Eat Dirt for Lunch With a Unimog Museum Visit and Ride-Along

By Tony Markovich - October 6, 2016

unimog_ride

Like the ever-popular Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon, the Unimog is a 4×4 military-based off-roader that has remained, at its core, unchanged for the extent of its long life. Benz found a formula that changed the game and worked well, and it’s stayed that way ever since. But the Unimog is much older than the G, with the first prototypes coming out in the late ’40s.

The Unimogs have been so important to Mercedes-Benz as a brand that there is actually a museum dedicated them, which you can visit in Gaggenau, Germany, about two hours west of Stuttgart. Ellen Lohr of YouCar recently had the opportunity to visit the historic venue and recorded a video to tell us all about it.

As with most museums that focus on products, the Unimog museum presents a wonderful timeline of the 4×4’s past and how it has developed into the legend it is today. The museum holds the sixth model ever produced; it shows the various instruments and tools that can be attached to make it into an extremely functional work truck (farming, for example); it houses design studies for possible future models; and it displays different technologies that have been incorporated.

One of the best parts of this place, though, is that you don’t just have to look at the rides, you can actually drive them or go on ride-alongs. After explaining a brief bit of the history in the building, Lohr continues her visit in the passenger seat of a 1979 model, and the driver takes her around one of the exhibition’s on-site tracks.