Short Take Road Test
Who says prestige vehicles have to be modern, luxury vehicles have to be refined, or off-road vehicles have to be slow? To those people, the Mercedes-Benz G550 wags a finger and thick coat of mud and ambles off to hurdle the nearest Jersey barrier. The anachronous G-class—or Geländewagen to purists—was introduced 30 years ago as a go-anywhere off-road military vehicle and today rides on essentially the same frame as the original, with the same suspension layout and nearly identical styling. It does, however, benefit from the accumulation of three decades of incremental improvements in two areas: luxury and power.
For luxury, the G550 comes standard with everything. No options list exists. Standard equipment includes a sunroof; a windshield with embedded heating elements à la Land Rover; Mercedes’ COMAND navigation system with Bluetooth, Sirius radio, and iPod connectivity; 10-way power and heated front seats; heated rear seats; and a rear-view camera, among a host of other goodies.
Power Proportionate to Its Boxiness
As for the major 2009 upgrade, the G550 is now equipped with the automaker’s ubiquitous 5.5-liter V-8. Sporting the same 382 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque as in its other applications and growling through an exhaust system that dumps out right in front of each rear wheel, the aluminum lump whips this 5700-pound packing crate to 60 mph in 5.9 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 14.5 at 94 mph. For something shaped like a brick and weighing nearly three tons, that’s world-class.
Floor it from a stop, and the G-wagen’s front tires squawk for a second as the towering lunchbox squats on its rear rubber. A standard seven-speed automatic is a good thing, as the G’s off-road-centric 4.38:1 axle ratio means it is already in third gear by 60 mph and shifts into fourth at 75, at which point three gears remain to get it to its governed 133-mph top speed.
The acceleration may be thoroughly modern, but the chassis is quite obviously not. Crank the wheel, and the G550 teeters like a drunken co-ed; catch a midcorner bump, and the body feints toward rollover. Although we never tipped the G, we did manage a paltry 0.63 g on the skidpad. For reference, we recorded 0.61 g in a GMC TopKick, an 11,000-pound commercial truck that towers nearly eight feet tall. To approximate the constant rolling and pitching of the G550, put on a helmet with a telephone pole sprouting from the top, and go outside on a windy day.
It’s 30 Years Old. What Did You Expect?
There are a few other age spots, too. The controls for the air-bladder seat adjustments look and feel like they came out of a two-generations-old Korean parody of a luxury car. The stubby dash puts the seating position so close to the windshield that, if the prospect of licking the suction cups on your radar detector grosses you out, you can simply lean forward and lick the windshield instead.
Solid axles front and rear are so 1974, but the three locking differentials (front, rear, and center) give this brute enough traction to drive to the moon. Sadly, our observed fuel economy of 13 mpg will limit the range to just midway through Earth’s ionosphere. Better stick to terrestrial travels, for which roads are strictly optional.
Honesty: Still the Best Policy
Despite its obvious age and idiosyncrasies, there’s a charming honesty to the G550. Its doors are emblematic of the vehicle. The panel gaps are so large you can actually see the latch between the door and body shell, but the doors are so heavy and solid that slamming them sounds like a bank vault closing. The locks are the old plunger type, virtually extinct today in cars costing over $15,000, but they’re so metal-intensive that the quartet locking or unlocking together sounds like the members of a firing squad simultaneously cocking their rifles. It’s a feeling of old design and engineering assembled with unrivaled quality and substance: history’s most perfectly carved and polished stone wheel.
Marketing spin has been used to sell vehicles ever since Cugnot’s steam-powered tricycle failed to take off on its own merits. Today, a select few refreshingly forthright vehicles still sell to the hard-core elite based on nothing more than exactly what they are. The Mercedes-Benz G-class is a pointy-bearded, leather-clad biker manifested as a luxurious off-road box, a nonconformist not so much marching as it is stomping to the beat of its own drum. Yes, it is ridiculous, but we’re not going to argue with it.
