Mercedes-Benz G-Class review

From £136,3858

Geländewagen receives a round of updates and a six-pot petrol engine

Stronger than time, proclaims the brochure of the Mercedes G-Class.

It sounds slightly preposterous, but there is a certain Stonehenge-like quality about this car. It’s one of Mercedes’ longest-running nameplates and, superficially at least, it feels built for the ages. Stronger than time it may be, but the current generation, which was a complete but careful redesign of the classic G-Wagen, has been around since 2018, so for 2024, Mercedes has given it a facelift.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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02 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review side driving field

Fundamentally, the G-Class remains as traditional as it ever was and very different from every other Mercedes passenger car on sale today. It sticks with a live rear axle and a ladder frame made from thick sheet steel. Not sharing a platform with other Mercedes is part of the reason why the G-Class continues to be largely hand-built by Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria.

For 2024, the biggest change is the addition to the range of the ‘G580 with EQ Technology’. That is the rather prosaic name for the first pure-electric G-Class, which hides a 116kWh battery pack between its chassis rails. That will merit its own road test when it arrives later.

The latest G-Class adopts matrix LED headlights but retains indicators perched on top of the bonnet. Seeing them flash orange at night is rather charming.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

The regular G-Class’s engine range has been tweaked. The mad V8 G63 AMG remains, the G350d is dropped, and the G400d gets a mild-hybrid bump to become the G450d. And for the first time in ages, you can buy a non-AMG G-Class with a petrol engine: the G500 tested here gets the same 3.0-litre mild-hybrid straight six as the Mercedes-AMG CLE 53.

You will recognise the updated G from the redesigned grille, which loses the chrome and now has four instead of three horizontal slats, while the bumpers have gained ‘squircle’-shaped cut-outs. It all makes the standard G-Class more closely resemble the AMG. New A-pillar cladding and a spoiler lip are said to improve aerodynamics (still decidedly brick-like, with a Cd of 0.46) and reduce wind noise. There’s also extra sound deadening to help with the latter.

INTERIOR

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08 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review dashboard

You can’t help laughing when you first open the door of a G-Class and get in. If this counts as the car’s handshake, it’s a firm, callused one. There’s no reason for the door’s lock to feel this mechanical, for it to be so tall or to require such a violent slam to close, other than this car being one big piece of automotive theatre.

You sit up very high, with the flat and near-vertical windscreen right in front of your face and looking out over that classic stepped bonnet. Even before you have started the engine, the G-Class experience is an evocative one and unlike that of any other new car. Many will find it all ridiculous, but for others, it begins to justify the high price of admission.

The off-road controls – for the off-road cockpit, manual gearbox, and low-range and diff locks – are now grouped neatly into one button cluster.
Matt Prior
Editor-at-large

The cabin itself is much more S-Class than it is military vehicle. Where the latest S-Class has gone very screen-heavy, though, the G remains quite traditional and retains a less overbearingly large screen and plenty of chunky physical controls.

The twin 12.3in screens have been updated to run Mercedes’ current MBUX software, which works even better than in other models because the climate controls get their own row of rocker switches, and because the G-Class retains its touchpad and shortcut buttons. The main infotainment is now a touchscreen (it wasn’t previously), but the touchpad is useful for scrolling through lists of settings or songs.

The rest of the interior builds on the G-Class’s sense of indestructibility. The door handles release with a clunk, the passenger-side grab handle that has been a long-time G-Class feature feels as sturdy as ever, and the cover for the centre console cubby has an almost exaggerated heavy-duty action.

There’s quite a lot of adjustability in the front seats, but it feels wrong to set them to their lowest setting. In the G-Class, you want to have that commanding viewpoint. Set up as such, the driving position is closer to that of a kitchen chair than a racing bucket, but very comfortable and more satisfying than the semi-sporting one you get in most crossovers. Rear passengers have more leg room than the number suggests as they can put their feet under the front seats.

Boot space, accessed by the side-hinged rear door, is affected by the G-Class’s construction, making the load bay narrow but tall, with a cross-beam preventing a flat floor.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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17 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review exhaust sidepipe

Like so many things with the G500, setting performance benchmarks on the track feels more than a little ridiculous. When you torque the car on the brakes, the whole thing twists like an old Dodge Charger on the drag strip. It gets off the mark smartly, however, and feels pretty quick up to about 100mph, at which point it hits an aerodynamic wall.

As an illustration of how much the G-Class is aero-limited, consider this: at MIRA we can do acceleration runs both ways to compensate for wind direction, and the G-Class’s 0-120mph run was a whole 2.0sec slower in one direction than it was in the other.

The G500 doesn’t flaunt them like the AMG G63, but it too has sidepipes. The downturned tips are on the driver‘s side and project a surprisingly sporting rasp onto the road surface.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

A diesel engine certainly feels like a more natural powerplant for a large SUV, but while the 3.0-litre petrol has its work cut out in the 2.5-tonne G500, it acquits itself remarkably well thanks to good reserves of torque. The sound from the twin sidepipes takes some of the truckiness out of the G-Class, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your taste.

The gearbox is Mercedes’ usual nine-speed automatic, which means it is generally smooth and responsive but can be hesitant at low speeds. The new mild-hybrid system is mostly smooth and unintrusive but is worth turning off for quick getaways.

Braking is about as good as can be expected from a car such as this. It pitches a fair bit on its soft suspension and takes longer to settle than a typical passenger car, but it feels stable and the stopping distances aren’t particularly bad.

When we tried the diesel on the international launch, we found it excellent too. On rational grounds this is the G, really. It’s uncomplicated to drive, has a good swell of torque that makes it just as quick as the G500 in the real world. It’s also the most economical.

RIDE & HANDLING

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18 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review front cornering

The most surprising thing about the current-generation G-Class is how decent it is on the road. One expects a heavy off-roader with a ladder chassis and live rear axle to be ponderous and crude and to shudder over bumps. The G-Class is none of that, although it’s no sports car.

You are aware of its weight, generous body roll, and relatively limited grip, but all of them remain within acceptable bounds, and the car responds predictably to your inputs. The steering is intuitively geared, and roll builds gradually, making the G-Class quite enjoyable to flow down a country road.

The stability control is tuned very conservatively, because a vehicle this tall has a naturally higher risk of ending up on its side. It’s very smooth and well judged, though, so isn’t especially intrusive. It can, of course, be switched off at low speeds for off-road driving.

At nearly 2.2m wide, it’s certainly a big car for British roads, but because you have such a clear view of the bonnet’s edges from your lofty vantage point, the G-Class’s size isn’t especially intimidating.

You might expect this sort of car to have air suspension, but the G-Class sticks with fairly soft coil springs, albeit with some quite fancy-looking adaptive dampers. As a result, the long-wave ride is luxuriously pliant. However, it’s impossible to disguise the effects of the live axle completely. On uneven roads, there is a bit of head-toss, and the rear axle can thunk across potholes. Noise refinement is generally very good, although wind noise does pick up above 60mph.

Mercedes’ assisted driving features are among the best on the market. When you have the lane following function for the adaptive cruise control turned on and come to a stop on a multi-lane road, the car will even position itself so emergency vehicles and motorbikes can pass. With all that said, speed limit recognition remains imperfect, and the lane-keeping assist can be foxed on rural roads.

Off Road

The fact that all UK G-Classes are sold on summer tyres rather than something more off-road-capable says a lot about how much action these cars tend to see in the rough.

We didn’t manage to take this one off-road, but from past experience we know the G-Class to be very capable thanks to three locking differentials, massive ground clearance, and axle articulation. The approach, departure, and breakover angles remain the same as before, at 31.2deg, 30.5deg, and 26.3deg. Wading depth is 700mm, and ground clearance is 241mm.

New for the updated G-Class is the off-road cockpit, which is called up via a button in the centre console and shows all sorts of information such as angles, tyre pressures, and differential lock status.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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01 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review lead driving front

Being largely hand-made and not sharing as many components with other Mercedes models as the mainstream range means the G-Class is inevitably expensive. These days you need at least £136,690 for a G450d and an extra £10,000 for the G500. Every UK-market G-Class comes as a fully loaded AMG Line Premium Plus, and there’s no real need (or much scope) to spend more on options.

Our economy figures on the petrol G500 neatly illustrate the effects of the G-Class’s brutalist aerodynamics. For a 443bhp six-cylinder petrol, the engine is fundamentally a fairly efficient one, so the G500 returned a reasonable 32.0mpg on the everyday economy test. That test only goes up to 50mph, however, so economy drops at motorway speeds and falls even further when there’s some brisk motoring involved.

Still, a 24.6mpg average is significantly better than the 17.9mpg we got from the petrol Ineos Grenadier last year. The 100-litre tank ensures a long range but is rather painful to fill, demanding 98-octane as it does. In the diesel, 30mpg is just about achievable.

VERDICT

20 Mercedes G500 G Wagen 2024 review static

A car that’s trying to be both a Suzuki Jimny and a Mercedes S-Class is never going to be a sensible proposition, and you can easily dismiss its ‘tough military vehicle’ affectations as gimmicks, but that would be to ignore the combined effect: making this feel like a very special car and a real event to drive and be in.

The G-Class isn’t too compromised on the road: it mostly drives like a well-sorted large SUV. The new petrol engine suits it, too. It’s very expensive, but think of the G-Class not as a normal new car but rather a sort of factory-built restomod.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.