Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Mercedes invited Dan and I on a 500 kilometer road trip through France and Spain, in one

  • of their brand new 2018 Mercedes G-Classes.

  • The Mercedes vehicles are pretty impressive, especially if you're into the luxury off-roading

  • market.

  • The G-Class is exceptional.

  • The thing I'm most excited about is the 3 locking differentialsnot just one or

  • two, but three.

  • Lucky for us, Mercedes is letting us take these off-road in some pretty extreme conditions,

  • so we'll see how they hold up.

  • [Dan] We're literally on a cliff right now.

  • [Zack] Let's get started.

  • [Intro]

  • [Music playing]

  • [Zack] Obviously we've already done some pretty heavy driving in this, but I'm going to run

  • you through the exterior.

  • So this is pretty much the same design as the previous Mercedes G-Classes, except for

  • they've managed to shave a hundred and seventy kilograms off of the total weight, which is

  • pretty sweet.

  • It still has the same iconic markers on the side, which, side note, is actually pretty

  • cool.

  • If this ever hits a pedestrian, this whole thing will collapse inside the frame, not

  • damaging the light, and more importantly, not damaging the pedestrian.

  • Same iconic grille with Mercedes logo and the same relative boxy shape that the normal

  • G-Classes have always had for the last 30 years.

  • One thing Mercedes has bragged about is the same style of door handles they've always

  • had with the push button on the side.

  • And the spare tire on the rear.

  • And it comes in two different styles.

  • This is the G 500, and there's also a G 63, and I'll talk about those more in a bit.

  • So inside of the back, you can tell we've been driving for a minute, we have the same

  • opening style handles right here.

  • And inside the car, these seats actually fold completely flat.

  • So we can lift these up, set these down, and there's a lot of room for activities back

  • here.

  • The thing I'm most excited about though, is the triple locking differentials.

  • Not only one in the rear, but there's also one in the front and one in the middle, and

  • I'll explain what I mean.

  • So every car has something called a differential that's in between the two tires that lets

  • them spin independently of each other.

  • My truck, my Toyota Tacoma, has a rear locker, which means that it can lock the differential

  • and make the tires spin together at the same time.

  • Which helps you get out of sticky situations.

  • Let's say you're in a patch of mud and one tire is spinning, the other tire won't move

  • while that tire is spinning.

  • So with a locker, it makes it so that both tires have to move at the same time, which

  • means that if this one is spinning, it transfers the power to the one that's not spinning and

  • also makes it move.

  • So in this G-Class undercarriage right here, we have the front of the car, and here we

  • have the rear differential with the locker, which is pretty standard on off-road cars.

  • But we also have a center locking differential here, which means that the front and rear

  • tires won't spin independently of each other.

  • They will all have to spin at the same speed at the same time.

  • And then this G-Class also has a front differential with a locker.

  • Basically with all of those lockers you'll just never get stuck in a G-Class.

  • But rather than just talk about the locking differentials, how about we show you how they

  • work.

  • So inside the G-Class we have a plethora of buttons - these control the seats over here.

  • We have two big monitors which I'll talk about in a second.

  • But right now we're going to talk about these dynamic select programs.

  • Here we have, obviously, you're basic slippery individual comfort Sport and Sport Plus modes.

  • But, if we jump down here into the differentials, and we put on the center lock, then it brings

  • us the different kind of trail modes.

  • So we have the regular trail mode, and then we also have a rock mode.

  • And then we have the sand mode here.

  • And each one of those...the tires act differently depending on what mode it's set to.

  • And also, if you check right here as I'm moving this steering wheel, you can see the angle

  • of the front tire as I turn the steering wheel back and forth.

  • So most of the cars I've driven have the exhaust coming out the back, and it sounds, you know,

  • like a normal car, normal truck.

  • But here in this Mercedes G-Class, the exhaust sounds completely different.

  • And first of all, it comes out the side right next to the back passenger rear tire.

  • And secondly, it sounds more like a Harley-Davidson motorcycle than anything else.

  • So right now we have the G-Class 500 and we're going to take it off-roading up into these

  • mountains behind me.

  • This one...it doesn't have the side rails, and it doesn't have those tail pipes that

  • stick out the side.

  • So the sound of this 500 is quite a bit different than the 63 that we were in before.

  • But this one is better for off-roading because it has that additional ground clearance.

  • It's time to see how it handles for real though.

  • So even though we're going uphill right now, and I can't see the road directly underneath

  • me, we have the camera here which can see the road directly underneath me and it can

  • see over the crest of the hill.

  • Which to my eyes, looking over the bonnet or looking over the hood, I can't see over

  • the hill.

  • So it's nice to have these additional cameras.

  • So one thing that I've noticed, taking this G-Class off-road...remember, this is the 500,

  • is that it is super super quiet when I'm driving.

  • The only thing you can hear is the sound of the engine as it's revving.

  • There's no wind noise, there's no nothing else.

  • And that's because the cab of the vehicle is air tight...like it's water tight.

  • You can feel it when the doors are slammed, you can feel the pressure of the car.

  • So right now we're going over this muddy terrain area in front of us, and there's a huge puddle

  • up ahead.

  • And it's kind of crazy because the water level... as we get deeper, the water level is going

  • to come up to the doors and the doors should stay water tight.

  • So we're going to go through the water.

  • Looking out through the door right here, you can see how deep...you can see how deep it

  • is coming up to the doors.

  • And there's zero water getting inside of the cab.

  • It's insane.

  • So a) it's water tight, and b) all of that water tightness helps keep the noise level

  • down as well.

  • [Rock music playing]

  • Solid day.

  • A bunch of water cover in the hood.

  • Yeah, the water level was definitely above that bottom seam at the door.

  • You can see the dry patches right here and the wetness right down here.

  • So above this bottom hinge, the whole bottom foot of the door was underwater.

  • But still nothing got in the car.

  • That's impressive.

  • So we've done a lot of the off-road driving.

  • We've tested the off-road capabilities.

  • But to be honest with you, with how expensive this is, it's more of like a luxury vehicle,

  • and so I imagine most of the time it's going to be on road because you don't want to scratch

  • something that costs this much.

  • So as far as the on-road driving goes, it feels like a luxury vehicle still, and one

  • of the things that comes with luxury vehicles is performance and speed.

  • Even driving at freeway speeds, it still has a lot of acceleration left over to get even

  • farther past legal speed limits.

  • But with that, Mercedes has put a lot of effort into making the vehicle more quiet.

  • The G-Class is not an aerodynamic by any means.

  • It is a box and has the aerodynamics of a box.

  • And while that's great for keeping the same style from the last 30 years of the G-Class,

  • it's not so great for wind noise.

  • But since this thing is pressurized and waterproof, it does keep a lot of that exterior noise

  • out including the road noise and cars next to you.

  • So as far as the interior goes on the G-Class, this is another 500 with a white leather interior,

  • and it looks phenomenal.

  • Check this out.

  • So right inside the door here we have the speakers.

  • We have all the seat controls, like every single aspect of the seat can be controlled

  • up, down, left and right, back and forward.

  • And this seat also, this is the leather.

  • Dan and his son Lincoln chopped up one of the S-Class seats, and this has the same technology

  • inside of it.

  • So it has like the massaging air pockets.

  • And the sides, as you turn the steering wheel back and forth, the sides grip your body with

  • each turn of the vehicle.

  • It's pretty sweet.

  • Plus it has heating and cooling in these seats with these buttons right here.

  • Normal window buttons and just the white leather everywhere.

  • Inside the vehicle we have a display right here, as well as a second display over here

  • on the side.

  • That's the same kind of thing we saw in the A-Class when me and Dan went to Amsterdam

  • for the A-Class reveal.

  • One thing that I'm not super fond of and I've noticed in every single G-Class that I've

  • been in...I think this is number 6 or 7 in this road trip....is that with the 2018's,

  • the reflection of this vent right here is in the rear view mirror.

  • You can see that little circle of the vent in the mirror all the time.

  • And it's not super distracting, and you might not always notice it, but I have.

  • There are buttons everywhere on this.

  • I feel like some of them are a little bit redundant, like down here we have a back button,

  • right here we have a back button, right here we have a back button.

  • There's just so many different places to control the electronics inside of the car that wherever

  • your hand is at that time, you can control basically everything, whether it's down here

  • at the bottom or up here on the steering wheel.

  • A couple more buttons up here at the top and a sunroof which I love.

  • There are 5 billion specs we could talk about, safety is one of them if you want to talk

  • about that.

  • So with the seat belts, when you clip them in there's a little motor up top that cinches

  • it tight across your chest.

  • I thought that was cool.

  • My truck doesn't have that.

  • And then there's also the normal safety features that cars in 2018 have.

  • So it has the lane assistit helps you stay between the two lines.

  • And the thing is, is that it's actually pretty strong.

  • If the cars thinks that I'm just naturally drifting into another lane, it'll take the

  • steering wheel and jerk it back into the lane whether it's, you know, a center stripe it'll

  • do it in like short segments, or if it's a solid stripe like on the edge of the road,

  • it'll do it hard.

  • It almost makes you think that you hit something on the side of the road because it jerks you

  • back into the center.

  • So I haven't quite decided if I like that feature yet, but it's still interesting that

  • it's there.

  • Also, when you're changing lanes and signaling to go in one lane or the other, there's little

  • LED markers on the side view mirrors that tell you if there's a car in your blind spot,

  • which is super super helpful.

  • But there are at least 50 buttons within my grasp right here and a lot of them do the

  • same thing, like the back button that I pointed out before, there are 3 of those all within

  • reach of my right hand.

  • But for those of you already familiar with Mercedes vehicles, these buttons are pretty

  • standard, and it is good to always have easy access to the buttons you press the most.

  • Also didn't realize the Mercedes-Benz logo lights up.

  • That's pretty sweet.

  • We finally made it to Barcelona after over 500 kilometers of driving from France to Spain.

  • To be honest with you, before this video, I knew that the G-Class was a little on the

  • more luxury side of things, but I didn't know that it was as capable off-road as it actually

  • is.

  • And super huge thanks to Mercedes for letting me and Dan put that to the test, literally,

  • today and yesterday.

  • The fancy seats and the 3 lockers are still my favorite things of the G-Class.

  • Let me know what you think is best down in the comments.

  • And thanks a ton for watching.

  • I'll see you around.

Mercedes invited Dan and I on a 500 kilometer road trip through France and Spain, in one

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it