "experts" even comprehend what would be required to integrate a third party product (like an iPad) such that it can communicate with the Mercedes vehicle network and control various devices?
If you think this is a waste of money then I wonder what you think of all the abominations that various rappers, movie stars and professional athletes drive when they suddenly hit the big time and have money to burn.
This is not some hack your local car stereo installer does when he whips a new deck into your car and charges you $99.
Funny how people on Tom's hate Apple so much they can't even give recognition where it's due.
The car is nice. It's a real shame what they did to it.
The article calls it ibusiness which is somewhat of an oxymoron.
Is this a joke? Maybe a demo of CS5? If that is the case..... Well done.
(I now start clapping slowly..... slowly increasing speed)
Apple and Brabus go hand in hand, both are overpriced and hyped up.
You won't be going too far in this cruiser. 700+ HP, 900+ lb/ft of torque = 5-10mpg city... maybe 20 on the highway. How big could the gas tank be? This isn't a truck. 20 gallons maybe?
Just cause its 700hp doesnt mean the fuel mileage sucks. At 638 the Zr1 still get 20 mpg highway. FYI
So, does the car go "bong" (Apple start sound) when the engine starts? Just checking.....
@ericburnby You are correct. The extra wasted effort to modify a closed source OS like MAC OSX to tailor to a specific car electronic setup is quite a feat ... and quite useless. Building a completely top of the line Linux system for half the price and 3x the bells/whistles/and overall USEABILITY (lol ipad ... lol...???) would be more efficient and better in the end. The ease of modability on a linux system is so effortless, ive seen people spent under an hour and have the ENTIRE CAR completely hooked up using linux via a remote control and decent R/C remote-module. The point people are making is that 2 ipads and a mac mini is equivalent to sticking 2 itouchg3(with slightly bigger screens) and a crappy low end mac into an expensive beauty is quite disgusting. Imagine the crazy things that couldve been done using an OS that isnt gated down like a prison yard. I mean seriously, without jailbreaking you cant even write your own apps for the ipad unless its approved by godJobs ... there goes customization...
1000 Lb Ft of torque means you either have traction control, and It barely allows you to move in fear of losing traction, or you turn it off and turn your tires into dust and noise. And the Apple stuff is just a gimmick, just like all the other tech they trow into cars these days.
You won't be going too far in this cruiser. 700+ HP, 900+ lb/ft of torque = 5-10mpg city... maybe 20 on the highway. How big could the gas tank be? This isn't a truck. 20 gallons maybe?
20 mpg hwy with 700hp? Nah. More like 4.
A ferrari 430, which I'll ad has half the horsepower and way better aero, not to mention much lighter, managed about 0.9 mpg when raced around a typical race track.
Sadly someone will buy this.
This is an insult to MB,I dont know what Brabus were thinking, btw what does mentioning that Steve Jobs`s favorite car is an SL65?
@ericburnby You are correct. The extra wasted effort to modify a closed source OS like MAC OSX to tailor to a specific car electronic setup is quite a feat ... and quite useless. Building a completely top of the line Linux system for half the price and 3x the bells/whistles/and overall USEABILITY (lol ipad ... lol...???) would be more efficient and better in the end. The ease of modability on a linux system is so effortless, ive seen people spent under an hour and have the ENTIRE CAR completely hooked up using linux via a remote control and decent R/C remote-module. The point people are making is that 2 ipads and a mac mini is equivalent to sticking 2 itouchg3(with slightly bigger screens) and a crappy low end mac into an expensive beauty is quite disgusting. Imagine the crazy things that couldve been done using an OS that isnt gated down like a prison yard. I mean seriously, without jailbreaking you cant even write your own apps for the ipad unless its approved by godJobs ... there goes customization...
Complete BS.
I develop embedded microcontroller applications for the automotive market. I want to see this Linux box that someone integrated into a car in under 1 hour. Then I'll consider the years I spent learning the specifics of all the current automotive networking protocols and various mircocontroller platforms as time wasted time, and I'll start really cranking out products in record time using an OS that nobody outside of geekdom gives a rat's ass about.
Very nice car, but the Apple stuff Meh. Put a PC in there and lets see what this baby can do!
Just shows that ones who can buy that car probably only care about name dropping not value or fuction.
Looks like a clumsy retrofit. Besides with that engine, you'll want to be at the driver's seat.
While I don't agree with what they did to this beautiful piece of engineering, I defend to death their right to do it.
Mercedes drivers head decapitated by a flying ipad after running into the back of a bus, film at 11:00
No business man would ever buy that... Why in the world would you put a catback exhaust on that luxury car? Its made for COMFORT, not exhaust growl and turbo lag. Dont get me wrong, my EvoX has a 3 inch catback, but I dont employ a chauffeur.
he just has all that apple hardware in there for show, he really uses a galaxy s and some windows notebooks.
As much as I don't use apple products, this car looks CLEAN.
I got the same setup in my Honda Accord but I used velcro. Browsing App Store and playing games while driving is awesome. ICar this changes more than everything. If you are like the rest of apple users just pretend the CarPC was never invented and the ICar will be Truly Revolutional!!!
iBusiness? Apple != business, so the statement iBusiness is an oxymoron.
Going to be a bummer when all those lap tops are outdated in 6 months and no upgrades can be thrown in them. oh well just buy another S class with updated hardware.
ROFLMAO april fool all over again
You're missing all the headlines:
iPad Used in Mercedes Sedan
iPad Used While Sitting in Leather Seat
iPad Used in Black German Car
iPad Used in Car with 700HP
...
Beautiful car. Too bad shoving it full of laptops and dangling headphones makes it look like ass.
iS600? Weird!
Very nice car, but the Apple stuff Meh. Put a PC in there and lets see what this baby can do!Just shows that ones who can buy that car probably only care about name dropping not value or fuction.
brabus already includes a dedicated ibm laptop in its mercedes modifications