Mercedes G400d: a rugged yet luxurious SUV

If you are banished to the Highlands for yet another holiday, the Mercedes G400d will bring a touch of off-road extravagance to your otherwise prosaic family trip. A redesign of the iconic G-Class, engineered in 2018, the new model makes a great addition to the German manufacturer’s catalogue. Its hardy-looking and rugged utilitarian exterior open up into typical Mercedes luxury inside – it’s “a vehicle capable of traversing a post-apocalyptic wasteland and can give you a soothing back massage while doing so”, says James Attwood in Autocar.

The car boasts a powerful three-litre, straight-six, turbo-diesel engine that can generate 700Nm of torque, so it’s more than capable of scaling any incline the Lake District has to offer. For its size, the machine will do it quickly too; hurtling all 2,489kg of its mass from rest to 62mph in just 6.4 seconds, says Sean Carson in Auto Express, and on to a top speed of 130mph. It will have no trouble tearing up the moor in every one of its nine gears or dragging a small boulder in its wake with a massive 3,500kg towing capacity.

The lavishly-lined interior, with its “diamond-quilt” leather upholstery and open-pore wooden trim, is also “an extremely nice place to spend time”, says Martin Pretorius for AutoTrader, and features a generous amount of gadgets to complement the more delicate traditional furnishings with all the mod cons. The dashboard has an infotainment system, standard operating navigation and even voice control. Fitted with a selection of ambient lighting in 64 colours, three-zone climate control and adjustable dynamic front seats that remember how you like to sit and counteract lateral forces when cornering, going for a drive starts to feel more like a spa day than piloting a typical SUV.

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It’ll cost you a fair bit more than your average spa day, however. The most basic model costs £101,565. That asking price seems “less lamentable” when you consider that it’s built almost entirely by hand in a bespoke facility and undercuts similar luxury SUVs, including the offerings from Bentley and Maserati, says South Africa’s Car Mag. It also provides the most “mesmerising 4X4 experience” you can buy.