This lovely little thing is a Mercedes-Benz W463-body G 350 turbodiesel, short wheelbase model. Quite a name, right? If that’s not enough of a handful, remember the G stands for Geländewagen.
I spotted the G-Benz in a nice, peaceful neighbourhood in Southern Helsinki, and it stood out for miles because of that colour.
The W463 model was a facelift or an update of the earlier, original W460 model. “W461” referred to the military versions of the original car, and W462 stood for licenced versions built elsewhere, like in Greece.
The 350 engine is of OM603 designation, and has 136 horsepower. I do wonder, how the short-wheelbase G-wagon feels to drive.
Most everything is colour-coded here.
For some reason, I really prefer the short-wheelbase truck. It should have an opening rear section of the roof, though.
Helsinki Weekend Edition: 1993 Mercedes-Benz G 350 TD
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Cute! Is the G-Wagen one of those vehicles that’s blisteringly expensive in the US but sensibly priced in Europe? SUVs are such status symbols here, add the Mercedes Benz tri-point star emblem and you have a double whammy of covetousness that keeps these things in the 5-digit price range.
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I remember when these were being bought in 2-door van form with naturally-aspirated diesels by farmers in Ireland keen to offload their EC farm subsidy cheques back in the early ’80s. The words ‘slow’ and ‘spartan’ don’t go far enough to describe what those models were like; the terms ‘glacial’ and ‘bare’ may be more accurate.
Once the farmers found that these had a propensity to rust alarmingly after a few short years and that servicing costs were not what they had become accustomed to with Land-Rovers, they defected to the Japanese and largely didn’t look back.
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