CFF

Check out the Sunday NY Times. Article about the G and Hollywood.

See link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/fashion/15NOTI.html

pocholin

is there a way to read the article with out registering? I don't want to go thru the hassle and start getting more yunk e-mail.

CFF

You can register and cllick no, when asked if you want to recieve emails.

DUTCH

Here you go:

September 15, 2002
The Beverly Hills-Mobile
By MICHAEL WALKER


LOS ANGELES -- Driving an intimidating vehicle is the leitmotif of personal style in Los Angeles, where acts of brazen self-possession are as prevalent as Botoxed brows. So it's not surprising that the Mercedes-Benz G500 S.U.V. has found a happy home here. Los Angeles practically created the urban S.U.V. craze in the aftermath of the 1992 riots, when navigating the city in an armored personnel carrier of the mind suddenly seemed prudent and, once the dust had settled, roguishly stylish.

Until recently, the G500 was not regularly seen in the United States. It is a gentrified version of the Gelaendewagen, or G-Wagen, built in Austria since 1979 under the Mercedes badge and sold in Europe, primarily to the military. The only way Americans could secure one was to pay as much as $135,000 to have a European model upgraded to comply with safety and emission standards in the United States. Because of the price and logistics involved, the trickle of G-Wagens into this country collected in places with buyers for whom cost is largely conjecture, which is to say East Hampton, Beverly Hills and Malibu.

None of this was lost on DaimlerChrysler, the parent of Mercedes-Benz, which in December began offering the G500 through its American dealers at a list price of about $73,000. The company had hoped to sell 1,500 G500's this year; it now expects to sell 2,200 to 2,300. "It's beyond our wildest expectations," Fred Heiler, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz USA, said.

In Los Angeles, the G500 has supplanted, in spirit if not in numbers, the hunter-green Range Rover and the tuxedo-black Lexus, BMW and Mercedes sedans as the dominant power vehicle. "All the celebrities have this car," said Cassio Mastropietro, valet manager at the Ivy, the Beverly Hills power-lunch institution. "J.Lo, Eric Clapton." He pauses. "Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit." Mr. Mastropietro said his valets park two to three G500's a day, casual evidence that it is successfully hitting its low-key Q ratings.

Ted Mason, director of new car sales at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, said, `We're getting sticker, and sometimes two or three grand over sticker" price for the vehicles. Diane Keaton purchased a G500 from his dealership, Mr. Mason said, and Brad Pitt just bought two. Mercedes will allocate 40 G500's to his dealership this year, compared with 400 of its cheaper M-class S.U.V.'s — which, for the typical G500 buyer, is the point. "This vehicle's status, besides the Mercedes-Benz status, is that there are so few of them on the road," Mr. Mason said.

The G-Wagen is suited to Los Angeles's marble-floored-garage demographic, which seeks a vehicle owned by as few as possible but which compels contemporaries to buy one, leading to everybody in the caste driving the same three or four models of car before the cycle begins anew.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up with one, and the next thing you know some movie producer calls up and says, `Got any more?' " said Russell Leabch, sales director for Europa International Inc., the New Mexico company that imported and modified the European-spec G-Wagens. Karl Brauer, editor in chief of Edmunds.com, an automotive Web site, made the point: "In L.A., it's most important to drive a vehicle you don't see every 10 minutes, that manages to break out of the typical Southern California motoring atmosphere. And it's not easy to do that."

Evi Quaid, a producer and director, said she waited nine months for a G500, which she leases. "I think it's the ultimate mix of basic and luxury," she said, "so for me it's like the perfect pair of jeans." Mrs. Quaid, who is married to the actor Randy Quaid, said her husband's reaction was: "How can you drive that car? It's a nerdmobile."

A friend told her that all the powerful female producers and agents of Beverly Hills drove them. Mrs. Quaid insisted the car's status holds no appeal. "But there is something very tempting in something so well made," she said. "I've had my Kelly bag for 17 years. This car, it feels solid. I expect to have it 10 years."

As a fashionable antifashion statement, the G500's boxy, Bauhaus-Teutonic silhouette, which also evokes Hemingway on the savanna, could scarcely be mistaken for the modern, wind-tunnel-derived luxury S.U.V.'s from Lexus, BMW and Mercedes itself. And while the G-Wagen is legendary for soldiering through off-road conditions that would maim lesser vehicles, few of those sold will tangle with terrain more daunting than the Pasadena Freeway, a point driven home by the G500's interior, which rivals the Mercedes S-class sedan for opulence. "The contrast," Mr. Brauer said, "is one of the most bizarre dichotomies I've ever experienced driving a car."

But all the burled wood and leather in the world can't stop the G500's origin from revealing itself, said Larry Webster, Car and Driver magazine's technical editor. "The G500 is a very utilitarian vehicle with a spruced-up luxury element," Mr. Webster said. "It's nowhere near the luxury of a Range Rover. You get into a Range Rover, it's like a car, it's comfortable. The G500 just isn't. Ergonomically, there are some flaws. The doors are hard to open. If the G500 had come out 10 years ago when S.U.V.'s were in their infancy, it would probably be O.K."

"Today," Mr. Webster continued, "you've got the Range Rover, BMW X5, Mercedes ML55. The way to look at the G500 is that it's a perfect example of conspicuous consumption. There is no reason to drive it other than not everybody has one."

Mr. Heiler, of Mercedes-Benz USA, says that nevertheless, the G500 "is still a very usable car," adding, "There are no tradeoffs in having a bulletproof vehicle to go down to the grocery store, in some luxury, to get a gallon of milk." Mr. Mastropietro, of the Ivy, hoots with derision when asked to compare the G500 with the Range Rover. "It's a lot better than the Range Rover," he said.

Now that hoi polloi can shamble into a Mercedes dealer and acquire a G500 for the price of, well, a Range Rover, will it lose its "It" edge? More to the point, will it share the cachet-killing ubiquity of the Mercedes M-class, a favorite of Beverly Hills soccer moms that looks like a kiddie car by comparison? Once supply catches up with demand, it will lose its luster, Mr. Mason predicted.

And what about the redesigned Hummer H2 — the civilian spawn of the United States armored vehicle in the Persian Gulf war — which lately has been turning heads around town at the sorts of places the G-wagen has had to itself?

It is fitting that a pair of former military vehicles may be poised to do battle on the streets of Los Angeles, using buzz instead of bullets.



Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

CFF

Good idea!!

Glad you enjoyed the article, I did.

CFF

MBDriver

I think I like this car more than the S 500. The exclusivity (if that is a word) of this car is what appeals to me also. Now if its the S 600, we need a test drive to determine that!!!!