The five hundred,000th Mercedes-Benz G-Class rolled off the manufacturing line on Thursday on the SUV’s plant in Graz, Austria.
The milestone comes 44 years after the civilian version of the G-Class made its debut, and as an indication of the automobile’s rising reputation, the final 200,000 examples have been inbuilt just the previous six years.
To mark the milestone, the five hundred,000th instance is a particular one-off design with parts mimicking an early G-Class, particularly a 1986 280 GE. Key retro cues embrace the agave inexperienced exterior paint (one of many earliest colours out there on a G-Class), checkered material on the seats, and orange lenses for the indicator lamps. The design of the steering wheel and spare wheel cowl additionally function basic cues, in response to Mercedes.
The G-Class, which attracts its title from gelandewagen, the German phrase for “off-road automobile,” was conceived as a army automobile. Nonetheless, Mercedes and the Austrian agency Steyr-Daimler-Puch started discussions a couple of civilian model of the SUV as early as 1969.
1979 Mercedes-Benz G-Class lineup
By 1972, the choice was made to develop one and within the spring of 1979 the primary civilian G-Class was launched. Steyr-Daimler-Puch was accountable for manufacturing, proper up till 2001 when the corporate was dissolved. Nonetheless, its automobile manufacturing operations have been taken over by Canada’s Magna Worldwide and became the brand new division Magna Steyr, which right now nonetheless builds the G-Class for Mercedes.
Over the a long time, the G-Class has been up to date whereas maintaining its feel and look unchanged—a philosophy that can be examined subsequent yr when the first electric G-Class is launched.
