I thought I would ask here since its one of the more active AMG forums. Basically ive been having a running debate with my father about why having a Brabus/Kleeman etc. tuned car is not a *bad* thing.

His standpoint is that they will never be as good as a proper inhouse FACTORY job like AMG who have spent millions in R&D and comply to strict Mercedes standards. He thinks having someone like Brabus mess around with base units from Mercedes/AMG will somehow make them less reliable and not "proper" because they are a 3rd party company using their own bits.

I'd just like to see what peoples views are here.

tell your father he is wrong.

Some people like factory.
Some people like modded.

Preference and Pocketbook are the major differences.

I think your father has a good point.

It really depends what your father means. If all he is talking about is reliability, then he may be right. MB builds their cars (minus all the elctronic problems) like tanks with alot of redundnacy built into the critical components. It makes it great for tuners b/c there is significant room to tweak the performance well within the tolerances of those components. If you are bumping the power, of course it is going to put more stress on those components, however, not necessarily to a point where it materially affects the reliability.

Some tuning involves adding components that are of better quality than those used by MB (e.g. Brembo BBK, suspension, etc.) so in that sense your father is wrong. Sure, the car might not perform the way the factory intended, but that often isn't a bad thing. From the perspective of performace, I don't see why your father would argue that stock MBs perform better, given that the whol purpose of aftermarket tuning is to improve performance.

Good points. I like the point about aftermarket tuners using better quality gear, perhaps because they are on a much smaller production scale.

What about at the top end with the 65 engines and the big Brabus V12's? They are both around 600bhp, which would you choose and why? Considering they are both alot of money.

amg. then again i am biased cuz i have an amg...

At $175,000 + I'd take the AMG 65 for two reasons:

1. Better warranty
2. Better resale

and the fact that they can be serviced at any MB dealer as opposed to Brabus who some MB dealers don't even know exist.

I am in the same situation. My dad has an 02 CL500 jus sittin stock. I tell him to put some rims and at least an amg kit or something but he says anything not put on from the dealer will only "hurt" the car. I tell him it doesn't, but he says otherwise. Don't worry I think I'm beginning to break him down ...Hopefully I can get at least a set of HRE's and a kit on it and then we would be rollin

Brabus gives warranty on their products as well. I like both of em, but theres still room to improve.

Keep in mind, when DaimlerChrysler is developing a new model, AMG is part of the Team from the beginning to see where the stock model can already be improved, and also to have stuff built in a certain way (exhaust pipes etc.), so AMG can add their parts more easily later on.

On the other hand, some of you surely know the SMART-cars: As for SMART having a top model in each class, they have the Smart-Brabus GmbH, which is a joint venture from DC. I'm sure thats a sign of Brabus being (almost) equal to AMG-quality.