![]() ![]() I drove a stick-shift model technically, it has five forward gears, but the first is a super-short granny gear meant for off-roading, not street use. So as you might imagine, acceleration is.plodding. An EMC 250 GD makes 91 horsepower and 114 lb-ft of torque.Hell, it's honestly unlike driving most 30-year-cars, due to a combination of factors from the exquisite craftsmanship to the Gelandewagen's mil-spec roots to the fact that, despite coming from the early 1990s, the design's age means you're actually driving a nearly 50-year-old car. ![]() It's miles different from driving a new G-Class. "They don't really break," says Bill Thomas, an automotive technician who worked for the corporate offices of Nissan, Infiniti and Ferrari before branching out to start his own company, William Thomas Roadsters, and becoming part of EMC. The screws holding everything together are stainless steel in fact, just about everything made of steel is stainless, an expensive choice the company made on purpose to make the machine look better and last longer.īeneath it all, however, still lies the basic architecture that has made the G-Class such a legend. The paintwork looks good at a glance - but look harder, and you'll see it's not just good, it's concours-quality great. Much of the more impressive changes are harder to spot at a glance - especially outside. Even a layperson can appreciate the production-car-level quality of the leather trim, or the smooth action with which the controls move through their motions. ![]() The attention to detail is practically Singer-esque - the craftsmanship impeccable, the fit-and-finish remarkable. Clamber inside, and after closing the solid door with that iconic G-wagen thunk, you'll find yourself surrounded with what looks like the interior of a car that just time-traveled here from the early '90s. He's not kidding: each EMC Wolf takes around 1,100 hours of labor to progress from soup to nuts - part of the reason the company has only made around 80 examples so far, as well as part of the reason there's a six-month wait for each new one.ĮMC's commitment to making high-quality vehicles shines through in ways big and small. “I quickly realized not a lot of people were stupid enough to do that, because of the hours involved,” Levin says. He pulled together a team to pull it off, but, he says, then realized the real business - "or fun," as he put it - was taking the restorations beyond the levels of quality other people were doing with aging Gelandewagens.Īs it turned out, there was a reason no one was doing that. The company got its start after Levin imported a couple of aged G-wagens for himself, only to realize they were in need of stem-to-stern restorations. That's straight from the mouth of EMC founder Alex Levin, who has a little experience with Gelandewagens while his company has only been in existence for a couple years, his fate has been tied to the G-wagen since he first had the chance to steer one at age five. So with the market for boxy off-roaders booming and restomod Land Rover Defender builders coming out of the woodwork in recent years, it's not too surprising that someone would try and make old-fashioned Gelandewagens into new-fashioned oceanfront lifestyle machines.Īnd that's exactly what Expedition Motor Company is aiming to do. But the older, more varied versions - the ones with different wheelbases and powerplants that were largely forbidden fruit for Americans for roughly three decades - are extremely rare, cursed - or blessed - to obscurity by their gray-market status and less-luxurious traits.īut like nature, the car world abhors a vacuum. Oh, you'll probably see plenty of new G-wagens - the four-door, V8-powered beasties that have been a staple of hip urban locales and super-bougie suburbs since M-B USA began officially selling them here about a decade and a half ago. One type of boxy soft-top SUV from days of yore you aren't too likely to catch a glimpse of, however: the Mercedes-Benz Gelandewagen. Old-school Land Rover Defenders are the most obvious example of this trend, but keep your eyes peeled and you're liable to see a decent number of Jeep Wranglers and CJs, an occasional Ford Bronco, maybe even an International Scout or Chevy Blazer if you're lucky. If you've ever ventured to one of the tonier beach towns of America - your Nantuckets, your Hamptons, your Newports (Beach or otherwise), your Vineyards Martha - odds are good you've seen a fair number of very nice open-top vintage off-roaders tooling around.
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