BEFORE CLASS THERE WAS WAGEN
DRIVING THE 461
Let’s declare an interest: we love a period car with checkered seats. And the pews in the 230 GE we’re sitting in are as tartan as a Scotsman’s kilt during the Calcutta Cup. It’s all part of the winningly period mid-’80s vibe inside the 461-era G-wagen we’ve borrowed from the factory collection.
Yes, the plastics are cruder than my kids’ Duplo Lego, but it’s a welcoming interior with a decent view out. The modern G has good visibility thanks to those vast windows, but the irst gen is better with its slender pillars, slab sides and a proper W124-spec steering wheel to hang on to when the going gets tough (as it usually does in a G-wagen).
There’s no digital distraction in here, just a trio of plain dials (the speedo barely passing 100mph), that characteristic Merc wiggly auto ’box gate pattern and only four buttons on the centre console. It’s enough to make you all elegiac and prompt you to start questioning the need for the digital trickery manufacturers seem hellbent on stuing into modern cabins.
Snick the delicate gearlever into D and we’re o, the G springing forwards with an enthusiasm for revs I wasn’t expecting. Early cars were leet of foot and this 33-year-old example goes and stops keenly; the ride, too, is surprisingly compliant, with more suppleness than you’d ind in a period Land Rover.
Only the steering lets the side down, with gearing so unresponsive it’d qualify as a yogic work-out exercise as you saw from lock to lock during manoeuvres.
The template was set and you see why early G-wagens caught on. It was a very Germanic take on the period Range Rover – and rather wonderful to boot.