World’s most luxurious game viewer
INTERNATIONAL NEWS/ Benz bids farewell to the current G-Wagen with utterly outrageous ostentation, writes Michael Taylor
The Mercedes Gelandewagen came into the world as a tough all-round, offroader and it goes out as a pinnacle of ostentation in the Mercedes-Maybach G650 Landaulet.
Based around the architecture of the G63 6x6 AMG, the long-wheelbase Maybach turns the 1979 G-Wagen into a hard core, high-rise limousine with an open-topped cargo area.
The four-seat Maybach takes the 39-year-old G-Wagen and makes it longer, wider, more powerful, more luxurious and gives it even more off-road ability with the adoption of the Unimog’s portal axles and 325/55 profile 22-inch tyres giving it 450mm of ground clearance.
EXRTA LARGE
At 5,345mm long, it gets more than half a metre of wheelbase stretch compared with the G500 4x42 and, at 2,110mm wide and 2,335 high, it’s going to demand an enormous garage to house it. It’s so big that its 3,428mm wheelbase is 258mm longer than the standard S-Class limousine.
It will take an enormous wallet to buy it too. Just 99 versions are being built by contract builder Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria and Daimler officials suggest it will be even more expensive than 2014’s outrageous €480,000 G63 6x6.
It will also take an enormous wallet to run it, with the 465kW twin-turbo V12 slurping down fuel at 17.1l/100km, and that’s on the combined urban-extra urban cycle, and it leaves it with a CO2 figure that almost breaches the 400g/km barrier.
So, while its well-heeled customers will barely care (indeed many of them will be pumping the oil out of the ground in the first place), generating 1,000Nm of torque from 2,300r/min will mean Daimler will need to sell plenty of Smart Fortwos to offset the emissions of each one.
LOW RANGE
The V12’s drive runs through a seven-speed automatic transmission before moving through an all-wheel drive system with three differential locks, which can be locked or unlocked while driving, and a low-range transfer case.
Though Mercedes-Maybach is taking a leaf out of the RollsRoyce book by not claiming a 0-100km/h time or a top speed, the lighter G65 AMG uses essentially the same powertrain and hits 100km/h in 5.3 seconds and is limited to 230km/h.
Once near moribund as a brand, Maybach has come back as a flagship atop Benz’s traditional models and the G650 Landaulet boosts the number of Maybachs at Daimler to five, but there’s really nothing traditional about it.
SEMICONVERTIBLE
The roof introduces a semiconvertible setup, which takes its inspiration from the 2007 Maybach 62 Landaulet, and will be publicly seen for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show early in March.
It’s so tall that it uses a standard running board to allow people to climb into it, and that’s not something you see every day, but the interior looks like it could be worth the climb.
All four seats are borrowed from the S-Class Pullman and they are electronically adjustable and, obviously, lined in leather, plus deliver the hotrock massage function and massaging air chambers.
There were hints (provocatively teased by Mercedes itself) that the G650 Landaulet would be a full convertible, but the four occupants will live beneath a steel roof, though an electronically controlled fabric section will retract into the luggage area behind the back seats.
The rear passengers haven’t been forgotten, with two 10-inch display screens mounted on the sound-proof glass partition between the front and back and held up with a cross member.
ALL FOUR SEATS ARE ELECTRONICALLY ADJUSTABLE PLUS DELIVER THE HOT-ROCK MASSAGE FUNCTION
Ed — Now we know that you are eager to get your hands on one for the game farm, or simply because there is almost zero chance of seeing another one on the same day, or even the same year (unless you were in Botswana last week where the international launch took place — there were loads of them around then). Sadly though, Daimler is only making it in lefthand drive, which means officially it cannot come to SA.
We did say officially though and will not be in the least bit surprised if one or more find their way to some luxury game lodge or other.