Close your eyes and whisper “Mercedes-Benz.”
This incantation likely conjures a stately, stretched-out sedan of some distant vintage. It’s probably riding on breadloaf sidewalls and either painted jet black or some gleaming metallic beige. It will not, however, look anything like this: The upright matte-bronze She-Shed parked in my driveway.
But in 2025, the G63 is the very best Mercedes-Benz has to offer. It feels of considerable substance and style, the type that used to drape the shoulders of any car that wore the three-pointed star.
One time, a friend came by, poked her head in the G Wagen, and simply decreed, “It smells like money!”
That old-school attention to feeling seems increasingly rare at a time when the German marque stumbles in search of a modern identity. Don’t understand what I mean? Take a look at the EQE. I’m not a fan, and neither are the car’s owners, apparently, as many have found their way to the secondary market in short order.
You should not confuse a Mercedes with a Chevy commuter
The cheapest EQEs have just dipped below thirty grand on the used market, have few miles on the clock, are a couple of model years old, and generally rang up near eighty grand when new with a few options. New ones can barely be given away.
Meanwhile, pull up a new tab and find your local Mercedes dealer: G-Class trucks—of which I am a fan—sell at a price of “Please Enquire.” Whatever figure that enquiry produces, you’ll pay it. Or more.
Granted, most EVs have depreciated quicker than a ripe peach, but EQE values have dropped like a Steinway in freefall. It was perhaps the least-enjoyable thing I’ve driven in the past few years (the EQE, not the free-falling Steinway), given the disparity between real-world experience and my expectation of the badge.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Mercedes might be forgiven for their early attempts at a mainstream EV, along with the rest of Zee Germans—only BMW nailed that first round with the i4. But that dilution of core brand attributes, which plagued Mercedes EVs, also stretched to flagship performance vehicles like the C63, which has come in for a raft of criticism from the media, including myself, with a similar attitude taken by prospective buyers.
Mercedes, to their credit, have admitted “they lost some customers” with the car and seem to be considering a course correction, though they’ve remained unrepentant in other interviews, insisting a lack of C63 sales resulted from a lack of customer education; Not from building a Mercedes nobody but legislators asked for.
C63: An embarrassment of technological riches. Undesirable all the same.
Photo by: Mercedes-Benz
It doesn’t bring me any glee to bring these points back up, because I’ve made them before. Rather than beat a dead horse, I repeat myself because I simply want Mercedes to find its way back.
Because every enthusiast loves Mercedes in some way or another, whether it’s for their stodgy Seventies sedans that wore like an old fraying cardigan, or for their hyperbolic approach to performance wherein most Mercedes-AMGs bore at least eight cylinders, a pair of turbos, and enough torque to rip a Sequoia from the earth.
There’s always been something deeply aspirational about a Mercedes-Benz, and yet the number of Mercedes I desire to own dwindles each year. How to solve that? Borrow some lessons from this G-Class and apply them to every last Mercedes.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Of course, it’s the most despicable auto-writer cliche to mention the cha-chunk of a G-Class’s door when you slam it shut against the latch, but here it is again. Combine that audible sensation with the mighty heft of the doors themselves, the force required to depress the door-latch button itself, and the slam it takes to fully latch the door shut…
Like a Colt 1911, this vehicle demands all your arm strength to actuate its exterior functions, evoking a rugged utilitarianism. These touchpoints perfectly demonstrate an abstract concept: Quality is communicated through what a driver feels, not how a vehicle looks.
So, simply make the EQE’s doors feel heavier? No, that’s not it. Take this less cliched example: the sunroof slider. Compare the G’s slider to a downmarket SUV like the 4Runner that sits in my driveway a lot.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Both the G63’s slider and the one in my own 4Runner offer identical functionality. You simply grab a little handle at the leading edge of the slider and move it along a set of tracks until the glass roof is revealed.
In the 4Runner, it feels unremarkable. In the Mercedes, it feels almost indescribable. There’s that heft again, but this time with a smoothness to the action, like you’re sliding a heavy piece of fine china over velvet. I think a team of human beings considered how it should feel to close this shade and made decisions working back from that particular aim.
There were cost-cutting measures to consider—after all, the money guys have shareholders’ pockets to line—but in the end, even the G-Class’s least-used feature feels like money.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
The G-Class communicates the abstract idea of “quality” with every touch point, whereas many other Mercedes—lined with capacitive touch buttons and clicky plasticky trim pieces—signal an indifference toward their driver.
Cut-rate Mercedes-Benz will demand cheaper materials, in turn creating a challenge for the designers, engineers, and bean counters. But Mercedes always overcame that challenge with its US products; Generally the less-expensive ones never felt anything less than a Mercedes-Benz.
Even the beat-up diesel E-Class taxi you hailed in Skopje still rode like a Mercedes. The sedan’s synthetic seats held up for a half-million miles with some occasional care and didn’t feel cheap so much as intentionally hard-wearing. Budget Mercedes haven’t felt that way since at least 2013, when the marque made its biggest play toward the mass market with CLA.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
Alongside BMW’s “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” Mercedes’s “The Best or Nothing” credo sits atop the pile of automotive taglines. It’s an idea so concise and so attractive, it still lures me to the brand. This G63 still speaks to that idea in an honest way, even if you’re cynical about the Kardashian types who buy the truck and park them in front of boutiques you can’t shop in.
But the Kardashians do prove something that Merc should remember; Americans buy cars that move them emotionally, not the one that looks the most clever on a piece of drafting paper.
It’s why we love the G63’s bombast, an old-school E-Class’s stodgy adherence to ultimate quality, and the SL’s drug lord menace. Vehicles like the EQE and C63 felt like equations where you have to work backward to find the value of “x”, instead of structures supported by a core brand identity.
Photo by: Kyle Kinard / Motor1
With a deeply unsure legislative climate, I sympathize with product planners at any company. Navigating the changing winds of world governments is difficult when product planning moves at a glacial pace.
But if you simply stick to your guns and build a car that feels like The Best or Nothing—at every price point—it doesn’t matter which direction the trade winds blow. People will follow in your wake.
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