What If... The Brabus Rocket 900 Was Actually a Toyota Camry?

Among them, the Rocket 900-series vehicles stand tall as signature flagships. From the S-Class to the G-Class, all you needed in order to earn the Rocket 900 moniker from Brabus was a top-spec Mercedes-AMG engine.

It’s hard to pick a favorite among all the Brabus Rocket 900 models ever created by the German tuner, but if we absolutely had to pick one, it’s hard to argue against the Rocket 900 ‘One of Ten’, based on the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+, with its twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine, producing 900 hp and 774 lb-ft (1,050 Nm) of torque.

Alternatively, we might also imagine a world much different from our own, as we often do in our What If... series. In this case, the alternate world would see Brabus lend their talents to the latest-generation Toyota Camry, which was unveiled back in 2017 at the North American International Auto Show, before going into production that very summer.

Built on the carmaker’s GA-K platform, the XV70 Camry is easily the most advanced and most appealing iteration of this nameplate ever made, not to mention the sportiest, which isn’t something you’d normally expect from a Camry.

Yet there is a precedent out there, thanks to Toyota’s decision to unveil a TRD-spec Camry back in 2018. TRD of course stands for Toyota Racing Department and what you ended up with was a 301 hp V6 engine, larger 12.9-inch front brake rotors with two-piston calipers, additional chassis bracing, a revised suspension, lower ride height (by about 0.6 inches), new anti-roll bars (front and rear), custom shocks and 19-inch wheels.

Today, a 2022 Camry TRD model would set you back upwards of $32,910, which isn’t even the most money you could spend on a new Camry – that would be the XSE V6. Anyway, we wouldn’t fault you for buying a TRD-spec Camry, it looks pretty good, it’s reliable and it’s certainly not slow.

That being said, we want to hypothesize about a completely different beast here. One that combines Japanese and German engineering in a way that not many of us had previously considered. You basically keep everything you get in the Camry TRD but add that 4.0-liter twin turbo V8 from the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+.

Once you do that, you’ll need even bigger brakes, additional suspension mods, and another gearbox too, if you’re trying to do things right.

In terms of visuals, we’ll happily roll with what our friend Joao Kleber Amaral did with this exclusive Camry rendering, featuring a carbon fiber version of its factory-standard body kit (spoiler lip, side skirts, diffuser), to go with the Brabus wheels and Brabus badging, plus of course, a ‘Rocket 900’ license plate, which is what you’d find on a show car or in a press release, if this was indeed a real automobile.

What’s funny is that there isn’t that big of a styling difference between this Brabus-tuned Camry rendering and the real-life Camry TRD – mostly because the former is based on the latter, but also because Toyota’s own designers did a heck of a job with the TRD spec. It even has a large rear wing, which let’s face it, is there just for aesthetics yet matches the overall character of the specification.

Bottom line, we’d love to drive a 900 hp Camry if that ever turned out to be possible, but we also dread thinking about what it would cost to actually purchase one.