This year, the oldest current Mercedes model is celebrating its 40th birthday, and the Mercedes Museum is hosting a special exhibition to honour the G Class.
Along the direction of the exhibition, there is a room on each floor, dedicated to a specific topic, and the last room before the technology segment presents a few specimens with exciting history.
I shall start with the most iconic G-Class of all, the white Mercedes-Benz 230 G with registration number SCV 7 that was used by His Holiness Pope John Paul II in his.
The vehicle was built by Mercedes-Benz for the Vatican in 1980. The modifications served to protect the Pope from wind and rain on his visit to Germany.
After the assassination attempt in 1981, the car received bullet-proof glazing, and the G Class has been used by the Holy Father on many occasions.
The next car is baptised Otto and is arguable the greatest globetrotter of the bunch. This 300 GD from 1988 spent 26 years visiting 215 countries and packing almost 900,000 kilometres.
Its owners, Gunther and Christine Holtorf travelled all around the world from 1989 to 2014. The world tour means the standard cross-country vehicle now has its own entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, and the car has been a part of the Mercedes-Benz Museum collection since 2014.
The eleven vehicles are complemented by countless further exhibits with colourful stories all about the oldest model series of the brand. For example, overcoming a 100% gradient incline can be tested by visitors on a correspondingly steep ramp.
The green one on the podium is a Puch 280 GE from 1986. The selection also pays homage to the fact that the G-Class has been built in Graz by Steyr-Puch (today Magna Steyr) for 40 years, and about a tenth of all Gs were sold under the brand name Puch from 1979 to 1999.
The other car is G 500 Cabriolet Final Edition from 2013, the last of the G-Class Cabriolet with a short wheelbase, that ended already in 2014.
The selection includes a few other milestones, like the 300.000th car made or the G 65 AMG Final Edition from 2017. I guess the longevity of the model lies in the fact that it keeps getting pronounced dead : ).
FOR AN OVERVIEW OF ALL THE CAR MUSEUMS I EVER VISITED, CHECK OUT THE INTERACTIVE MAP:
