Promoting Mercedes’ G-Class has got to be an easy task for a creative dep’t. The revision of the ladder-framed series in early 2018—the first in nearly four decades—was ushered in with the ‘Stronger than Time’ campaign, a brilliantly bombastic riff that neatly subverted the idea of change while highlighting it as essential to the series image. A more recent ad campaign—which placed a G-Class in a bedamned, unenviably acute daredevil angle—loudly proclaimed ‘Stronger than Gravity.’ Clearly, the company’s marketing is waxing grandiose in its cycle, because the G-Class apparently has terrestrial as well as temporal limitations in its sights.
The cusp of summer 2019 finds the G-Class in a reflective mood, reprising the slick advertising leitmotif with the ‘Stronger than Time’ Edition, a further step in cementing the G-Class as one of Mercedes’ contemporary consumer idées fixes. It’s a further chapter in the tall-telling of a series, a curiously effective if sledgehammer capping of the model’s unimpeachable, and carefully crafted, mythological mettle.
To some degree, the hyperbole is only a preaching to the converted. Because the G-Class, perhaps more than any other model in automotive history, has already earned the right to exaggerate. Only the Volvo 240 was able to stand with it for pure tenacity of stubbornly unchanging utilitarian/luxe boxiness…and even that popular, literate fixture of the auto world went the way of the dodo 25 years ago. The G-Class soldiers on, still garnering double-takes from the uninitiated when its mystery slides by, graceful as an elk despite its stodgily vintage look.
So, yes, stronger than time. Or, at least, unusually resistant to the mechanics of time in relation to tastes in automotive design. Or perhaps enduringly fashionable, like a pea coat or fedora, no small feat in this quicksilver world. What you will, because this edition is tailor-made for the stiff-lipped extroverts out there, some of whom are already salivating like Pavlovian hounds at the imperious imagery of a fully blinged-out G-Class.
The flared fenders alone speak volumes to this particular target consumer, but the ‘Stronger than Time’ street illumination lights that flare up when the doors are opened are one of the essential footnotes for that spender. There’s plenty of up-to-the-minute cushiness inside, including Multi Contour seats, a Burmester surround system, and atmospheric lighting. ‘Night’ and ‘Stainless Steel’ packages are standard, bringing tough surface cosmetics and tinted lighting to the mix. The edition also comes with 20” wheels, prepping it for the off-road adventures most examples will never see.
Does it look good? If you like the style, there’s nothing else even remotely like it. And even those who would never buy one themselves are still fascinated by what it represents.
