If any model symbolizes the ultimate victory of the S.U.V., Mr. Edwards said, it is the Mercedes G-Class, or Geländewagen. Built in Austria, it was conceived in 1979 as an unpretentious military or farm truck.
Mercedes didn’t initially offer the G-Class in America, and a gray market of imports stoked demand. The federal government cut off imports in 1987, making the Mercedes three tons of forbidden fruit. The automaker finally brought the model stateside in 2003, where it evolved into a sumptuous luxury S.U.V. that can still perform off-road.
Jessica Hart, founder of the Luma Beauty brand, and a former model, adores the G-Wagen she bought when she moved to Los Angeles, after 17 car-free years in New York. She has the AMG G 63, a prized version from Mercedes’s performance division.
“The boxy design is masculine, but not overly aggressive,” said Ms. Hart, who grew up around farms in Australia with the nation’s iconic “utes” oddball mash-ups of a sports sedans and pickup trucks.
“I’m a bit of a rev-head, so the engine is worth it for me,” Ms. Hart said.
The G-Class has managed to clamber over the S-Class, the limo-like sedan that had been Mercedes’s benchmark brand, in both sales and image. Mercedes sold nearly 11,000 G-Classes last year, quadruple its sales from a decade ago. S-Class sales continued to wither, down 25 percent last year from the year before, to 8,800 cars. The explosive sales gains of the G-Class seem more striking in light of its average price, $192,000, according to surveys conducted by Strategic Vision, compared with $131,000 for a typical S-Class.
