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I felt slightly forlorn when it went back to Mercedes-Benz and I still miss it. But the truth is the G-Wagen was never a realistic proposition for me, not least because dropping a hundred quid into its bottomless pit of a fuel tank would add fewer than 400 miles to its range, which from where I live is Stansted and back. But in an age where function now follows form at a deferential distance in so many areas of our lives, it was an ice- cool blast of fresh air to spend even three months in the company of a car that is the way it is because that’s how best it could be designed to do the job it was made to do.
Yes, there are limitations deriving from the fact that brief is now more than 40 years old, but the truth is that, despite it all, if there is another five-seat car out there with more raw charm than this, I haven’t driven it. And for all the improvements the all-new G-Wagen will undoubtedly bring, its single most important job is to ensure that its unique character survives the metamorphosis unscathed.
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