Rufty-Tufty

WE SAY: MEET THE NEW G-CLASS. SAME AS THE OLD G-CLASS. EXCEPT IT’S NOT. FAR FROM IT, IN FACT

- Ollie Marriage

The door handle button, the headlight washer nozzles, the sun visors and the spare-wheel cover. Those are the only parts carried over from the outgoing G-Class. It may not look it, but everything else is new. About time, really. The old G had been around since the dawn of the motor carriage (well, 1979), an old soldier refusing to desert its post.

The post is of-roadability. I ask Gunnar Güthenke, G-Class’s boss, if he was tempted to take the new one in a more urban direction, since that’s the landscape the G seems most able to conquer. “Not at all. Above all it had to be authentic, so there were three elements we had to keep: the super-tough ladder chassis, the three locking differentials and the low-range gearbox.”