Icon is an overused word, but if any 4x4 deserves the accolade, it's the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. To celebrate its production extension to 2010, I placed a special order for one. You can imagine the double-take and spilled coffee: "A what? A right-hand-drive, turbodiesel, automatic, long-wheelbase, van-body 461 with a heavy-duty rear axle?"
I waited five months to receive it from Germany. Although my local Mercedes-Benz dealer didn't know it, the Type 463 G-Wagen is alive and well and sold to aficionados in the U.S. (see sidebar) for around $105,000 (the price as of mid-2006). Like its kindred spirit Range Rover, it has evolved from a no-nonsense military vehicle into a ticket dispenser with leather and walnut trim. The core G-Wagen is built like a battleship and has a similar turning circle. With 100-percent mechanical driver-selectable axle diff locks front and rear, it's excellent off-road. On-road, it's smooth, solid, and well insulated from heat, cold, and noise. Incredibly, with so much unsprung beam-axle weight, there's less tire noise than on the E-Class that ferried me back from the dealership.
In the Sand
The Sahara stretches across the top end of Africa--6000 miles or so from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Algeria's part of it is about three times the size of Texas. There's certainly space to be alone with the landscape. The scenery is addictively spectacular. That, and with books and photography in mind, is why I've been coming back for years. Though I've been doing this kind of thing for decades, my 461 G-Wagen--the "civil engineer version"--has been with me for six years and five trips totaling 30,000 miles on journeys to the desert. My trips are solo, with 600- to 750-mile, 10- to 12-day, off-track--not just off-blacktop--sectors; these are what I call off-the-planet (OTP) legs. Reliability and the ability to carry reserves of fuel and water are incredibly important.
Cresting the first high dune in the 463, where unexpected and mysteriously wide tire tracks led, I looked down in astonishment at what seemed to be a James Bond film set. Rows of engineers' caravans, tents, throbbing machinery, generators, huge trucks, and drilling rigs lay before me, tiny figures scuttling about on urgent business. "Ah, the hospitality of the desert," I thought, as they seemed to turn toward me, motioning to their friends to greet the newcomer. Then I realized they had rifles. The man in the lead had a two-way radio in one hand and a pistol in the other. His colleagues dropped to one knee and looked at me over the barrels of their weapons. It was time to dismount. Slowly.
Fifteen minutes later I was sipping chilled orange juice and strong Arabic coffee in the chief engineer's caravan. The initial reaction of his men had been sensible. They had no way of telling how many other vehicles were behind mine over the lip of the dune or their intentions. There were bad guys roaming the Sahara and that was in late 2001. Later on it stoked up. In 2003, feeling a slackness of the purse strings, a gentleman rakishly nicknamed "Razzak the Para" and a group of ne'er-do-wells allied with one of the extremist groups took no fewer than 32 foreign tourists from seven separate groups hostage and gave them a summer tour of the Sahara dodging Algerian special forces. They finished up, after half the party had been rescued, in neighboring Mali, where it's rumored the remainder were freed in exchange for a large sum of money.