Don't Teach Your Father To Make Babies

It has been around for nearly four decades, even its intended replacement is over a decade old now, yet the G-Wagen refuses retirement. What more can daddy teach sonny?

- Sirish Chandran

I TURN 39 THIS MONTH AND AS THE GREY hairs poking out of my beard will attest, I’m no longer a spring chicken. Even less of a spring chicken is the car I’m driving. The back story is a familiar tale: the Shah of Iran, a significant Mercedes-Benz stakeholder in the seventies, wanted a cross-country vehicle for his armed forces to venture far and wide. Testing in the Sahara and the Arctic Circle revealed a 4x4 so capable it was quickly civilised, going on sale a year after I was born. A year later the Pope got his Popemobile. Three years later, a nearstock G-Class won the Paris-Dakar rally. Then came three locking differentials. Air-con, ABS, an auto ’box, all kinds of engines, a dash fashioned out of something more than metal sheets folded by pliers – everything was thrown at the G. An (intended) end-of-story ‘Classic’ edition came and went twenty years ago; it was followed by another end-of-line ‘Grand’ edition. AMG shoe-horned a V12 into it. A ludicrous 6x6 version murdered a few dunes. The US Army militarised it into the Fast Attack Vehicle. Maybach left the rear quarters open to the skies and slapped a half a million dollar price tag on it. It’s an incredible story, a slab-sided 38-year-old dinosaur that is still ticking away, every minor update managing to land itself on the covers of magazines! This is the newest variant – the Edition 463 sticker job – and it is causing accelerated greying of my stubble as arms saw away at the steering wheel in response to a planted right foot.