Mercedes-Benz G 500 4x4²
Why 2.6: Mercedes took the G-Class 6x6's portal axles — gear reduction at the hub, so the halfshaft sits above the wheel centre — and put them under a two-axle G. The result clears 450 mm, wades a metre, and is 2,100 mm wide before the mirrors.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
Side-exit pipes ahead of the rear wheels put the M176 biturbo V8 level with the doors, and there is real bass off idle and on the overrun. But it is turbocharged and boomy at speed, so what carries is resonance from a two-metre-wide body more than engine note.
8-cylinder · turbocharged · 6,500 rpm redline · rated 6.4 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €208k (2016) → €207k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two ISOFIX positions on the outer rear seats, the outer pair being the ones the standard covers.
The rear anchors are the supported route — the manual points child seats there, and front-passenger ISOFIX is the exception rather than the rule. A belt-mounted seat up front needs the airbag off, and cars with a rear row don't always fit a deactivation switch, precisely because the rear seats exist.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
Around 500 were built between 2015 and 2018, and the United States got a specific slice of them: sold as the G550 4x4² for the 2017 and 2018 model years at roughly $225,000, with the 4.0-litre biturbo V8 rather than the 5.5 the 6x6 used. It was never a limited edition in the marketing sense so much as a limited-patience one — Mercedes built them while people ordered them. The ownership pattern is the clearest garage-queen signature in this batch. Auction and dealer listings for eight- and nine-year-old cars routinely show four-figure mileage; the width makes ordinary car parks a problem and the ride height makes loading one a decision; and the off-road capability the entire vehicle is built around is, for the overwhelming majority of these cars, theoretical. Values dipped once the novelty passed and have since climbed back above the original list price, which tells you what the market thinks it is: not a car with a job, but a fixed number of a discontinued shape. It sits marginally above the 6x6 on this index only because a 4x4² is at least usable on a public road.