G-Wagen Goes From Luxury Mall Crawler to Off-roading King
Many G-Wagen owners only drive them on paved roads. They’re missing out because they were built to do fun stuff like this.
Wasted potential is a shame, no matter how it’s squandered. It’s most often thrown away by people who could capitalize on an incredible talent, but for some reason can’t or, even worse, choose not to. Vehicles can also fail to live up to their potential. Some sports car owners baby their high-performance machines and rarely take them out of the garage. Then there are those truck lovers who put thousands into visually upgrading their rigs, but never use them to haul or tow anything. The Mercedes-Benz G-Class’s full talents are often left unexploited, too. G-Wagens are the vehicle of choice for celebrities and socialites and many of those spend their lives driving only on pavement. But not this one.
According to CarBuzz, Mercedes-Benz is going to open a G-Class Experience Center by the end of the year in Kaldsorf, Austria – only 20 minutes away from the Graz factory where the boxy brute is manufactured by Magna Steyr. The facility will cover 25 acres of a former Austrian Air Force base and feature an on-road section as well as various off-road inclines that vary in steepness, all the way up to a 100-percent grade.
The G 500 in this AutoMotoTV video sure seems to be frolicking in the off-roader’s playland. Each exercise it completes shows that Mercedes gave it the right amount of ground clearance and dialed in the right amount of approach, breakover, and departure angle. As the footage progresses, the stations grow in difficulty. The first starts with a banked turn that leads to a steep climb up a paved road, which the G-Wagen completes with ease. It then makes the descent. Judging by the looks of it, the driver’s windshield must’ve been filled with only the grass and dirt of the path ahead.
The G-Wagen then makes its way down a staggering 80-percent grade at a relatively normal speed that seems devoid of any hill descent control interference. That only appears to come into affect when the driver barrels down a vertigo-inducing gravel slope.
The G-Class Experience Center’s rocky hill climb isn’t quite as steep, but its terrain is more irregularly placed and shaped. The G-Wagen barely notices. Its tires never lose grip and it never stops climbing, not even for a split second.
Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to start booking flights for New Year’s Eve. It shouldn’t be too hard to get one-way tickets to Austria…
Photos: Screenshots
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