Yahoo Autos The 300,000th G-Wagen is Blue And Ready For Action
Back in the seventies, the G-Wagen took seven years to develop, starting as an idea for a military vehicle and morphing into a bare-bones civilian off-roader with three locking differentials. After Mercedes-Benz was done with the planning, a dedicated assembly line had to be built at Steyr-Daimler-Puch (today's Magna-Steyr). Since then, 300,000 of these boxes on wheels have been assembled there, mostly by hand, ever since the first one left the gates in 1979.
The G Wagen undergone quite a few changes throughout the last 38 years. Due to their Austrian origins, they were sold under the Puch badge in a number of markets up until 1999; American imports only began in 2002. AMG variants have followed, and while Magna still builds a pickup truck variant for Mercedes' military customers, long gone are both the two-door and the convertible Gs.
Recently, G Wagen production has been scaled up significantly, with sales growing continually since 2009 and a new record achieved in 2016 with almost 20,000 units. Setting a new sales record every year since 2012 hastened the pace, and this month Magna signed off the 300,000th G. Following a Facebook poll, the chosen example was built to G500 spec, in metallic blue with black leather seats, contrasting white stitching and the Off-Road package with black 16-inch wheels, all-terrain tires and a roof rack.
Now, all it needs is some mud, sand and snow. But don't wait around for the 400,000th old-school G: Mercedes is ready to unveil its all-new G-Class, which will be more comfortable, yet just as brick-like on the outside as the original.
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