First Drive: Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG
Over the last 15 years my job has afforded me the very great opportunity to drive the world’s best cars. I’ve made stops everywhere from Aston to Zonda with frequent visits to the lands of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche. Hell, I’ve ever had a one night stand with a Veyron. McLaren F1 aside, there’s very little I’ve not driven.
I’m not telling you this because I’m a look-at-me-motoring-journo. I tell you because, like you I’m sure, there is always something a true car enthusiast wants to drive. For nearly a decade, there’s been an enormous hole in my driving resume and only now have I managed to fill it – stuff it full of 500hp, 5721lbs G55 actually.
I’ve been in love with the G55’s 5.4-liter, supercharged V8 since 2003 when I first drove the R230 SL55 AMG powered by the same insane engine. On a two mile runway, I hammered the big roadster from zero to its 155mph speed limiter, braked back to zero, got back on the gas and thundered up to 155mph again before braking back to a stop. The test had no scientific merit, but jeez it was fun.
A few months later, I heard AMG was putting the same engine into its G-wagen – a car born in 1979. I’ve been waiting to drive a G55 since 2003.
When I first locked eyes on ‘my’ very black G55 I laughed out load. It was an involuntary reaction to the cartoon size and set-square design of this SUV that has its roots in military applications. Thirty three armies from Australia to the United States run or have run G-wagens over the last 30 years.
At just shy of six-foot-six, the imposing monster truck towers eight inches above me and the jutting side pipes are at the perfect height to BBQ third-degree ovals into my knee as I load my two children into the back seat. But the school run has never been more fun.
Few ‘cars’ this side of a neon Lambo, with doors upswept for maximum drama, attract more attention than the G55. Car enthusiasts are fast on the draw with their camera phones, non-car people stare open-mouthed, mothers shield the ears of their children and cops chuck U-turns and flick on their lights. I was stopped three times in four days; “Just a license check, sir.”
After explaining that the G55 was a press car and that I was a journo, most cops changed their suspicious attitudes. One even admitted that he stopped me because, “you just had to be a dealer in something like this.” One officer, however, took some convincing that the G55’s supercharged V8 and fat side pipes were factory legit and not illegal modifications.
The engine fires with all the subtlety of an artillery barrage, the enormously potent V8 gently rocking the 2.6-tonne mobile command center on its springs (for those with a technical bent, the G55 runs a separate chassis with live axles at both ends). Huge power and torque is available everywhere in the rev range and is always accompanied by a NASCAR soundtrack. Torque peaks with 700Nm from 2750-4000rpm but rev the mighty bent-eight to 6100rpm and you’ll be rewarded with an even 500hp (373kW).
But unlike modern monster trucks like Porsche’s Cayenne Turbo or the BMW X5 and X6M, the G55’s power delivery is fearsome. Because of the crudity of the chassis, you are always driving/fighting this monster. It bucks and squirms, hisses and roars – it’s like driving a dragon.
The five-speed torque converter auto – the same used in the first series of R230 SL55s – is a smooth operator under the circumstances. It grabs ratios up and down without fuss or any real haste.
The engine does a superb job to mask the 2.6-tonne mass, something at which the brakes, chassis and steering are dramatically less successful. Mercedes claims a 0-100km/h (62mph) sprint in 5.5 seconds, which I manage to undercut by a tenth. It is the most ludicrous vehicle to which I’ve ever attached the timing gear.
Later I find a sufficiently quiet road to stretch the beast to 125mph (just 5mph short of the speed limiter) and I’m still shaking as I type these words four days later. Though 90mph short of my personal Vmax, and 45mph short of what I’ve hit in a Cayenne Turbo, 125mph in a G55 is harder work than your first ever lap of the Nurburgring.