The Luxury Turn
The W463 arrived in 1990 with permanent four-wheel drive, three differential locks and an interior that moved the G-Class towards the luxury market. Over the following decades AMG engines and steadily richer trim turned a military design into a status symbol without changing its silhouette.
Part of G-Class
23 moments in this segment.
- — Daimler-Benz archive film on the revised Gelaendewagen. A Daimler-Benz corporate film held under an archive reference, presenting a comprehensively revised G model as a more comfortable cross-country vehicle. It documents the point at which the utilitarian Gelaendewagen began to be sold as a civilised road car.
- — Papal escort passing the Scottish Club, Tallinn 1993. The papal motorcade in Tallinn in 1993, showing the G-Class popemobile in convoy. Photographs like this capture the vehicle in service rather than on a stand.
- — A Greek 240 GD carrying an M40 recoilless rifle, 1997. A Hellenic Army Mercedes 240 GD converted into a weapons carrier for an M40 106 mm recoilless rifle, with a metal guard fitted to protect the engine from the gun's backblast. Conversions like this show how far armies pushed the basic chassis. Genuine 1990s photograph.
- — John Paul II in Sosnowiec, 1999. The G-Class popemobile during John Paul II's 1999 pilgrimage to Poland. By this point the vehicle had been in papal service for nearly twenty years and was instantly recognisable worldwide.
- — A 2005 G-Class on the show stand. A W463 G-Class at the 2004 San Francisco International Auto Show. The G-Class was officially imported to the United States only from 2002, after years of grey-market imports, and its arrival there transformed the car's commercial fortunes.
- — Canadian Land Forces G-Wagen. A Mercedes-Benz G-Class of the Canadian Army. Canada bought around 1,150 G-Wagens from 2003 for reconnaissance and military police work, many of them armoured, and deployed them in Afghanistan.
- — German G-Wagens on ISAF operations in Afghanistan. German Bundeswehr vehicles including G-Class 'Wolf' variants on ISAF duty in Afghanistan. Afghanistan exposed the limits of the unarmoured G and drove the development of protected variants such as the LAPV Enok and the Serval.
- — A G-Class commercial that was never broadcast. A short Mercedes-Benz G-Class advertising film which, according to the uploader, was never aired on television. It reached its audience through enthusiast circulation rather than through the brand's own channels.
- — Mercedes-Benz USA advertisement: the G-Class against winter. A short Mercedes-Benz USA brand film pitching the G-Class as a cold-weather off-roader that snow and ice cannot stop. It shows how the marque sold the Gelaendewagen into the American market in 2011: rugged capability marketed as luxury.
- — G 500 Edition Select and G 300 CDI Professional PUR on the Schoeckl. Two special-edition G-Class models, the G 500 'Edition Select' and the G 300 CDI Professional 'Edition PUR', driven on the Schoeckl off-road testing area at Graz. The pairing sets the two ends of the range side by side: an equipment-heavy luxury edition and a stripped, work-oriented one.
- — W461 Professional flatbed. A Mercedes-Benz G 300 CDI Professional with a flatbed body on the W461 chassis, photographed in Stuttgart in 2012. The W461 line was kept alive alongside the luxury W463 for exactly this kind of customer - armies, utilities, aid agencies and mining companies.
- — The W463 interior after three facelifts. The cabin of a W463 G 350 BlueTEC in 2013. By this point the G had a wood-and-leather interior and a modern infotainment screen bolted into a dashboard architecture that dated back to 1990. The three round differential-lock switches remained where they had always been.
- — Annual meeting of the Mercedes-Benz G-Klasse Club, June 2013. Footage shot alongside a photo session at the German G-Klasse Club's 2013 annual gathering, including many G-Class vehicles running an off-road trial. It is a look at the owner community that has carried the model's culture between generations.
- — Carbuyer road-tests the G-Class. A consumer road test weighing the G-Class's on-road manners against its off-road ability. The verdict the channel quotes, that it is wanting as a road vehicle but in a league of its own off road, captures the tension that defined the car in its later years.
- — Six wheels, five diff locks. Another view of the G 63 AMG 6x6. The military three-axle G-Wagen it was based on had been built for Australia since 2007; the AMG version simply made the idea absurd and expensive.
- — Portal axles on a road car. A G 500 4x4² showing the portal axles that raise the differentials above wheel-centre height. The design was borrowed straight from the military G and gave the car a ground clearance no other production road car could match.
- — A first drive in a G-Class, from a sceptic. A reviewer who had never driven a G-Class finally gets one and reports back on what the car is actually like on the road, against its reputation as a London status object. The verdict is not what he expected going in.
- — Sold as a Puch G in Austria. A 1995 W463 cabriolet badged as a Puch G. Because the car was built by Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Graz, it was sold under the Puch name in Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and the COMECON countries, and as a Mercedes-Benz everywhere else. The Puch badging was dropped in the 2000s. The vehicle or site is period; this photograph was taken in 2023.
- — The W463: the G-Class goes upmarket. A W463 230 GE. Introduced for the 1990 model year, the W463 kept the ladder frame and the body shape but added permanent four-wheel drive, three fully locking differentials operated by dashboard switches, ABS, carpet and wood trim. The utilitarian W461 continued in parallel, so from 1990 the G-Class was effectively two different vehicles wearing the same body. The vehicle or site is period; this photograph was taken in 2023.
- — Assessing the previous-generation W463 as a used V8 SUV. A technical review of the outgoing W463 G-Class with the twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8, looking at the interior, the mechanical layout and how it drives. It weighs the model against the Bronco Raptor and Wrangler Rubicon and discusses how the off-road heritage sits alongside the vehicle's status as a lifestyle object.
- — G550 against a 4Runner in deep snow. An off-road comparison between a 2015 Mercedes G550 and a 2015 Toyota 4Runner, both on 35-inch tyres, in deep snow. Both vehicles get stuck and a winch breaks during the recovery, which makes it an unusually honest record of the W463's limits away from tarmac.
- — Review of a 1992 300GES short-wheelbase W463. A review of a short-wheelbase 1992 300GES, arguing that an early W463 is a better G-Class than a modern G63. The video is a present-day assessment of a car from the start of the W463 generation, when the luxury version still had modest engines and a simple cabin.
- — Used G-Class buyer's guide filmed in Austria. A buyer's guide filmed in Austria, the country where the G-Class is built, with a military 461 Wolf owner and a Mercedes dealer who restores and sells G-Wagons. They cover which generations and engines to look for and where rust and mechanical problems appear.
