Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6X6 2013 Review - International

The idea attracted global interest and now Sweden’s army has the first left-hand drive version, but all the army 6X6s are 3.0-litre turbo-diesels to cope with the appalling fuel standards in their overseas theatres. This AMG version uses the twin-turbo, 5.5-litre V8 from the latest E 63…

Everything about this machine is big. Its weight is big, its turning circle is big, its ride height is big, its pricetag is big and its tyres are big. The only small thing is its 750kg payload. And the amount of sense it makes.

It is not yet in full production, because Benz officially calls this an interest depth gauge and judging by the way the brother of the ruler of Dubai took off in one of the Depth Gauges when we were there, then disappeared for the day, they might be on to something. And it will be almost certainly on sale in October.

The 6X6 G-Class is born to climb sand dunes, to play in the desert and to be a fun machine to drive. Accordingly, its interior is as far removed as possible from an army beastie, with its four individual seats dragged from the front of the G 63 (which means, essentially, the front of the E63) and the cabin stretched even longer than the standard G 63.

In spite of the size and heft, its off-road ability is hugely increased, thanks to Unimog-style wheel hubs that push the axles to the top of the wheel, then step down via gears to drive the centre of the wheel. There are also five(!) diff locks, 37-inch wheels and tyres, huge Ohlins dampers and on-board air compressors that can lower and raise tyre pressure on the run.

Benz hasn’t announced its pricing, but be prepared for a shock when it does. Its development leader, Axel Harries, admitted it would rank second in the Benz price list, behind only the electric version of the SLS.

PRICE AND EQUIPMENT

It’s largely hand-built – actually, this one was so hand-built and so new that it had been tested just once (and even then mostly for filming purposes) in Namibia before it was flown to Dubai to meet us.

Besides the best in AMG seating, complete with heating and ventilation and full bolstering and lumbar support adjustments in all four seats, it gets plenty of everything else.

Start with everything the top-of-the-line G63 gets and work up from there. There is just so much. Of everything. It even has a centre console in the rear and a bamboo tray in the back.

There are also daytime running lights, but not just as you know them from the G 63. They are fitted to the roof shade, which protects the flat windscreen. There is also a huge stainless steel rollover bar in the back, which would want to be mightier than even it can look if it wants to hold all of this.

Let’s start, oh, I dunno, at the track widths. The axles stretch the track of all six axles by 281mm over the standard G 63, taking them out to 1790mm and demanding a slick set of carbon-fibre wheel-arch extensions to keep them politely inboard.

Then there’s the wheelbase. That’s been stretched by 300mm to 3120mm – and that’s just to the middle axle – and all of that space has been given over to the rear seat’s occupants. And then there’s another 1100mm between the middle axle and the rear one.

And it’s bigger in every dimension. A lot. It’s nearly six metres long (5875mm), which is more than 1.1 metres longer than the G63. At 2110mm wide, it has bumped out by 225mm and its height has jumped 272mm to 2210mm. Whatever else it needs, the G 63 AMG 6X6 is going to demand one hell of a garage.

Then there are the off-road numbers. The ground clearance more than doubles, leaping by 250mm to 460mm and the wading depth has jumped 400mm to a neat metre. The ride height is 282mm, so you’ll have some climbing to do to even get into it. And there’s no ‘Jesus’ handle.

The off-road angles are all better, too, with the approach angle jumping 16 degrees to 52 and the departure angle boosted by 27 degrees to 54, while the rampover angle creeps up a degree to 22 degrees.

Big numbers, all…

Except the payload is a miserly 750kg. That means that if you stick four burly blokes in it, you’ll only be able to carry 350-400kg of anything else. But that’s the official number. Mr Harries just looks and smiles as he admits, so it’s just a technicality.

So it has an extended version of the civilian chassis rails, stiffened a bit in key places and invented a bit (like, from where the normal ‘rear’ axle sits) in others.

The engine bay seems familiar, at least, with 400kW of twin-turbo 5.5-litre V8 doing the damage. There is also 760Nm of torque there from 2000rpm to 5000rpm and it doesn’t really feel like it ever struggles to move it.

That’s odd, because this is also demonstrably heavier than the G 63. In fact, it’s almost an A-Class heavier. At 3775kg, it’s 1200kg more than the G 63, which is no lightweight itself. Benz makes no claims for fuel consumption, though the stock G63 is in the high 13s, so expect it to be considerable. Still, they implied, anybody spending this much money on a sand rocket won’t care…

A quick look around shows that everything – everything – is heavy-duty. Even the seven-speed MCT transmission has had a bit of reinforcing, which is just as well because it has never been AMG’s nicest feature.

The driveline starts with a two-speed transfer case with a choice of either a 0.87:1 high range and a 2.16:1 low range, just in case things get hectic. Then there is a locking centre diff between the conventional axles then another one between the second and third axles and both centre diffs are managed by a single button on the centre console.

Then there are locking diffs on each of the cross axles, with the rear two run by one console button and the front one by another.

When they’re all locked in, they send 30 per cent of the drive to the front axle, 40 per cent to the middle and the rest to the rear. Grip aplenty, then.

Tri-Axel Harries (as he’s now known) and his team rummaged around for ideas at Benz and came back smiling with six Unimog portal wheel hubs which give an instant jump in ride height and ground clearance for very little cost in a well-proven system.

Essentially, instead of just driving an axle from the diff through to the middle of the wheel, it sends the shaft to a cog sitting in the top of a big hub-mounted casing. It spins this cog whenever you step on the throttle, which in turn mates to a cog beneath it, which then drives the wheel. Effectively, it just tucks everything out of the way at a small cost to driveline efficiency.

Then there are the wheels and tyres, complete with bead-locking technology. They are huge, taken from US off-roading culture, at 37 x 12.5 inches x 18 inches.

Beside spreading the not-inconsiderable load well and having more than enough sidewall height to help the ride quality, the tyres have been the focus of significant development.

With an on-board compressor filling four 20-litre tanks (fitted above the rear wheels), it can lift the pressure from the fiddling-in-sand 0.5 bar to a highway-style 1.8 to 2.0 bar in just 20 seconds. All from the comfort of your ventilated seat.

There are also enormous gas-pressurised Ohlins dampers with remote canisters helping to control the rising rate springs and if all that fails there are six conical bump stops at the end of all that travel.

The brakes to stop it all are cast-iron (which cope with predicted sandy batterings than carbon ceramic units), while the steering is an old-fashioned recirculating ball system with 3.4 turns lock-to-lock.

Oddly, with all these changes to the standard G 63, Mercedes didn’t have to crash test the 6X6, insisting everything complied on stock G63 data. Strange to us, given that it’s still hitting a 50km/h crash barrier with another 1200kg of weight behind it…

This is not one of those. The G 63 AMG 6X6 just works. And it’s nothing like as cumbersome as you would think. Well, it’s nothing like as cumbersome as I assumed it would be.

In its element, the thing is downright nimble, but that element is not going to be a Parramatta Road traffic jam. You’d hope not, because the tiny sliding rear window and standard-sized rear vision mirrors means you’ll feel neighbouring machinery before you’ll see it. And you won’t be able to double back to check because you’ll need most of a supermarket car park to complete a circle, but only if it’s empty.

This sort of area is where it is at home. Lots of space and nothing much around it. And then it’s a giggle. And it’s a giggle because it actually feels stupidly coherent and organized.

Sure, they know plenty about how to do this thanks to Australian taxpayer dollars, but pulling something like this together and throwing people in it without a thorough test program is both brave and some sort of feat.

It fires up with extreme prejudice, thanks largely to four short side pipes that exit right beneath the cabin area. The sheer size of the 6X6 does nothing to weigh down the message coming from the twin-turbo, that’s for sure. It’s still raucous and belligerent and feels every bit as purposeful and is every bit as capable of rocking the body on the springs as it does in an E 63.

Then you just pull the standard AMG gearshifter back, engage the Sport + mode and go, with all six axles shifting torque.

It doesn’t just go, though. Even on loose sand, it actually hammers. There’s almost zero wheelspin and with all six of those monster boots clawing and scooping away at the silicon, it blasts to 100km/h in something akin to the sub six-second claim.

And it takes just about that long for the apprehension to disappear and for the loud guffaws to fill the enormous, luxuriant and decadent cabin.

The sand is flung high in the air as the 6X6 leaps forward, with none of the bogging down you would get in a 4X4 if you tried this. It’s like the thing is on tarmac with a sheen of loose sand, not deep desert sand.

It’s utter lunacy. It’s outrageous. And it’s good. The FUV takes desert hooning to a new level and shrinks around you to feel like something half the size with more stability.

On the way to the test area, we were ferried in G 63s, which were yawing incessantly as they fought the tracks in the sand. Not in the 6X6. It just goes straight. Nothing throws it off line.

The only thing that gives pause is its dead-slow steering system that is a throwback that identifies just how old the core of the G-Wagen actually is. There is no feel, it takes an age to turn the truck 90 degrees and it feels connected to the wheels in the same way yelling instructions down the pipe to the engine room connected old ship’s captains to the engine.

Then there’s the next outrageous step: Corners. We started gently and ended up simply trusting it to bite and hurling it at any bend we saw. It always took more steering lock than we thought, but it always gripped and bit. And then it just went. If it ever got into strife, you just stood harder on the throttle and giggled as it pulled out, straight.

Even in deeper sand, up and over dunes, the G 63 6X6 didn’t find anything that looked like stopping it. We provoked it with outrageous tyre pressures and it still wouldn’t sink, then we gave up. At least it let us try out the air pressure system, which works a treat on all six tyres.

It’s not a delicate truck, either. It smashed into dune faces, leapt over jumps with all six wheels more than a foot in the air and landed with a beautiful softness before disappearing up the road again, utterly untroubled and arrogantly demanding more.

With the centre and rear diffs locked, the 6X6 pulled out its party piece, capable of Colin McRae style spinning donuts and sending plumes of dust high into the air while ripping shards out of the ground.

But the real trick was still to come. On the winding desert track that took us back to our hotel, we followed a hard-driven ML63 AMG. It was drifting, bucking and sliding all over the road, getting bucked sideways over ruts and sand blows.

The G 63 6X6? It just sat behind calmly, being held up by the more-modern engineering. We had to pull back a few times to have a big charge and we’d very quickly regather the ML.

No, it’s no rally car. Actually, it’s like no other car you’ve ever seen or heard of.

But it’s fast, it’s near unstoppable, it’s disturbingly organised and… I just want one.