That which balanced at fine AMG GT Melting the tires and putting the 911 in distress will now be the norm in the new G. Entry-level engine they say to the new 500er. Welcome to the world of the Mercedes SUV.
A world in which you did not have to let demolish on the highway on the acceleration strip behind a hard-hitting Porsche Macan S, the merry-smoking exhaust vents have betrayed him and the Stuttgart would-be off-roader to 210km / h have to give a meter.
A world in which the casual, snotty exhaust noise tattooing an eight-cylinder soundtrack through the side pipes to the eardrum, without flap control and synthetic tricks, ticks all your hair nuts.
skid marks
A world in which, as a driver, you become afraid of your own courage in difficult terrain, almost put a skid mark in your underpants due to threatening lean angles and the G just calls out to you casually: “Is that all?” Maybe we should activate the barriers and have a really rough romp through the mud!
The Mercedes G is a madness. Always been. His qualities: undisputed, beyond doubt, legendary. A diamond cut for 36 years, already at the beginning of unreal brilliance and today, 2015, in a finely crafted perfection that everything else loses in total insignificance.
Clearly, modernity has moved in. There are colorful displays, navigation and entertainment equipment, the finest leather upholstery and noble oiled woods. Suede, diamond quilting, on request even carbon fiber inserts on the handle for the passenger. Seat heating on all seats, massage function and television screens for the rear.
Nobody needs that, of course, but the G wears it with a frame. He does not care about the funfair in the interior, he is not embarrassed by the daytime running lights. Because he has already experienced everything. Everything has been seen everywhere. And if you do not believe him, just think of him as a modern compensation machine, then in the pouring rain he opens the heavy door for you and shows you what he does best.
Blind crests
In front of you is a course that is not easy to drive even in the dry: steep slopes, rough entanglements, narrow ravines and scree accumulations in football field size. The whole thing now loose up to the knee in the mud. The G sets the reduction, locks middle as rear axle and lays down. Quite easily you lose sight of the horizon, dangling through the interior like a doll with too loosely sewed marble head and are in some places really afraid that the thing falls on your side as normal.
You wiggle twisting arches, the holes of which are as big as a whole Smart, and crawl out so easily that the big V8 doesn't even have to raise its voice. Idle gas pulls it out almost everywhere. On an incline, certainly twenty percent, not to be able to climb in a dream on foot, then he demands the third lock, because the mud on the blind crest then goes all the way to the hub and every panic attack of the driver himself the G here without use the completely rigid drive could bring into distress.
But he does that too: easy. Because there are no limits for the G If he does not get anywhere, it's because you did something wrong, not him. Of course he would never show you that. Instead, he assists you in the new model year nicely, hides on demand on the display an off-road menu that shows you the inclination angle and - more importantly - the steering angle. Because in the tight angle of knee-deep mud, you really like to lose track of how many revolutions you have just turned the bike and where exactly it was again straight ahead.
Own world
By the way, now for the first time available for the G adaptive damper adjustment is not a mere marketing gimmick, so you may feel sportier in the city, no, in heavy terrain, the tight setting helps that the body does not swing too much. Because in the G-Ländewagen nothing serves the gimmick.
Well, the mighty engine power maybe. As I said, the 422PS strong and 610Nm stemmende V8 biturbo in G500 is actually the entry-level engine. Then come the AMGs with 571PS as eight-cylinder and whole 630PS in the big V12. Incidentally, the G63 AMG alone handles well over 50% in sales. The entry-level gasoline and especially the diesel G350 play virtually no role.
The Mercedes G lives in its own world. And that at least until 2022, as long as the contract is still running with Magna in Graz to produce the legend. But even then it will not stop, you simply had no contracts with a longer term, says line manager Dr. Gunnar Güthenke. And that's no joke.