Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.
This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.
I’ve alluded to my annoyance at the ubiquity of the AMG Geländewagens around Silicon Valley, as growing up there was a mystique to insane breathed-on monster SUVs. The German marques have seemed to erase all mystique in their performance brands by expanding them to every model and selling as many as possible. Today’s G-Wagen would turn some heads and probably elicit some envy from G55 owners, intrigued by this short wheelbase convertible that will seem to the rich but ignorant to be a very expensive and unique car when it was in fact a more base version in other parts of the world. Living in Canada but with a US title, this would be an extremely capable off-roader with diesel efficiency and Jeep-like convertibility. The importation and rarity doesn’t make it cheap though, with an asking price that could easily get you a very nice, newer G55.
Click for more details: 1997 Mercedes-Benz G300 CDI on eBay
The 1990s was a time of transition at Mercedes-Benz. Model nomenclature evolved from numbers at the beginning of each model to a letter, Porsche was commissioned for a super sedan in the form of the 500E/E500 and AMG, the engineering firm responsible for a lot of Mercedes-Benz motorsport success and performance oriented street vehicles became a subsidiary under the Three Pointed Star umbrella. Their first official vehicle was the W202 based C36, a compact sports sedan intended to battle for enthusiasts’ wallets right in BMW’s Motorsport backyard. Right before the C36 appeared, an AMG oddity appeared, something that would grab the attention of the burgeoning SUV market: the G36 AMG.
This pumped Geländewagen appeared some years before Mercedes-Benz would flood the US market with G500s, G550s and AMG tuned examples that have become so popular with the rich and famous. With a breathed on 3.6 liter inline-6 under the hood, this G-wagen would give off-roaders a bit more juice when tackling those steep hills with this truck’s renowned three locking differentials.
As much as I think all the fancy AMG G55s and G63s I see around (not to mention the unobtanium G63 6-wheeler) are interesting thought exercises in mechanical dissonance, I’d much rather have a “real” G-wagen in my garage. Something like this 280GE would do just fine, as it spent much of its life with an off-road guiding company. Hell yes. It looks like the business on big BFGoodrich 33s with a winch and the perfectly-classic light blue. The interior looks nice enough for me, but there are some rust spots that may need attention. Or not, and you can keep driving this thing on and off-road like the badass it is, knowing that a few scuffs just add to its story.
The Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen has a reputation that precedes it. Around the world, this truck has been known for its superior off-road capability, in no small…
For reasons that shall not be discussed, I was subjected to my first complete episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” this weekend. It displayed…