30 Years Young
1997 Mercedes-Benz G36 AMG
(This listing is from Bring a Trailer.)
The great thing about a 25-year-old G-Wagon is that it’s pretty much the same thing as a 2-year-old G-Wagon, which is admittedly very different from a current year G-Wagon, mostly in that you can’t make it spin around in circles or use it for shady tax bill offsets.
But assuming you don’t care about those last two things, it turns out that you can have a $150,000 driving experience vehicle experience for a clean Camry price, not to mention probably sell this thing in a couple of years for approximately what you’re about to pay for it right now.
We’re talking about foreign warlord levels of style and presence here, and not the mediocre warlords, either. Like, if Elon Musk became a warlord, this is what he’d get driven around in, even if admittedly that’s just because it’s too much of a security liability that the CyberTruck can’t get wet.
So warlord style, but also suburban runabout levels of practicality. Room for all the CostCo paper towels in the back, but with a wheelbase that makes it more maneuverable than a standard midsized SUV. And backup cameras? Forget about it! But you’re not worried about that anyway, because your G-Wagon bumpers are for bumping, not just for eating up your insurance deductible before you even get to the Honda Civic you just unceremoniously crunched at the grocery store.
Why are you backing into people at the grocery store? Is it because Bluetooth wasn’t a thing in 1997 and you were awkwardly messing with your phone? Definitely not! Because your earbuds work just fine and if you don’t want to do that, you just need to risk looking retro-future dope as hell. No, if anybody backs into something in this it’s definitely just because visibility is pretty lousy back there, but you’re competent and you’ll figure it out or else you wouldn’t be here right now.
Anyway, there’s the warlord style, the suburban power user practicality…what else is there to say, really?
You could spend this kind of money on some genuine dogshit sitting on a dealership lot in your town right now with all of the unstated implications of admitting you value the soft security of a factory warranty over the rugged individualism of maintaining a vehicle with fewer moving parts than a high-end juicer.
But that’s more of a you question than anything else.
Oh and it’s also the two-door! That means that even if you live somewhere where G-Wagons make up half the carpool line at the elementary school, you still have one that stands out from the rest.
In conclusion, so help you if you’re cross-shopping a Chevy Trax against a Kia Telluride right now and aren’t immediately slapping yourself awake to throw a bid on this thing instead.
