It’s too late to cry now, but hot damn, the G-Class would have made for an ass-kicking pickup
by Tudor Rus, on LISTEN 02:18The Mercedes-Benz G-Class is the second most long-serving car in Daimler’s portfolio, outranked only by the tougher-than-a-tardigrade Unimog. For that reason alone, we believe that the X-Class pickup truck should have been based on the Geländewagen in the first place. Sadly, Mercedes-Benz went asking for help from Nissan.
The G-Class pickup truck that never was…or will be
News that the Mercedes-Benz X-Class wasn’t developed from the ground up and instead used the Nissan Navara’s skeleton is not a novelty anymore.
And the fact that the X-Class is getting thrown under the bus after just three draught-filled years on the market sales-wise is not exactly a surprise, is it now?
To put it simply, the X-Class never managed to get the love of European customers and although it looked like a Mercedes-Benz on the outside, prospective buyers wouldn’t pay the hefty price tag for a pickup that was, in essence, a Nissan, even down to some cabin bits and bobs.


But what if Mercedes-Benz opted to morph the G-Class into a pickup truck? What if the X-Class came from the G-Class instead of the Navara? Would that have tipped the odds in any way? It’s really hard to tell, but from a strictly design standpoint, a G-Class-based X-Class would have looked amazing.
How do we know? Well, thanks to Instagram’s @j.b.cars, we get a taste of what a G-Class with a bed might have looked like. The renders are based on the North American version of the new Mercedes-AMG G63 and to us, they look pretty natural and unforced.
Plus, let’s not forget that Mercedes-Benz went to Nissan in developing the X-Class to save money, but converting the G-Class would have done exactly the same thing.
And in addition to that, the argument that the G-Class moniker would have been tainted in some way doesn’t stand, because Mercedes had already fiddled with the G-Wagen when it created the likes of G500 4x4 Squared or the G63 AMG 6x6 - which, guess what, is essentially a pickup truck.
So, what’s your poison here? The Navara-based X-Class or G-Class-based X-Class?
X200 | X220d | X250d | X350d | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Horsepower | 165 | 163 | 190 | 257 |
Torque | 176 lb-ft | 297 lb-ft | 332 lb-ft | 406 lb-ft |
Driveline | part-time 4WD | part-time 4WD | part-time 4WD | full-time 4WD |
Transmission | 6MT\7AT | 6MT\7AT | 6MT\7AT | 6MT\7AT |