All you need is BODO

Love has inspired many things. Poems, operas, bouquets of roses, and occasionally even marriages. These days, it has twelve cylinders, two turbochargers and 1,000 PS. It accelerates to 100 in three seconds and only stops at 360 km/h.

It’s called BODO.

And it comes from Bottrop.

You’d have to think of that connection first. At Brabus, they’ve evidently decided that, after centuries of love letters and Italian sunsets, romance deserves a technical overhaul. More displacement, more boost, more feeling.

The BRABUS BODO is the manufacturer’s first independently developed supercar, limited to 77 units. Anyone who owns one needn’t worry about being underpowered on a trip to the bakery.

But that’s not the point at all.

It’s about love.

Or, to be more precise, ‘A Love Letter to Performance’.

This is how Brabus describes its collaboration with Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz. At ComplexCon in Los Angeles, the couple unveiled their very own BODO – the first in North America – which was presented to them in person by Brabus CEO Constantin Buschmann. And because, as we all know, love is at its best when as many people as possible can share in it, a fashion collection was launched to go with it.

The BRABUS x LOVERS ROSE COLLECTION.

T-shirts, long-sleeved tops, hoodies, tracksuit bottoms, caps.

One might well ask what a pair of tracksuit bottoms has to do with a V12 biturbo.

But that would be nit-picking.

The rose, explains Brabus, stands for love, devotion and creativity. The collection is “about what remains”. About memories we cherish. About things we leave behind. About people, passions and experiences that become part of us.

That’s lovely.

It sounds a bit like a registrar who develops engines on the side.

My favourite phrase is that it’s all about ‘looking back without standing still’. With a car that goes from 0 to 100 in three seconds, standing still is limited anyway to traffic lights, petrol stations and the photo shoot in Los Angeles.

Yet behind this BODO lies a story that needs no embellishment.

Bodo Buschmann founded Brabus in Bottrop in 1977. The name is a combination of the first letters of two surnames: BRAckmann. BUSchmann. That’s it.

Buschmann died in 2018. His son Constantin continues to run the company and has now dedicated a car to his father. A modern grand tourer, which, according to Brabus, is inspired by the elegance of a bygone era and designed to forge ahead.

A son honours his father. A company honours its founder. An extraordinary car is born.

That would have been enough.

So BODO had to go to Hollywood.

There, the dream from the Ruhr region meets music, streetwear and a rose that has set itself quite a task. It is meant to embody love, devotion, creativity, the past, the future and the connection between fashion and automotive culture.

That’s quite a workload for a rose.

It used to stand in a vase.

Today, it is one of the design codes of a ‘luxury mobility brand’.

That’s what Brabus calls itself these days. It sounds more cosmopolitan than ‘car tuner from Bottrop’. Yet Bottrop certainly has its charm. Other luxury brands have to go to great lengths to piece together their origins. Brabus could simply say: We’re from the Ruhr region, we’ve been building absurdly fast cars for decades, and if 600 PS isn’t enough, we’ll just turn it into 1,000.

There’s something pleasantly uncomplicated about that.

Here, nothing is simply built, driven or worn. Here, experiences are had. Here, worlds are connected.

And sometimes, a pair of training trousers emerges from it all.

The ten items cost between 55 and 139 euros. By BODO standards, that’s downright touching. Brabus finally has a product on offer that’s easier to buy than comprehensive car insurance.

If you don’t have a BODO, you’ve at least got a hoodie.

The twelve-cylinder stays in Bottrop.

This way of life is being shipped all over the world.

Car brands now sell perfumes that allow you to make an olfactory statement of loyalty to the brand in question. Brabus sells hoodies that let you make a sartorial declaration of love.

Yet love used to be quite simple. You bought flowers. You wrote a letter. You invited someone out for a meal. Today, you give a V12 biturbo as a present and include a love letter to the performance.

And what if true love doesn’t come back after all?

Then you’ve still got the BODO.

Or at least the hoodie.

With a rose.

That’ll stay.

At least at 30 degrees. Washed inside out.